Archive for Grants, External

“Many Voices: Building a Consortium of Small Scholarly Societies in the Humanities”

citation

Ball, Cheryl E. [PI] et al. (2017–18). Many voices: A consortium for sustaining small, scholarly societies. Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Scholarly Communication platform. $59,500.

executive summary

As a collaborative group of faculty, scholarly publishers, and digital scholarship professionals, our 2016 Triangle SCI project team is collectively seeking a 12-month planning grant from the Mellon Foundation in the amount of $59,500 to explore the possibility of establishing a consortium of small scholarly societies (those with fewer than 1,000 members) in the humanities. The purpose of such a consortium would be to consolidate the recurrent and often time-consuming administrative functions that all scholarly societies face, but that are especially burdensome for small societies with limited or no professional staff. The ultimate aim of such an administrative consortium would be to allow these societies to focus their efforts on core activities and membership benefits—such as publishing a scholarly journal—rather than on the more mundane “business of the business.”

The planning grant will cover 12 months of research and analysis, which will include an in-person meeting involving the project team and stakeholders from a range of small scholarly societies to explore the consortium idea and an online survey of small-society officers based on the in-person discussion to further vet the idea. While the planning grant is meant to move us toward consortium-building, the centralization envisioned would be in service of several larger goals: to help small societies achieve financial stability through greater efficiencies; to support small societies’ efforts to develop scholars and academic leaders in their respective disciplines; and to provide a forum in which small societies can collectively consider potential alternative approaches to traditional publication, including open access.

supporting materials

KairosCamp! – a digital publishing institute

IATDH Narrative for KairosCamp by s2ceball on Scribd

Vega: An Academic Publishing Platform

citation

Ball, Cheryl E., & Morrison, Andrew M. (co-PIs). (2015–17). Vega: An academic publishing platform [funding proposal]. Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Scientific Communication and Information Technology program. $1,000,000.

abstract

The primary deliverable for this project is the free, open source EditMe platform, intended for publishing digital and media-rich scholarship. This editorial-management system will be a “turn-key” publishing platform for print-like and scholarly multimedia journals, books, and data sets. The platform includes features that will help editors and publishers provide an accessible, secure, sustainable, flexible, open, free, and collaborative environment for authors and readers, and which will help them engage in building and reading multimedia-rich, peer-reviewed content. (Note: Vega is the final name for this program. It went through two prior names before we settled on this one.)

supplemental materials

“Building a Better Back-End” – NEH DH white paper

citation

Ball, Cheryl E. (2014). Building a better back-end: Editor, author, and reader tools for scholarly multimedia (Grant #HD-50188-10). Washington, DC: NEH Office of Digital Humanities.

abstract

This white paper outlines the original NEH DH Start-Up Grant activities for “Building a Better Back-End,” which aimed to build PHP plug-ins for Open Journal Systems to allow for multimedia workflows. Ultimately, the project was not successful. The white paper outlines as set of lessons learned from this grant project.

accompanying materials

Fulbright Award

I have received a Fulbright grant to research scholarly multimedia journals at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design in Norway during the 2013-14 academic year. My project has three facets:

  1. to implement the first scholarly multimedia journal outside of the U.S., at AHO,
  2. to draft a reference book on starting a scholarly multimedia journal, and
  3. to professionalize students and faculty in writing and editing scholarly multimedia.

The full project-statement, which outlines my research and teaching plans, timeline, and benefits to the US and Norwegian universities and cultures is appended. (For the full Teaching Materials outline, please contact me.)

"Digital Scrapbooking and Oral Histories"

citation
Ball, Cheryl E. (2005). Digital scrapbooking and oral histories [pre-proposal]. Dee Foundation. $60,000. [not funded].

abstract
This project intended to collect oral histories of local Utah residents & scan their keepsake/artifacts for arhival purposes.

accompanying materials

  • not available

"Composing _The New Work of Composing_"

citation
Ball, Cheryl E. (2009). Composing The New Work of Composing: A Born-Digital Afterword Reflecting on Digital Scholarship for a Born-Digital Book. NEH 2009 Summer Stipend. $6,000. [Not funded]

abstract
The Modern Language Association reports that over 52% of humanities department chairs have no experience evaluating digital books for tenure/promotion, including “born-digital” books (i.e., a book that exists only in a digital format, with no possible print or analog counterpart). I intend to edit the first born-digital scholarly book in English studies, The New Work of Composing. This book will add to humanities’ understanding of writing in a digital age by providing an example of born-digital scholarship that will help us consider the new intellectual work of the “book.” The deliverables for this NEH summer stipend include designing the book’s interface and composing the afterword, a media-rich assessment of digital scholarship with an emphasis on the process of writing, designing, and editing the field’s first born-digital, scholarly book. Computers and Composition Digital Press—the humanities’ first digital-only, open-access, academic press—has asked for a prospectus in Spring 2009.

accompanying materials

"Creating Sustainable Teaching Practices for Multimodal Scholarship"

citation
Ball, Cheryl E. (2009, October 1). Creating sustainable teaching practices for multimodal scholarship. NEH Teaching Development Fellowship. $21,000. [under review]

abstract
I am requesting funding of $21,000 over the five-month period August–December 2010 to complete a teaching development project aimed at creating templates for multimodal scholarship, which I will use as the basis for my English 239: Multimodal Composition course at Illinois State University. These templates will use a selection of open-source software created in partial conjunction with University of Southern California’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy. The release time this stipend provides will allow me to travel to USC to work with these designers and to create three templates and three tutorials (on how to use those templates) so that my students can practice more cutting-edge and more sustainable digital humanities scholarly practices.

accompanying materials

"Humanities High Performance Computing Collaboratory"

citation
Group Leader/Consultant, Humanistic Algorithms Project. (2008–2009). Humanities High Performance Computing Collaboratory (HpC). Principle Investigator: Kevin Franklin (UIUC); Project Leader: Virginia Kuhn (USC). National Endowment for the Humanities Institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities Grant. $250,000 [External; ~$5,000 for travel/honoraria].

grant project description (from accompanying materials letter)

As one of the group leaders of the Humanistic Algorithms project—one of three humanities groups selected for the 2008–2009 HpC mini-residencies—you will collaborate with high performance computing specialists in order to identify, create, and adapt computational tools and methods. Your participation in this grant includes travel to three supercomputing centers for three different workshops tailored to address the specific challenges of your individual projects and research goals. The Humanistic Algorithms project is a collaboration between SEASR, I-CHASS, and the University of Southern California’s Institute for Multimedia Literary that focuses on building metadata algorithms for digital media content and creating a digital archive system in support of an open-access digital portfolio application for faculty and students at higher education institutions. Supercomputing workshops for the Humanistic Algorithms group include visits to the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center on February 26-27, the San Diego Supercomputing Center on March 19-20, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications from April 19-23 to participate in the third workshop and to attend the third annual HASTAC conference, Traversing Digital Boundaries. The year-long program will culminate in a final two-day conference in August 2009.

group/project abstract
Humanistic Algorithms: The University of Southern California’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy (IML) has faced a material challenge for the past eight years in realizing one of its primary goals: creating a digital archive system in support of the creation of digital portfolio application. The lack of sufficient computational resources for holding large collections of multimedia resources, most notably its robust digital portfolio of media-rich student projects and faculty teaching resources, has hindered IML’s creation of a pedagogical tool for faculty and students. The Humanistic Algorithms project is a collaboration between SEASR, ICHASS, and IML to address this challenge. The project is being imagined in phases, with the first stage to serve as a prototype to be completed by early June. SEASR will use data analytics to extract information from unstructured texts (i.e., raw textual data like websites, etc.) to produce semantic information that can be used to create meta-analyses of scholarly multimedia. From these meta-analyses, Humanistic Algorithms would like to contemplate: What are the components of scholarly multimedia? What is pedagogy in a networked world? How do we collaborate, train faculty, and teach students how to read and compose scholarly multimedia?

Note: Kairos (see under Edited Journals) is part of the corpus for the prototype algorithm, along with the IML student projects and two other scholarly, multimedia collections.

accompanying materials

"Uncovering Theories & Practices of Multiliteracies & New Media Pedagogies"

citation
Ball, Cheryl; Atkins, Anthony; Anderson, Daniel; Homicz Millar, Krista; Selfe, Cynthia; & Selfe, Richard. (2004–05). Uncovering Theories & Practices of Multiliteracies & New Media Pedagogies. CCCC Research Initiative Grant: National Council of Teachers of English/Conference on College Composition & Communication. $5,000.

abstract
This group conducted a survey to discover what sorts of instruction is happening at institutions with a nascent or established curriculum of multimodal pedagogy especially as it relates to student and faculty production of multimodal texts. Our aim is to produce a snapshot of various programs working to integrate multimodality into their writing classes. From this data, we hope to provide the CCCC audience with a set of standards/guidelines for best practices within this growing field.

accompanying materials

see also