The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has awarded SC&I Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science Jessica Yi-Yun Cheng (PI) and her colleagues Rhiannon Bettivia (Simmons University, co-PI) and Michael Gryk (University of Connecticut, co-PI) funding to support the project “Storytelling Across Time: Building a Community Around Provenance (B-CAP).” The project was awarded $150,000.

The project is one of the 85 awards, totaling $22,533,904, the IMLS is funding this year to support libraries and archival services across the country. The FY 2024 awards were made through the IMLS’s National Leadership Grants for Libraries and the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program.

Cheng’s project will be funded through the National Leadership Grants for Libraries Program. According to the IMLS, this program “supports projects that address critical needs of the library and archives fields and have the potential to advance practice in these professions to strengthen library and archival services for the American public. Program goals include generating results such as new models, tools, research findings, services, practices, or alliances that will be widely used, adapted, scaled, or replicated to extend and leverage the benefits of federal investment. The National Leadership Grants for Libraries program received 146 preliminary proposals requesting $38,098,986.60. IMLS invited 85 institutions to submit full project proposals, and of these, awarded 50 projects totaling $13,206,160.”

Provenance is the story of how something has come to be, whether it be physical, digital, or even an abstract idea. While the importance of provenance crosses disciplinary boundaries, current practice lacks collective conversation and scholarship.

"The National Leadership Grants for Libraries and Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program are vital in advancing library services across the nation,” said IMLS Acting Director Cyndee Landrum. “The funding supports libraries, staff, and projects that exemplify excellence in the library field and community service, driving innovation and improving access to information for all.”

Cheng’s project, according to the abstract, “will address the need to create integrated, flexible, and comprehensive approaches to provenance documentation across types of collections. Provenance is the story of how something has come to be, whether it be physical, digital, or even an abstract idea. While the importance of provenance crosses disciplinary boundaries, current practice lacks collective conversation and scholarship.

“The project will plan events bringing together 100 research and practitioner experts from across many disciplines over the course of 24 months. At these events, participants will share their expertise on current provenance debates, such as disciplinary silos, temporality, and persuasiveness. The project will result in a community of practice to clarify foundational provenance challenges and support future work on improved models and documentary approaches. Ultimately, the work will promote greater transparency and accountability in the management and curation of cultural heritage, digital data, and e-science collections.”

Cheng, Bettivia, and Gryk will host three in-person events and four webinars to convene experts from various disciplines to discuss issues surrounding provenance. 

They have identified three themes from their prior lines of work relating to provenance, and these will be the three main themes in their events: disciplinary challenges, temporal challenges, and persuasiveness challenges.

Cheng, Bettivia, and Gryk will host three in-person events and four webinars to convene experts from various disciplines to discuss issues surrounding provenance. 

“The challenges with provenance need to be addressed now,” Cheng et al. wrote. “Addressing the systemic issues will take time, and the current social and technical conditions are exacerbating these provenance issues: computers and AI are increasing the situations in which decisions are made by computers, at speeds that move too fast for human documentation. Vaccination rates are dropping. People are losing trust in the validity of cultural heritage collections. Newspapers, especially smaller, local ones, are closing at record numbers, with back issues and institutional data often winding up in the local library, which has to construct provenance to tell the story of local papers of record." 

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation's libraries and museums. The IMS advances, supports, and empowers America's museums, libraries, and related organizations through grantmaking, research, and policy development. IMLS envisions a nation where individuals and communities have access to museums and libraries to learn from and be inspired by the trusted information, ideas, and stories they contain about our diverse natural and cultural heritage.

Learn more about the Library and Information Science Department at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information on the website.