University of Virginia Library receives $870,000 Mellon Foundation Grant to preserve unique digital-only materials

"The University of Virginia Library has received a major grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a two-year project to model how institutions can preserve and deliver rare materials that currently exist only in digital form. "Born-digital" materials include the works of contemporary writers and architects, as well as archives of current political figures and organizations. These materials are quickly becoming significant collections that require careful, planned stewardship to ensure their preservation and availability to scholars now and in the future, said Martha Sites, an associate University librarian and a principal investigator for the grant. Programmers and archivists from U.Va. are working with counterparts at Stanford and Yale universities, as well as from England's University of Hull, to create a model for digital collection management that can be easily shared among research libraries and other institutions charged with preserving rare materials"