ACH Microgrants

Submitted by kfitzpatrick on Fri, 01/27/2012 - 09:56

ACH Microgrants: Web Development and Scholarly Communication
Proposals Due 25 February 2012
Awards: ~$200-500; $2000 total grant call

The Executive of the Association for Computers and the Humanities  is delighted to announce a call for Microgrants.  

Proposals will be accepted in two categories:

  1. initiatives that enhance the redesigned ACH Website <ach.org/>, or
  2. activities that add functionality/features to the online journal Digital Humanities Quarterly <digitalhumanities.org/dhq/>.

Proposals might include developing new content such as podcasts or making existing content more user friendly, more visible, or amenable to analytics. Proposals may take the form of apps, plugins, or tools. For DHQ, of particular interest are proposals focusing on integration of DHQ content with digital humanities tools, visualization of DHQ data, or enrichment of DHQ data. ACH is particularly interested in proposals that focus on enhanced communications with ACH members, our mentoring and advocacy initiatives, Digital Humanities Questions and Answers <http://digitalhumanities.org/answers>, or on the history of the association. Proposals should seek to draw in the community, expand the existing community, or link to other initiatives. Graduate students and early stage researchers are encouraged to apply.

Applications will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

  • excellence and innovation of the proposal;
  • contribution of the activity to development and promotion of the ACH or DHQ missions;
  • deliverables can be accomplished within the proposed budget and time period.

For further technical information about the ACH/DHQ websites please see further details below

** Applicants must be members of the ACH <http://ach.org/> at the time of application **

It is expected that grants will be in the range of $US 200-500. These are intended to be small grants that enable innovative activities by community members, such as graduate students, alt-ac faculty and staff, and junior faculty, who don't have access to the resources of senior researchers. Projects should begin no later than three months after receipt of notification of acceptance and should conclude by 31 December 2012.

Applicants will be expected to report back to the ACH three months after the conclusion of the project. Applicants will also be expected to provide the ACH or DHQ with an appropriate Creative Commons license to any content to be posted, and open source software license for any code.

Proposals should be no longer than three pages (ca. 750 words) and should contain the following information:

  1. Name, background and full contact details of proposer (institutional affiliation, email address, etc).
  2. Name of organization (if the proposal is being submitted on behalf of an organization).
  3. Narrative addressing the criteria above, both conceptual and technical with clear statement of deliverables.
  4. If it is envisioned that support will be needed from ACH or DHQ technical staff, please state the type of support needed.
  5. Budget justification that explains what is needed and why (no longer than ½ page).
  6. Date for project start date, date of conclusion, and for final report.

Further technical details

The DHQ publication platform includes the following features:

  1. A RESTful API that exposes both the TEI/XML source and the generated HTML data, as well as several generated indexes (e.g. to authors and article titles; others are also feasible)
  2. The data exposed through the API is TEI/XML and includes structured text, an abstract, a teaser, publication metadata, and a bibliography (though the encoding of the latter is very basic at the moment, pending completion of our current NEH startup grant to create a centralized bibliography for the journal).

The ACH website is Drupal-based. DH Answers runs a modified version of bbPress.

For additional details on the DHQ platform please email John Walsh <jawalsh[AT]indiana.edu> and Julia Flanders <julia_flanders[AT]brown.edu>; for ACH please email <DHanswers[AT]digitalhumanities.org>.

Please send submissions for grants to achgrant[AT]googlegroups.com by 25 February 2012