[Forwarding from the US National Endowment for the Humanities. --Peter Suber.]
NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES
PRESS RELEASE
OFFICE OF communications
1100 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, D.C. 20506
(202) 606-8446
<http://www.NEH.gov>www.NEH.gov
For Immediate Release
NEH Media Contact: Lindsey Mikal: (202) 606-8317
JISC Media Contact: Nicola Yeeles:
<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]
September 16, 2009
Digital libraries bridge the Atlantic
Collaborative grant program brings American and U.K. scholars together
WASHINGTON, D.C. The hand-written annotations
Charles Darwin made on 700 of the books in his
personal library were painstakingly transcribed
in the 1980s. Now, thanks to high-resolution
digital imagery and an international partnership
between the Darwin Digital Library of Evolution
at the American Museum of Natural History in New
York, the University of Cambridge (U.K.), the
Natural History Museum in London, and the
Biodiversity Heritage Library (a collective of
ten major natural history museum libraries,
botanical libraries, and research institutions in
the U.S. and U.K.), Darwins marginalia will be
digitally married to the texts they describe,
allowing students to learn his thoughts on a wide range of topics.
The project is supported by the JISC/NEH
Transatlantic Digitization Collaboration grant
program offered by the National Endowment for the
Humanities (NEH) and the Joint Information
Systems Committee (JISC), a joint committee of
the U.K. further and higher education funding
bodies. The grant program funds collaborative
projects undertaken by scholars from the U.S. and
U.K. who are working to develop new digitization
projects and pilot projects, add important
materials to existing digitization projects, or
develop infrastructure (either technical
middleware, tools, or knowledge-sharing).
"The development of digital tools has made
cultural materials globally accessible, making
scholarship a worldwide enterprise," said NEH
Chairman Jim Leach. "Recognizing these new
technologies, we at NEH are committed to
facilitating international scholarly collaborations."
Last year, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said
that British and American universities should
cooperate at a far higher level than they currently do.
"The first phase of JISC / NEH projects is
generating substantial benefits for research
communities on both sides of the Atlantic, not
just in terms of the resources created but also
in the skills shared between the communities,
said JISC program manager Alastair Dunning. The
second phase will build on this, giving further
evidence of the advantages to be gained through international collaboration."
Additionally, other grants recently awarded
through the JISC/NEH program will allow
researchers to have access to archaeology
collections previously separated by the Atlantic
and a shared online reading room for Islamic manuscripts.
Awards for the projects range from approximately
$200,000 to $300,000 (£135,000 to £200,000) for a
period of eighteen months starting September
2009. Details about the other projects are below:
* Arizona State University and the University of
York (U.K.) are bringing together two large
digital libraries related to archaeology so that
both libraries can be searched simultaneously.
A web services application will be developed to
allow researchers to cross-search metadata
records held by The Digital Archaeological Record
(tDAR) in the U.S. and Archaeology Data Service
(ADS) in the U.K., covering the archaeology of the United States and England.
In a second stage, a richer and deeper
cross-search web facility will be developed for
databases recording animal remains in the United
States and England, providing a valuable research
tool for archaeologists in both countries.
* Yale University is working with the School for
Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London to
bring ancient resources to life through a virtual
reading room for Islamic manuscripts; these will
include Arabic and Persian manuscripts by Arab
philosophers, physicians, and scientists
alongside relevant reference materials.
The project will build a suite of tools that will
analyze the digitized manuscripts and
cross-reference them with supplementary
materials, an infrastructure which will serve as
a model for other special collections and
libraries rich in manuscripts and related reference materials.
- # # # -
Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency,
the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
supports learning in history, literature,
philosophy, and other areas of the
humanities. NEH grants enrich classroom
learning, create and preserve knowledge, and
bring ideas to life through public television,
radio, new technologies, museum exhibitions, and
programs in libraries and other community places.
Additional information about the NEH and its
grant programs is available on the Internet at
<file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/lmikal/Local%20Settings/lmikal/Local%20Settings/lmikal/Local%20Settings/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/OLKD8/www.neh.gov>www.neh.gov.
The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) is
a joint committee of the U.K. further and higher
education funding bodies and is responsible for
supporting the innovative use of information and
communication technology (ICT) to support
learning, teaching, and research. Information
about JISC and its services and programs can be
found at <http://www.jisc.ac.uk/>www.jisc.ac.uk.
