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Indiana University Fine-Tuning Kuali OLE With Mellon Foundation Grant

Indiana University has received an $882,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the Kuali Open Library Environment (OLE), an open source library software system that helps research and academic libraries oversee and provide access to their growing collections (including print, licensed digital and local "born digital" content).

Kuali OLE was founded by a partnership of research libraries led by IU, which now includes the Bloomsbury Library Management System consortium, Lehigh University, Duke University, North Carolina State University, University of Chicago, University of Florida, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania and Villanova University. The partners have pooled resources and expertise with investments from the Mellon Foundation to develop Kuali OLE.

The OLE project was launched in 2009 with a $2.3 million grant from the Mellon Foundation and matching funds from the Kuali OLE founding partners. With this latest grant, IU has now received more than $4 million from Mellon for the project.

The OLE team will work to expand the community of libraries partnering with the project and fine-tune the software for a version 2.0 release later this year. The University of Chicago and Lehigh University will be the first to implement OLE this summer.

"Collaboration is an essential means for universities to achieve new economic efficiencies in higher education," said Brad Wheeler, Indiana University's vice president for information technology and CIO and chair of the Kuali Foundation Board, in a statement from IU. "OLE accelerates the rich tradition of leading university libraries as they serve students and faculty in an increasingly digital age."

"This latest investment in Kuali OLE by the Mellon Foundation demonstrates its strong support for our project and its unique capability to drive deep collaboration among our research library partners," said Brenda Johnson, IU Ruth Lilly Dean of University Libraries, in a press release. "We are looking forward to delivering OLE 2.0 during this grant period and further growing our partnership community thanks to this generous gift."

About the Author

Rhea Kelly is editor in chief for Campus Technology, THE Journal, and Spaces4Learning. She can be reached at [email protected].

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