Bisson Wins $50K Mellon Award

-- Library Journal, 01/08/2007

The worlds of technology and libraries drew closer together as Casey Bisson, information architect at Plymouth State University, NH, was presented with a $50,000 Mellon award for Technology Collaboration at the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) annual gathering in Washington, DC, in December. Bisson's project, WPopac, is seen as the first step in allowing library catalogs to integrate with WordPress, a popular open source content management system. "Libraries' online presence is broken," Bisson asserted. "Users are looking for an online presence that serves them in the way they expect. The intention is to bring together the free or nearly free services available to the user." The revolutionary part of the announcement, however, is that Plymouth State would use the $50,000 to purchase Library of Congress catalog records and redistribute them free under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license or GNU.