The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is the primary source of federal support for the nation's 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The Institute works at the national level and in coordination with state and local institutions and organizations to sustain heritage, culture, and knowledge; to enhance learning and innovation; and to support professional development.  

In the Knowledge Society of the 21st Century, digital content will be created, managed, preserved and disseminated within an infrastructure that is seamless and virtually invisible to users. The future digital environment will include digital representations of accumulated historical knowledge as well as vast amounts of new content. Future generations of users will build on this existing information and preserved digital content to create new knowledge and forms of expression. Libraries, museums, and archives are vital components of the emerging cyberinfrastructure.  

Cultural heritage institutions are developing digital repositories to manage and preserve collections converted from analog formats as well as those that are digital-only. They are also leading efforts to develop tools, standards, and best practices to improve the management, discovery, presentation, and use of digital content. IMLS provides grant opportunities to libraries, museums, archives, and institutions of higher education for research, demonstrationl, and implementation projects to enhance library and museum services and for programs to educate the next generations of library and museum professionals. IMLS grant programs that support cyberinfrastructure include:

National Leadership Grants

• Research and Demonstration Projects
• Building Digital Resources
• Library and Museum Collaborations
• Collaborative Planning Grants

Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program

Rome Reborn 1.0 resides at the crossroads of history, archeology, technology and imagination. You can visit the project's website or read a short report on its unveiling from CNET News.com where you will learn that the simulation "shows almost the entire city within the 13-mile-long Aurelian Walls in 320 A.D., when Rome was the multicultural capital of the Western world." One of the more provocative tidbits from the project site is the fact that the creators are hoping to incorporate the work of other scholars who would "contribute their work as bricks in the larger edifice." If that dream of collaboration is realized, the virtual city would double as a spatialization of particular scholarly projects and as a metaphor for the scholarly endeavor at large. At the same time, as you view the video clips on the project site, you may be reminded of Second Life and find yourself wishing to move about in Rome Reborn as a toga-clad avatar. The pedagogical (and other) possibilities are staggering.

Many people will be familiar with Muzzy Lane's game Making History. This World War II strategy game is designed with certain extra capabilities, such as decision tracking, to make it easier to integrate into the classroom than other commercial games such as Hearts of Iron II. It seems their game's success along with successful titles from other small publishers such as Peacemaker  and A Force More Powerful have encouraged Muzzy Lane to focus on current events as their next subject area. Harvard historian Niall Ferguson will be working with Muzzy Lane to create a new series of video games focusing on modern global conflicts. You can read more about it on Wired.