Today the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced grant awards to four institutions through the Advancing Knowledge: The IMLS/NEH Digital Partnership grant program, a funding opportunity that encourages digital innovation by bringing humanities scholars together with museum, library, archives, and IT professionals. ...
The grants announced today are:
$250,609 to the Alexandria Archive Institute for its project, Enhancing Humanities Research Productivity in a Collaborative Data Sharing Environment. The Alexandria Archive Institute, in collaboration with the UC Berkeley School of Information, will create best-practice guidelines for the development of humanities data-sharing software to meet user needs, as well as continue to develop Open Context, a collaborative, free, open-access resource to facilitate online sharing of archaeological field research among excavators, scholars, and cultural heritage institutions.
$175,000 to the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) for its project, AIHEC American Indian Collections Portal. AIHEC ... will federate databases focused on Native American collections and share the data in new ways with tribal colleges and community members.
$108,882 to the City of Philadelphia, Department of Records, for its project, A Partnership to Increase Access to Our Nation’s Historical Records. The City of Philadelphia, Department of Records, in collaboration with the Free Library of Philadelphia, will develop an enhanced Web site (www.PhillyHistory.org) featuring historically significant collections at the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Records and the Free Library of Philadelphia, and will create tools to increase the level of access to and usefulness of these collections for researchers, students, and members of the general public. ...
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
