There's great news from Stanford University's Henry Lowood, as revealed on the IGDA Preservation SIG mailing list: "The Library of Congress has sent out the official news release announcing the Preserving Creative America Program", which includes a game preservation grant.

As Lowood notes: "This is an omnibus release covering all the projects funded in this impressive new program (over $2 million in all, a nice portion of which went to the games project). The games project is called "Preserving Virtual Worlds" and includes historical games (cf. our Digital Game Canon), electronic literature, and virtual worlds. It is the project listed under University of Illinois, as prime contractor. Stanford, Maryland, and Rochester are sub-contractors."

From the grant press release itself: "The Preserving Virtual Worlds project will explore methods for preserving digital games and interactive fiction. Major activities will include developing basic standards for metadata and content representation and conducting a series of archiving case studies for early video games, electronic literature and Second Life, an interactive multiplayer game." I very much look forward to hearing more about plans.