By Brett Bobley on 7/28/2009 4:07 PM

The next Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant deadline is October 6, 2009.  If you are considering applying, I want to pass on some important advice.  Applicants often ask:  "To what audience should I address my proposal?"  The answer is: a general one.  Your application will be read by a variety of people including peer reviewers, NEH staff, and members of the NEH’s National Council on the Humanities.    Hence,  I wish to strongly emphasize the importance of writing your application in a clear fashion that can be understood by a non-technical audience.  We realize that your project may be technical in nature and that part of the application will have to address complex technology issues.  But particularly in your abstract and in the first portion of your narrative, it is very important that you write to a general audience that is familiar with the humanities, but may have no specific knowledge of technology or...

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By Brett Bobley on 7/27/2009 12:09 PM

I want to bring to your attention an excellent grant opportunity from the NEH's Division of Research.  The Fellowships at Digital Humanities Centers (FDHC) program supports collaborations between digital centers and individual scholars.  The program's four goals are to 1) support innovative collaboration on outstanding digital research projects; 2) expand digital literacy and expertise;  3) promote the work of digital humanities centers; and 4) encourage broad and open access to the humanities.   Each fellow must be "sponsored" by a center.  The center sends in the grant application.  The award provides funds for both a stipend for the fellow and a portion of the center's costs for hosting the fellow.   The intellectual cooperation between the scholar and the center may take many different forms and may involve humanities scholars of any level of digital expertise.  Fellows may work exclusively on their own projects in consultation with center staff; collaborate on projects with other scholars affiliated with...

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By Brett Bobley on 7/15/2009 9:51 AM

I'm happy to announce that Ithaka has just released Case Studies in Sustainability.  This study was funded in cooperation with the NEH along with the National Science Foundation and the JISC Strategic Content Alliance in the UK.   This study seeks to answer the question "how does a digital project continue once the grant has run out?"  Or, as Ithaka puts it, "Tens of millions of dollars, pounds, and euros are invested each year by government agencies and private foundations to develop and support digital resources in the not-for-profit sector. As budgets tighten, will these digital resources be able to survive and thrive?"   I believe that the case studies will be of great use to both applicants and to funders.  For each case study, Ithaka staff conducted extensive research, including interviews with project directors, funders, and users.  Each case study includes candid and in-depth discussions of how the project was able to obtain sustained revenue to ensure the project could continue to provide an important educational resource.  ...

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By Jason Rhody on 7/9/2009 4:22 PM

DFG/NEH: New Awards / New Funding Opportunities   We are pleased to announce two exciting bits of news: the awardees from the DFG/NEH Joint Digitization Projects program and the future of DFG/NEH grant programs.   Announcement of DFG/NEH Joint Digitization Project Awardees   This program offered support for digital humanities projects funded by NEH in collaboration with the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft or DFG) in Germany.  These grants provided combined funding of up to $350,000 for up to three years of development in for new digitization projects, the addition of important materials to existing digitization projects, or the development of infrastructure to support U.S.-German digitization work. Each project was sponsored by both an American and a German institution, whose activities will be funded by NEH and DFG respectively.   These awards are part of a larger group of 154 awards recently announced by the NEH.  For a full state-by-state list of all the awards, please...

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By Jennifer Serventi on 6/15/2009 9:05 AM

I'm very happy to say that the NEH has just announced five new awards from our Institutes for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities program.  These grants support national or regional training programs for scholars and advanced graduate students to broaden and extend their knowledge of digital humanities. These awards are part of a larger group of 154 awards announced today by the NEH.  For a full state-by-state list of all the awards, please see today's press release. Awards in the Institutes for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities program (click on each for more details): George Mason University -- Fairfax, VA One Week, One Tool: A Digital Humanities Barn Raising Tom Scheinfeldt, Project Director Outright: $249,221 To support: A one week institute for twelve participants on the principles of humanities-centered...

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By Brett Bobley on 6/1/2009 1:33 PM

This is Part II of a series of posts highlighting recent white papers (Part I also available). Numerous ODH programs (and some programs in other NEH divisions and offices) require the grantee to submit a "white paper" at the conclusion of the grant. In ODH, we publish these white papers in our Library of Funded Projects. In the white paper, the grantee provides a summary of the grant activities, what they learned, recommended best practices, and even what they might have done differently. By making these white papers freely available, members of the public -- including other prospective applicants -- can learn from what has already been done and build upon it.

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By Brett Bobley on 5/13/2009 3:38 PM

Numerous ODH programs (and some programs in other NEH divisions and offices) require the grantee to submit a "white paper" at the conclusion of the grant.  In ODH, we publish these white papers in our Library of Funded Projects.  In the white paper, the grantee provides a summary of the grant activities, what they learned, recommended best practices, and even what they might have done differently.  By making these white papers freely available, members of the public -- including other prospective applicants -- can learn from what has already been done and build upon it.    In a series of posts, I'll be highlighting some of the white papers we have recently added to the library. 

Update: Part II of this series is now available.

In each case below, just click the title and then scroll down to find the "download" button to access the full report:   Approaches...

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By Brett Bobley on 4/29/2009 1:01 PM

The NEH’s Division of Preservation and Access has recently released the guidelines for the program “Humanities Collections and Reference Resources.”  This program supports projects that preserve and create intellectual access to such collections as books, journals, newspapers, manuscript and archival materials, maps, still and moving images, sound recordings, art, and objects of material culture.  The grant can cover activities such as digitizing materials, cataloging collections, implementing preservation measures, developing databases, and many others.  Please consult the guidelines for more details. The deadline for this program is July 15, 2009. 

Please note that "Humanities Collections and Reference Resources" is a separate program from "Research and Development."  The R&D program has a deadline of July 30, 2009 and you can read more about it in this earlier ODH Update...

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