The University of Virginia received a grant of $1,000,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to enable the Library, in collaboration with Cornell University, to build a digital object repository system based on the Flexible Extensible Digital Object and Repository Architecture (Fedora). The new system demonstrates how distributed digital library architecture can be deployed using web-based technologies, including XML and Web services. The new system is designed to be a foundation upon which interoperable web-based digital libraries can be built. Virginia and collaborating partners in the US and UK will evaluate the system using a diverse set of digital collections. The software will be made available to the public as an open-source release.