Archive for December, 2008

Greenstone Wins Andrew W. Mellon Foundation MATC Award

admin. Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008.

I am very pleased to announce that the University of Waikato has been awarded US$50,000 for the Greenstone project within the Third Annual Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration (see http://matc.mellon.org/press-release). This competition is meant “to recognize important organizational contributions to open source projects which currently or potentially provide significant benefits to at least one traditional Mellon constituency (higher education, especially the arts and humanities; libraries; museums; arts organizations; and nature conservation).” We understand that the committee was primarily impressed by Greenstone’s impact in the developing world as testified by many users who supported our candidacy online, thanks to all of you who contributed recommendations.

The University intends to use the award to further the Greenstone community of developers and users, particularly in developing countries. This will involve improving the documentation, making tutorial videos, and stimulating the development of Greenstone capabilities and user groups in developing countries.

As part of this effort we invite proposals from the Greenstone community in developing countries for small grants (US$1000 to US$5000) which will be awarded in 2009 according to the following criteria:

* one-time assistance (not a continuing subvention) for a project which will lead to sustainable follow-up: examples of activity could be organisation of user meetings or training workshops, expert missions for training and advice (particularly exchange of expertise within a given region or country), institutional exchanges or user services;
* priority to regional networks and to countries and institutions in greatest need (normally grants will not available to individuals, but there could be exceptions);
* priority to projects which are partially self-funded or partially funded by third parties.

Detailed proposals should be addressed to John Rose , Research Associate, University of Waikato, who will correspond with the submitting parties as needed to refine their proposals. Awardees will be expected to submit a detailed evaluation report at the conclusion of their projects.

cheers
ian