Serendipity35

William Paterson University, Rutgers University and NJEDge.net received a three-year IMLS National Leadership Grant to support the launch of NJVid - a New Jersey Video Portal. The grant (nearly $1 million) is from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) in order to create a statewide digital video archive comprised of a wide range of educational materials that will provide streaming video to New Jersey colleges and universities, K-12 schools, libraries and cultural heritage institutions.

I like the idea that NJVid will utilize a variety of open source software programs to serve the organizations in the project’s various consortia. The portal will allow access to three general areas. The first area scheduled to launch is the part that interests me the most right now. That component is the Video Commons which will hold publicly available videos.

The other two areas will hold commercial videos and lectures on demand and will generally require authentication by users. It's a model I'm familiar with from my iTunes U experiences while at NJIT - offering both a public (open) face and a private (authenticated) face.

There is still much to be done with this project, such as an authentication method that works across all the organizations, the customized annotations of videos etc.

The Institute for Museums and Library Services grant was awarded to William Paterson University with partners Rutgers and NJEDge.Net, and collaboration with VALE (Virtual Academic Library Environment), statewide academic library consortium with 50 members, and NJDH (New Jersey Digital Highway), the statewide cultural heritage consortium which includes museums, archives, libraries, and historical societies.

“Digital video provides a multi-sensory experience that is an increasingly important resource for teaching and learning,” says Sandra Miller, director of instruction and research technology at William Paterson University and principal investigator for the project. “The goal of this project is to expand New Jersey’s digital media collections in academic institutions, libraries, museums, and other historical collections and archives, and provide easy access to those resources via the Web for students, faculty, and citizens any place and any time.”

William Paterson will be responsible for developing the Web-based portal for users. Rutgers University and NJEdge.net will provide technical development and the ongoing technical infrastructure, including a centralized video storage repository and an infrastructure for housing and managing a variety of digital video objects.

The hope is that this portal will serve any cultural heritage institution, school or university regardless of size or technical readiness.

In addition to William Paterson University and Rutgers University, eight other institutions serve as initial testers of this model integrated resource: University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Montclair State University, Georgian Court College, Atlantic Cape Community College, Middlesex County College, Passaic Valley High School, the Bergen County Cooperative Library System (BCCLS), and the American Labor Museum.

NJVid is notable for providing a statewide video strategy to accommodate any type of organization - higher education, K12, public libraries, museums and archives. A substantial part of this project will provide the resources to develop a statewide Shibboleth-based Identity management infrastructure, supporting statewide network authentication and authorization that can be used for many content resources.

Additional Information
at William Paterson University
at Educause