The National Endowment for the Humanities

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The National Endowment for the Humanities

• Brett Bobley
• Chief Information Officer
• www.neh.gov
• bbobley_at_neh.gov

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Some History

• In 1967, NEH gathered together leading humanities
  scholars and computer scientists and posed two
  questions

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1967 NEH Computing Conference

• Question 1 "At what stage should an agency, in
  making grants involving computer use, insist on
  some standardization of format so that projects
  are not isolated repositories but are subject to
  general access throughout the country?"

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1967 NEH Computing Conference

• Question 2 "Will the computer call for a
  reorganization of humanistic knowledge, and will
  computer capacity make possible a significantly
  new kind of encyclopedia of humanistic knowledge?"

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Key Items

• Creating technology standards for accessing
  humanities content
• Preserving humanities materials and making them
  accessible via technology
• Studying technology as a subject and
  understanding its impact on reading, writing, and
  understanding
• Researching ways in which technology can enable
  us to perform new humanities scholarship

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Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)

• has produced a set of guidelines for formatting
  humanities texts to ensure their most effective
  retrieval.
• TEI- SGML DTD (document type definition) is
  widely used.
• the Women Writers Project at Brown
  http//www.wwp.brown.edu/ is one recent example.

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Encoded Archival Description (EAD)

• now the standard for creating Internet-accessible
  archival finding aids
• examples the Online Archive of California at
  the University of California, Berkeley.
• the Online Archive of New Mexico at the
  University of New Mexico.

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Thesaurus Linguae Graecae Project (1972)

• grant given to the University of California at
  Irvine for TLG.
• dedicated to amassing and maintaining in an
  electronic database all extant Greek texts from
  Homer to the fall of Byzantium
• provides unified access to over 10,000 works by
  more than 3,330 authors.

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Papyri Project

• under the direction of Columbia U.
• to digitize important papyrus collections
• create an integrated information system via the
  Internet by developing common standards for
  digital imaging of papyri and formatting
  electronic data about this ancient writing
  material.

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Digital Library Initiative

• joint project with NSF and others.
• develop standards and best practices that will be
  critical to the effective use of digital
  technology in the humanities
• addressing currently unsolved technical problems
  concerning the digital preservation of text,
  sound, and video and its delivery via the World
  Wide Web.

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Technology as Subject

• the impact of new technologies on the way we
  read, write, distribute, and understand text
  literature.
• the relationship of electronic texts to oral and
  print cultures
• to what extent can traditional ethical theories
  be applied to developments made possible by
  modern technology?

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Digital Parallel Production Grants

• joint project with Corporation for Public
  Broadcasting
• funding television documentaries that utilize
  interactive datacasting elements
• Crucible of the Millennium -- a four-hour series
  will be enhanced by the addition of a "virtual"
  exploration of an Aztec pyramid.

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H-Net

• NEH funded the H-Net project at Michigan State
  University.
• humanities-based discussion groups moderated by
  top scholars.
• over 90,000 subscribers. http//www.h-net.msu.ed
  u/

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Teaching with Technology

• helped propel advances in digital technologies
  for humanities education
• The Valley of the Shadow at the University of
  Virginia, a website about the civil war
  http//jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vshadow2/
• Oyez, Oyez, Oyez is a Supreme Court Web site
  developed at Northwestern University
  http//oyez.nwu.edu/

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Challenge Grants

• At the Electronic Text Center of the University
  of Virginia (whose archive of 45,000 texts is
  regularly accessed by over 50,000 online users a
  day), an NEH Challenge Grant will support
  enhancements to the technology infrastructure and
  address training needs that will enable this
  pioneering digital effort to enjoy continued
  growth. http//etext.lib.virginia.edu/

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NEH Divisions

• Research
• Education
• Preservation and Access
• Challenge
• Public Programs

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Contact Information

• www.neh.gov
• White Paper on NEH, Science Technology
  www.neh.gov/publications/workingpapers.html
• Brett Bobley, CIO bbobley_at_neh.gov