Program Goals
The program aims to support and enhance access and use of collections for teaching and research through the creation or acquisition of enduring digital resources.
Examples of proposals that are within the scope of the program include:
- Supporting access to the Library’s special collections for use in interdisciplinary scholarship at the University and larger scholarly communities.
- Digitizing or converting Cornell-held materials that support teaching and research, including faculty papers, slides, photographs, printed documents, manuscripts, audiovisual items, and born-digital materials.
- Projects that will subsequently support new research methods, interdisciplinary study, and enable novel analysis and interpretation.
For more information or an initial assessment of a project idea, please email dcaps@cornell.edu.
Note: Final selection of materials will be subject to ability to clear copyright.
Selection Criteria
The Program is open to Library curators and selectors, in partnership with the teaching and research needs of faculty and post-A exam, PhD students. The Library particularly encourages projects that:
- Create impactful teaching resources in support of student learning
- Demonstrate strong interest within the academic community for access to the collection, thereby providing significant opportunity for collaboration and engagement beyond the Cornell community
- Increase the availability, discoverability, and consequently the use of a collection of demonstrated scholarly significance
- Identify collections held by Cornell University that are important or unique and should be accessed online by a global community
- Need digital preservation, as the materials are rare, fragile, or at-risk
- Support the University’s subject strengths
- Seek to provide greater access for a diverse range of hearing and sight abilities with web-accessible description, OCR, transcription or captioning
View Proposal Evaluation Rubric (PDF).
How to Apply
Expressions of interest are welcome at any time.
After receiving an expression of interest, DCAPS staff will contact and assist applicants with the full proposal process — including copyright issues, budgets, and technology options.
Proposal submissions are reviewed in January and July.
Considerations in review include copyright, accessibility, and condition
The Review Committee will evaluate proposals and make their recommendations.