Reproduced below is the announcement from Steve Griffin at NSF concerning this very exciting program, which was initially announced at the Fall 2001 CNI Task Force meeting.

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI.


Dear Colleagues:

We are pleased to announce a new International Digital Libraries
Collaborative Research and Applications Testbeds (NSF 02-085) Program
Solicitation.  It has now been posted on the NSF Web Site:

http://www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?nsf02085

This NSF program is the reference program for the JISC/NSF DIGITAL
LIBRARIES AND THE CLASSROOM: TESTBEDS FOR TRANSFORMING TEACHING AND
LEARNING (JISC Circular 07/01)activity, announced in December 2001.  The
announcement is appended below.  JISC Circular 07/01 and supporting
documentation on the joint activity is available at:

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/pub01/index.html

Applicants should prepare their submissions to meet the circular
guidelines.

Because of the later than expected release of the NSF program document,
and GPRA requirements, the proposal deadline is extended to May 26, 2002.
Letters of Intent are encouraged, but not required.  Evaluation of
proposals is expected to be completed by late summer and decisions on
awards to be made in September 2002.  We look forward to your submissions
to this promising joint JISC/NSF activity.


Steve Griffin
Special Projects Program
Division of Information and Intelligent Systems

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December 2001 Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and National
Science Foundation (NSF) JOINT FUNDING ACTIVITY

DIGITAL LIBRARIES AND THE CLASSROOM: TESTBEDS FOR TRANSFORMING TEACHING
AND LEARNING

JISC Circular 07/01and supporting documentation about the above programme
is now available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/pub01/index.html

The objective of this joint NSF/JISC initiative is to demonstrate
significant improvement in the learning and teaching process and bring
emerging technologies and readily available digital content into
mainstream educational use. This will be done by funding exemplar projects
that take an integrative and innovative approach to development of
educational environments, based on the use of information and
communications technologies across a number of disciplines.

It is intended to fund four projects at a total of around #1,500,000
($2,100,000) each over three years. Each project must be a collaboration
of at least one institution of higher education in the USA and one in the
UK. Projects will be expected to provide a five-year plan of activities,
although funding will only be provided for the first three. This will
ensure that the projects are embedded into the institutions and
demonstrate that the innovations are sustainable. The projects will run
from academic year (AY) 2002/03 until AY 2006/07. The date for full
proposals is 8 April 2002.

For further details please go to the URL given above.