Grants and Acquisitions

David Free

Grants

The Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI) and the Partnership for Academic Library Collaboration and Innovation (PALCI) have successfully completed an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant to fund the project, “Hyku for Consortia: Removing Barriers to Adoption.” This collaborative effort aimed to enhance the adoption of Hyku, an open-source multi-tenant repository solution, by addressing identified barriers and creating a comprehensive toolkit for consortia and library groups to implement their own institutional repositories. Hyku is an application developed and supported by the Samvera.org open-source technology community.

As part of the project, PALNI and PALCI conducted extensive research to understand potential barriers to adopting Hyku. This research, led by two user experience (UX) research firms, Samhaeng and Aestiva Solutions, involved piloting Hyku Commons users as the focal point. Satisfaction surveys, structured interviews, usability testing, and focus groups were employed to gather valuable insights. Drawing on the operational model piloted during the project, PALNI and PALCI created the Hyku for Consortia Collaborative Repository Toolkit. Accessible on the project website, the toolkit offers practical guidance and examples for running a collaborative repository. It addresses communication and engagement, documentation and training, staffing and service models, governance, and technical considerations.

For more information about the project and access to the Collaborative Repository Toolkit, please visit the Hyku for Consortia website at https://hykuforconsortia.palni.org/.

Acquisitions

The University of British Columbia (UBC) Library has acquired several rare titles as part of its Japanese Collections, thanks in part to support provided by the David Graham Memorial Fund. Digital copies of two of these titles are now openly accessible to the public through UBC Open Collections.

Ikoku jinbutsuzu 異國人物圖 (Illustration of people from other countries), a manuscript in scroll format, was acquired by the library at auction in 2019. The illustrations in lkoku jinbutsuzu, drawn in black ink with colored ink washes, complement a few notable items in UBC Library’s Japanese Maps of the Tokugawa Era Collection such as Bankoku sōzu and Gaiban yōbō zuga, Ken 1. Nara ehon dankan 奈良絵本断簡 (Illustrated book fragments), a series of hand-painted illustrations on gold-bordered pages, was acquired along with Ikoku jinbutsuzu, and provides a valuable new primary source for UBC scholars and students of classical Japanese literature.

Learn more about the Japanese Special Collections at UBC Library at https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/jsc.