NEH Advancing Knowledge grant

This page is for ideas about possible projects to apply for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)'s "Advancing Knowledge: The IMLS/NEH Digital Parternship" grant. This is a US organisation and all amounts and references below are in US terms.

Application information: http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/Digital_Partnership.html

Timeline:

• Draft proposal (recommended, not required): mid Februrary 2007
• Register with http://www.grants.gov/ (if not already registered): early March 2007
• Deadline: March 27, 2007
• Projects beginning: October 2007

Fine print

About the grant givers

The Advancing Knowledge program is a part of IMLS's Digital Connections Initiative and the NEH's Digital Humanities Initiative (DHI).

Digital Connections supports and promotes projects that digitize museum and library collections, foster and strengthen the role of museums and libraries in the digital infrastructure, and pioneer in the development of new tools and technologies for learning. (see Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections)

DHI is aimed at supporting projects that utilize or study the impact of digital technology.

Application requirements

innovative, collaborative humanities projects using the latest digital technologies for the benefit of the American public, humanities scholarship, and the nation's cultural institutions.

collaborations among libraries, museums, archives, universities, and other cultural organizations that may serve as models for the field. We encourage projects that explore new ways to share, examine, and interpret humanities collections in a digital environment and to develop new uses and audiences for existing digital resources.

Collaboration is a requirement of the Advancing Knowledge grant program, and to be eligible an application must include at least one library, museum, or archive as an integral member of the project team. Potential partners could also include universities, state humanities councils and other cultural organizations, or private sector organizations, as appropriate.

Any U.S. nonprofit organization with 501(c)(3) tax exempt status is eligible. Tick.

Terms to define

• collaborative: although we think of wikis as naturally collaborative, the project must include a specific collaborative partner such as a library, museum, archive or university.
• humanities: from [1]: According to the 1965 National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act, "The term 'humanities' includes, but is not limited to, the study of the following: language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, criticism and theory of the arts; those aspects of social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods; and the study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life.
• latest digital technologies - guess wikis pass this requirement :)
• benefit of the American public - need to justify this strongly

What won't be supported

• projects that focus primarily on digitizing existing collections;
• the preparation or publication of textbooks; (sorry Wikibooks :))
• purchase of artifacts or collections;

$$$

Awards normally are for two years and typically range from $50,000 to a maximum of $350,000.

Cost sharing consists of the cash contributions made to the project by the applicant, third parties and other federal agencies, as well as third party in-kind contributions, such as donated services and goods. Cost sharing is not required. NEH, however, is rarely able to support the full costs of projects approved for funding. In most cases, NEH grants cover no more than 80% of project costs.

People we need

• Project Director (should be an American?)
• Primary Contact/Grants Administrator: this is our Grants Coordinator Danny Wool (user:Danny)
• Authorized Representative: This person, often called an "Authorizing Official," is typically the president, vice president, executive director, provost, or chancellor.

Application parts

Some things to keep in mind when dreaming up ideas:

• Describe the strengths of each contributor and how this joint effort will make the project stronger. Discuss the ways in which the collaboration can serve as a model for other humanities organizations.

• Describe the specific tasks that will be accomplished during the grant period and the specific individuals who will be responsible for their completion. Include a schedule indicating what will be accomplished during each stage of the project.

Our ideas

Projects that need a partner

• Paying translator(s) to translate articles for a new (or small) language Wikipedia (or Wikibooks, or Wiktionary, or...). To translate a central corpus (which must be defined) into a target language. such as a native American language. Possible partner: publisher? university?
• improving Wikipedia's maps and geospatial data - see w:User:AudeVivere/GIS

Misc.

• Which WM projects can most benefit from this? Wikisource, Commons, Wikipedia?