• http://www.imls.gov

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

• Master's and Doctoral programs, pre-professional recruitment
• Research on the library and information science profession
• Early Careers Development for tenure-track, untenured faculty
• Programs to build institutional capacity in graduate schools of library and information science (e.g., digital asset management and data curation)
• Continuing Education

21st Century Museum Professionals

• Improving the knowledge and skills of museum professionals

IMLS has hosted the annual WebWise Conference on Libraries and Museums in the Digital Age since 2000. In 2007 and 2008, IMLS is collaborating with the National Endowment for the Humanities on a new grant program, Advancing Knowledge, which funds innovative, collaborative digital humanities projects. Contact IMLS at http://www.imls.gov.

Joyce Ray is Associate Deputy Director for Library Services for the IMLS.