Story of illumira

The evolution of illumira

July 2004

The Educational Activities Task Force (EATF) of NJEdge was in discussion about an easy method to stream licensed commercial video through the consortium.
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2007

IMLS awards a federal grant to William Paterson University, Rutgers University and NJEdge for the development of a Federated statewide video repository
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July 2011

NJEdge started funding the on-going development and hosting of the project and offered it as a fully supported service to its higher education members.
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September 2011 - NJLA Technology Innovation Award

New Jersey Library Association awards NJVID the Technology Innovation Award
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Oct 2012 - NJVID wins WCET WOW Award

The WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET) is pleased to announce that NJVID is a recipient of a 2012 WCET Outstanding Work (WOW) award, a competition that recognizes innovative uses of educational technologies in higher education
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Nov 2016 - Birth of illumira

illumira was chosen as the new national brand to replace NJVID

In July of 2004, the Educational Activities Task Force (EATF) of NJEdge was in discussion about an easy method to stream commercial video. Interest in digital video for teaching and learning further escalated as New Jersey faculty and students began increasing their production of self-created media content in online and blended courses accessible via institutional course management systems. Faculty needed a place to store and stream their content, but their local institutions were not always up to the task.  YouTube, iTunesU and other commercial resources provided outlets, but had some severe drawbacks including lack of storage growth, limitations in size, advertising, and preservation. In addition, these delivery modes did not provide institutions a way to stream their commercial video content. Commercial video is a rich resource for educational usage as it is designed with instruction in mind, but it demands payment for licensing.

In 2005, the savings that could be gleaned from those institutions as part of the VALE Consortium was calculated at $7,400 per institution. However, even once negotiated, the commercial video vendors often had no way to deliver to the end user. Bringing costs down for commercial video was a good beginning, but delivering streaming video to the end user was still an issue. What remained to be developed was the physical statewide digital video portal and repository that tied it all together, and one that would take it a step further by providing not only commercial video content but local and user-created content as well.
A collaboration of New Jersey educational institutions through a unified streaming digital video portal and repository delivering member-wide benefits including cost avoidance of streaming video servers, storage or technical support personnel was proposed to the IMLS in 2006. In 2007, the grant was resubmitted using open source software. The proposal to develop NJVID was awarded close to $1 million dollars by the IMLS to William Paterson University with Rutgers University and NJEdge as partners and Sandra Miller, Director of Instruction and Research Technology at WPUNJ, as Principal Investigator.

In July 1, 2011, NJEdge started funding the project and offered the service to its members. Soon Merit, the Research and Education network of Michigan and CSM soon started offering this service to its members. In 2015, the service was offered to Higher Ed institution of Pennsylvania.

In November 2016, NJVID was rebranded as illumira.