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Dear Code4Lib Community Members, A grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has enabled the North Carolina State University Libraries to offer several block grants to support work on visualizing digital scholarship in libraries and other learning spaces; see below for the Call For Proposals. If you work in this area please consider submitting an application. Also, if you know of someone whose work would be a good match for the project and who could benefit from participating please feel free to share this CFP. Please note that successful participants will be invited to join us in Raleigh for an initial workshop. If you attended Code4Lib 2014 and would like to come back to Raleigh, here is your opportunity! Sincerely, Markus Wust Digital Research and Scholarship Librarian North Carolina State University Libraries Raleigh, NC, USA ORCID: 0000-0001-5958-2058 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ CALL FOR PROPOSALS Grant: Visualizing Digital Scholarship in Libraries and Learning Spaces Award amount: $40,000 Funder: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Lead institution: North Carolina State University Libraries Due date: 13 August 2017 Notification date: 15 September 2017 Website: https://immersivescholar.org Contact: [log in to unmask] PROJECT DESCRIPTION NC State University, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, invites proposals from institutions interested in participating in a new project for Visualizing Digital Scholarship in Libraries and Learning Spaces. The grant aims to 1) build a community of practice of scholars and librarians who work in large-scale multimedia to help visually immersive scholarly work enter the research lifecycle; and 2) overcome technical and resource barriers that limit the number of scholars and libraries who may produce digital scholarship for visualization environments and the impact of generated knowledge. Libraries and museums have made significant strides in pioneering the use of large-scale visualization technologies for research and learning. However, the utilization, scale, and impact of visualization environments and the scholarship created within them have not reached their fullest potential. A logical next step in the provision of technology-rich, visual academic spaces is to develop best practices and collaborative frameworks that can benefit individual institutions by building economies of scale among collaborators. The project contains four major elements: 1. An initial meeting and priority setting workshop that brings together librarians, scholars, and technologists working in large-scale, library and museum-based visualization environments. 2. Scholars-in-residence at NC State over a multi-year period who pursue open source creative projects, working in collaboration with our librarians and faculty, with the potential to address the articulated limitations. 3. Funding for modest, competitive block grants to other institutions working on similar challenges for creating, disseminating, validating, and preserving digital scholarship created in and for large-scale visual environments. 4. A culminating symposium that brings together representatives from the scholars-in-residence and block grant recipient institutions to share and assess results, organize ways of preserving and disseminating digital products produced, and build on the methods, templates, and tools developed for future projects. WORK SUMMARY This call solicits proposals for block grants from library or museum systems that have visualization installations. Block grant recipients can utilize funds for ideas ranging from creating open source scholarly content for visualization environments to developing tools and templates to enhance sharing of visualization work. An advisory panel will select four institutions to receive awards of up to $40,000. Block grant recipients will also participate in the initial priority setting workshop and the culminating symposium. Participating in a block grant proposal does not disqualify an individual from later applying for one of the grant-supported scholar-in-residence appointments. Applicants will provide a statement of work that describes the contributions that their organization will make toward the goals of the grant. Applicants will also provide a budget and budget justification. Activities that can be funded through block grants include, but are not limited to: - Commissioning work by a visualization expert - Hosting a visiting scholar, artist, or technologist residency - Software development or adaptation - Development of templates and methodologies for sharing and scaling content utilizing open source software - Student or staff labor for content or software development or adaptation - Curricula and reusable learning objects for digital scholarship and visualization courses - Travel (if necessary) to the initial project meeting and culminating workshop - User research on universal design for visualization spaces Funding for operational expenditures, such as equipment, is not allowed for any grant participant. APPLICATION Send an application to [log in to unmask] by the end of the day on 13 August 2017 that includes the following: - Statement of work (no more than 1000 words) of the project idea your organization plans to develop, its relationship to the overall goals of the grant, and the challenges to be addressed. - List the names and contact information for each of the participants in the funded project, including a brief description of their current role, background, expertise, interests, and what they can contribute. - Project timeline. - Budget table with projected expenditures. - Budget narrative detailing the proposed expenditures SELECTION AND NOTIFICATION PROCESS An advisory panel made up of scholars, librarians, and technologists with experience and expertise in large-scale visualization and/or visual scholarship will review and rank proposals. The project leaders are especially keen to receive proposals that develop best practices and collaborative frameworks that can benefit individual institutions by building a community of practice and economies of scale among collaborators. Awardees will be selected based on: - the ability of their proposal to successfully address one or both of the identified problems; - the creativity of the proposed activities; - relevant demonstrated experience partnering with scholars or students on visualization projects; - whether the proposal is extensible; - feasibility of the work within the proposed time-frame and budget; - whether the project work improves or expands access to large-scale visual environments for users; and - the participant’s ability to expand content development and sharing among the network of institutions with large-scale visual environments. - Awardees will be required to send a representative to an initial meeting of the project cohort in Fall 2017. Awardees will be notified by 15 September 2017.