DIGITAL HUMANITIES INITIATIVE AWARDS Announced: March 2007 DIGITAL HUMANITIES START-UP GRANTS Automatic Extraction of Article Metadata from Digitized Historical Newspapers Drexel University — Philadelphia, PA Robert Allen, Project Director Outright: $30,000 (Funding for this award provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services as part of the IMLS/NEH "Advancing Knowledge" partnership.) To support the development of a programming tool for automatically identifying, categorizing, and describing newspaper articles from digital files produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). Cuneiform Forensics 3D Digital Analysis of Cuneiform Tablet Production CUNY Research Foundation, Brooklyn College — Brooklyn, NY H. Arthur Bankoff, Project Director Outright: $29,850 (Funding for this award provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services as part of the IMLS/NEH "Advancing Knowledge" partnership.) To support digital laser scanning and three dimensional quantification, as well as the creation of digitally generated models, of ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets. The Character Description Language (CDL) Digital Humanities Start up Independent Scholar — San Leandro, CA Richard Cook, Project Director Outright: $30,000 (Funding for this award provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services as part of the IMLS/NEH "Advancing Knowledge" partnership.) To support using Character Description Language software in the mapping of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese scripts and the augmentation of a standard database of characters open to members of international standards bodies and to the public. Enhanced Access to Digital Humanities Monographs Syracuse University — Syracuse, NY Anne Diekema, Project Director Outright: $29,921 To support creation of a proof of concept system that employs Natural Language Processing techniques and utilizes information contained in tables of contents and back of the book indexes for more precise searching of the content of electronic books. Artists' Books Online: From Prototype to Distributed Community University of Virginia — Charlottesville, VA Johanna Drucker, Project Director Outright: $30,000 To support the testing and implementation of a prototype for digitizing artists' books by a group of curators, artists, critics, and scholars who will expand the use and population of this virtual resource through a distributed content model. The Impact of Academic Podcasting: Emerging Technologies in the Foreign Language Classroom Old Dominion University Research Foundation — Norfolk, VA Betty Facer, Project Director Outright: $30,000 To support a study of the impact of podcasting technology in the teaching of foreign language courses. Ashes2Art: Virtual Reconstructions of Ancient Monuments Coastal Carolina University — Conway, SC Arne Flaten, Project Director Outright: $30,000 To support the digital reconstruction of classical Greek monuments in a second stage pilot project focused on the three dimensional digital recording of the early fourth century BCE tholos at Delphi in Greece. Training to Establish the North Carolina Central University/African American Jazz Caucus Jazz Research Institute Digital Library North Carolina Central University — Durham, NC Paula Harrell, Project Director Outright: $30,000 To support the beginning stages of a jazz research digital library, located at North Carolina Central University, comprising photographs, oral histories, music, and text. Podcasting and the Maine Humanities Council: Integrating a New Tool for Public Humanities Education Maine Humanities Council — Portland, ME Erik Jorgensen, Project Director Outright: $30,000 To support Podcasting public humanities projects throughout Maine, a state of concentrated population and long distances. This project would expand the geographic and temporal reach of Maine Humanities Council programs. Hawaii Island Digital Collaboratory Kohala Center — Kamuela, HI Karen Kemp, Project Director Outright: $29,979 To support planning for a "digital collaboratory" engaging humanities scholars, scientists, technology specialists, and native Hawaiian culture experts in the development of a geospatially referenced database of the island of Hawaii. Presenting Progressions University of Virginia — Charlottesville, VA W. Martin, Project Director Outright: $29,873 To support development of a tool to present the progressions of interrelated items held in an electronic thematic humanities repository. Digital Humanities Start Up Grants: Thai Digital Monastery Project University of California, Riverside — Riverside, CA Justin McDaniel, Project Director Outright: $30,000 To support two planning conferences, one in Riverside, California, the other in Bangkok, Thailand, to lay the foundations for the interactive mapping of Asian Buddhist monastic centers in Thailand and the creation of a digital resource using state of the arts tools. Building Information Visualization into Next Generation Digital Humanities Collaboratories Independent Scholar — Chapel Hill, NC Michael Newton, Project Director Outright: $28,988 To support a digital humanities collaboration on Celtic studies that will allow multiple users to contribute to, discuss, edit, and utilize a common body of information. Digital Corinth Synchronized Database Project University of Pennsylvania — Philadelphia, PA David Romano, Project Director Outright: $29,999 To support a pilot program for a model high resolution archaeological database in Greece and the United States consisting of photographs, video, field notes, laser scans, architectural data, and simulations relating to the ancient Roman colony of Corinth. Russian Folk Religious Imagination University of Kentucky Research Foundation — Lexington, KY Jeanmarie Rouhier Willoughby, Project Director Outright: $29,958 To support a robust web based multimedia resource combining folk legends on saints and biblical figures, songs and religious rituals, and iconography of Russian Orthodoxy. The Development Of Mapping: Portuguese Cartography And Coastal Africa, 1434 1504 University of California, Irvine — Irvine, CA Patricia Seed, Project Director Outright: $29,997 To support the creation of an interactive GIS (Geographical Information System) database of early maps of the African coastline, 1434 1504.