June 16, 1997

Contact:
Guy Lamolinara (202) 707-9217

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Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital Library Competition Workshops To Be Held at American Library Association Conference

Workshops on applying for awards from the Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital Library Competition for 1997/98 will be held during the Annual Convention of the American Library Association in San Francisco.

The workshops will cover the eligibility requirements, the evaluation process and criteria, how to make proposals competitive and technical requirements. Applications will be available in July, with completed applications due Nov. 3, 1997 (postmark).

The workshops will be held:

• June 28, 9:30 a.m. - 11 a.m., Moscone Convention Center, Room 226
• June 29, 9:30 a.m. - 11 a.m., Moscone Convention Center, Room 256

Program staff will also be available in the Library's exhibit booth, No. 3016, from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m., June 28- June 30, to answer questions. A new brochure describing the competition will be available at the exhibit booth and during the workshops.

A $2 million gift from the Ameritech Foundation (http://www.ameritech.com) to the Library of Congress is enabling U.S. institutions to apply for awards to digitize their unique collections in American history and -- for the first time -- make them a part of the Library's on-line collections, called American Memory.

This is the second year of a three-year program (details of the 1996-97 Competition are available from the Library of Congress Web site at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/award/). The 1996/97 winners are institutions both large and small from across the United States. Their collections to be placed on-line represent a diversity of subjects in American history for the period 1850-1920.

The National Digital Library Program of the Library of Congress aims to make freely available over the Internet millions of items by the year 2000, in collaboration with other institutions. Ameritech's contribution will help the Library meet that goal by providing funds to libraries, museums, archives and historical societies to aid them in the critical, yet expensive, task of making their unique collections available to anyone with access to the World Wide Web.

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PR 97-111
6/19/97
ISSN 0731-3527