Advanced networks are making it possible for libraries to expand access and outreach opportunities in never-before imagined ways.

The Chester County World Tour

The Chester County World Tour is a project of the Chester County Intermediate Unit to use IP-based video conferencing to develop language and cultural exchange for students in Chester County. As part of this initiative students and teachers in Chester County, PA have connected with Chile, France, Northern Ireland, Israel, and elsewhere to share language and cultural exchanges and professional development opportunities.

Computer-Assisted Communications Program (CACP)

The Computer-Assisted Communications Program is a means to dynamically link the human resources from the Clinical Epidemiology Centers at the Universities of Pennsylvania and North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the USA and the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Javeriana's R-CERTC) at Santafe de Bogota, Columbia. This initiative is aimed at providing support for the production and dissemination of knowledge in Clinical Epidemiology and related disciplines. In particular, the CACP is in place to facilitate easy, inexpensive and timely contact and interaction among scholars, faculty, researchers, and students from the participant institutions. In addition, CACP offers a variety of Internet-based tools for the dissemination of the principles and methods of rational thinking in health sciences and Evidence-Based Medicine, ranging from descriptive documents and scientific papers made available through the World Wide Web, to distance learning computer-assisted tutorials and courses, to Internet-based bi-directional communication channels including Chat, IP-based telephone, videotelephone, and videoconferencing. For more information, see the CCAP website.

Digital Corinth

Expanding access to antiquity

The ancient city of Corinth, Greece has been excavated since 1895, creating a vast accumulation of information that is being digitized. The Digital Corinth Project teams at the University of Pennsylvania and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens are designing a unique system for tagging of digital components and the creation of tools and lesson plans that draw on the data to present learning opportunities on the architecture, city planning, social and religious life of the city of Corinth during the Roman occupation in 44 BC. Students and teachers from around the world will be able to utilize these learning resources and opportunities without ever leaving their classrooms.

NJVid – A Higher Education Video Collaboration

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Building a Statewide Academic Video-on-Demand Repository

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has awarded a 3-year grant for nearly a million dollars to a partnership between William Paterson University, Rutgers University Libraries and NJEDge.Net to develop and deploy a statewide academic video-on-demand repository, NJVid.  The digital video repository (Fedora Commons-based) will be housed in the core of the NJEDge network and will provide "lectures-on-demand", licensed commercial videos, and locally owned videos. A Video Commons collection will be publicly available including history, lectures from notables, and video documenting research and scientific advances. NJVid is notable for providing a statewide video strategy to accommodate any type of organization- - higher education, K12, public libraries, museums and archives.

The Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image at The University of Pennsylvania

Re-envisioning scholarly research through digitization

The University of Pennsylvania Libraries have made over 12,000 images from various collections of rare books, manuscripts, papyri, photographs and sheet music are available over the network through the Schoenberg  Center for Electronic Text and Image (SCETI). Since 1996, SCETI has been enhancing the research and scholarly use of rare books, manuscripts and other primary source materials by making them easily accessible to the worldwide community. They create archive-quality digital facsimiles and make them available online through web sites tailored to the each individual collection. Several of their projects are collaborations between the University of Pennsylvania Library and other libraries, museums and private collections.