What's Happening at Hege!

Guilford College has been selected to participate in the Council of Independent Colleges’ Consortium on Digital Resources for Teaching and Learning. Made possible by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the grant provides two years of full funding for Artstor’s Shared Shelf product and a portion of costs for two additional years. Grant participation requires that colleagues from two different campus areas (one of which must be a librarian) participate in Consortium workshops in Fall 2015 and 2016. The selection committee was impressed by the high quality of our proposal describing projects the Friends Historical Collection and the Art Gallery will implement using Artstor’s Shared Shelf media management tool. This grant opportunity arrived at an ideal time as we seek innovative affordable ways to improve access to resources and to collaborate with others on campus.

Our grant application proposed to explore Shared Shelf’s potential for two specific projects, one audio and one visual, in the Friends Historical Collection and the Art Gallery. This two-pronged approach will serve as model pilots for other potential campus partners, improve access to unique digital materials held at Guilford, and offer opportunities for faculty and students to engage more fully with our resources. The Friends Historical Collection will focus on using Shared Shelf to provide access to recent oral history audio interviews documenting Guilford’s integration in 1962 and the experiences of early African American faculty and students. The Art Gallery will focus on access to images documenting its Asian collections and connecting the permanent art collection to key themes taught in Guilford’s art history courses.

This grant provides essential funding for us to implement a much needed digital management solution. By using Shared Shelf, it is anticipated that other institutions and individuals beyond Guilford will have greater opportunity to discover our unique collections. It also provides an opportunity for us to bring newly emerging digital projects initiated by Guilford’s faculty into the Shared Shelf environment. Conversations are already underway with faculty in a variety of disciplines and several administrative offices about ways they might also utilize Shared Shelf. It is exciting to consider the many new opportunities made possible through this grant.