Photo by Jessica Hodder. Eighteen advisers arrive in Miami this week to help us review the semifinalists in Knight News Challenge: Libraries. Forty-two ideas moved forward in the challenge, which asked the question, How might we leverage libraries as a platform to build more knowledgeable communities. You can learn more about the on the News Challenge site.

With the help of these technologists, thought leaders, strategists and library professionals, we expect to identify a group of finalists that we’ll examine more closely over the next few weeks and submit to Knight’s board of trustees for approvals. We’ll announce the winners of Knight News Challenge: Libraries in January.

Please note if you are one of those finalists, you can expect to hear from us by next week. If you’re not a finalist, you can expect to receive a declination e-mail from us by Nov. 21. We may also follow up with several projects individually if we feel it is better suited to another funding option at Knight, such as our Prototype Fund.

We’d like to thank the following people who have taken two days to join us:

• Gia Arbogast/Miami-Dade Public Library System (Arbogast will recuse herself from conversations involving her proposal)
• Brian Bannon/Chicago Public Library (Bannon will recuse himself from conversations involving his proposal)
• Jill Bourne/San Jose Public Library (Bourne will recuse herself from conversations involving her proposal)
• Chris DiBona/Google
• Sue Gardner/Wikimedia Foundation
• Josh Greenberg/Sloan Foundation (Greenberg will recuse himself from conversations involving his proposal)
• Emi Kolawole/Stanford dschool
• Maura Marx/Institute of Museum and Library Services
• Andrew Means/Impact Labs
• Kara Oehler/GoPop
• Wendy Ortiz
• Jen Pahlka/Code for America
• Stephanie Pereira/Kickstarter
• Julie Sandorf/Revson Foundation
• Dan Sinker/Mozilla
• Bianca St. Louis/Code2040
• Jesse Thorn/MaximumFun.org
• Anne Wootton/PopUp Archive

Knight News Challenge: Libraries closed on Sept. 30 with 693 applications. Jessica Hodder is the digital communications associate at Knight Foundation.

*An earlier blog post stated that there are forty-one Knight News Challenge: Libraries semifinalists; there are actually forty-two.