Grant-backed expansion The Mellon Foundation grant funding a five-year project to transform Indigenous histories preservation and access signals strong demand for digital preservation, metadata workflows, and collaborative engagement with tribal nations. This creates opportunities to offer digital asset management, metadata curation, secure access portals, and partnerships for culturally respectful digitization projects.

Digital access growth A large, diverse collection with extensive online resources supports selling cloud hosting, digital access platforms, streaming exhibition content, API-based research access, and enhanced accessibility tools to broaden reach for scholars, students, and the public.

Partnership monetization Ongoing collaborations with StoryStudio Chicago and Digital Medievalist demonstrate appetite for co-branded programs and exhibitions. There are opportunities to monetize partnerships through sponsorships, ticketed or member events, licensing of content, and joint grant proposals.

Education market focus The library serves researchers and educators via vast manuscript collections and programs, creating demand for digitization services, metadata services, teaching resources, and research data management solutions that can be offered to universities and schools.

Fundraising and operations With mid-sized nonprofit scale and a modern tech stack, there is potential to upgrade donor CRM, grant management, and analytics to improve fundraising efficiency, donor engagement, and program impact reporting, aligning with current funding and expansion plans.