Roy Rosenzweig: Memorial Events

Several memorial events are being planned to celebrate the life and work of CHNM's beloved late director, Roy Rosenzweig, who passed away earlier this month after a valiant struggle with cancer. Details will be posted at thanksroy.org/memorialevents, where friends, colleagues, and admirers may also post memories, stories, tributes, photos and other materials in celebration of Roy.

Washington Area Technology & Humanities Fall Forum

This fall the Washington DC Area Forum on Technology and the Humanities is pleased to present:

Bob Stein on “The Evolution of Reading and Writing in the Networked Era”

For the past several hundred years intellectual discourse has been shaped by the rhythms and hierarchies inherent in the nature of print. As discourse shifts from page to screen, and more significantly to a networked environment, the old definitions and relations are undergoing substantial changes. The shift in our world view from individual to network holds the promise of a radical reconfiguraton in culture. Notions of authority are being challenged. The roles of author and reader are morphing and blurring. Publishing, methods of distribution, peer review and copyright - every crucial aspect of the way we move ideas around - is up for grabs. The new digital technologies afford vastly different outcomes ranging from oppressive to liberating. How we make this shift has critical long term implications for human society.

Our speaker will be Robert Stein, director of the Institute for the Future of the Book. The institute has two principal activities. one is building high-end tools for making rich media electronic documents (part of the Mellon Foundation's higher-ed digital infrastructure initiative) and the other is exploring and hopefully influencing the evolution of new forms of intellectual expression and discourse. Previously Stein was the founder of The Voyager Company where over a 13-year period he led the development of over 300 titles in The Criterion Collection, a series of definitive films on videodisc, and more than 75 CD ROM titles including the CD Companion to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Who Built America, and the Voyager edition of Macbeth.

We will meet on Wednesday November 7, 2007 from 4:30-7:00 PM on George Mason University's Fairfax campus in Room 163 of the Research 1 Building. There will be an informal dinner after the forum, at a cost of $10 per person. You must RSVP to Meredith Mayo ( mmayo1[at]gmu[dot]edu) by October 30, 2007 if you would like to have dinner.

Co-sponsored by the Center for History & New Media (CHNM) at George Mason, the Center for New Designs in Learning & Scholarship (CNDLS) at Georgetown, and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH), the DC Area Technology and Humanities Forum explores important issues in humanities computing and provide an opportunity for DC area scholars interested the uses of new technology in the humanities to meet and get acquainted.

The Research 1 building is located on the main Fairfax campus of George Mason University. Parking is located directly across from the building in the Sandy Creek Parking Deck.

History Clearinghouse Contract, Omeka Grant

The Center for History and New Media is proud to announce its award of two major grants last week from the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

CHNM received a $7 million contract from the U.S. Department of Education, one of the largest competitive grants ever won by George Mason University, to develop and maintain a National History Education Clearinghouse over the next five years in collaboration with the History Education group led by Sam Wineburg at Stanford University (SU), the American Historical Association (AHA), and the National History Center (NHC). Centered on K-12 history education, the project will aim to integrate major developments to advance history teaching and learning. The emergence of the Internet has made an unprecedented number of historical documents and resources available to teachers and students alike, while the Department of Education's Teaching American History (TAH) program has devoted over $700 million to improve history education. Led by Roy Rosenzweig, Kelly Schrum, and Sharon Leon, the Clearinghouse project will consolidate the most informative online history content as well as provide a digital support center for American history teachers at all levels and in all locations. More specifically, the web site will focus on seven features: history education news, history content, teaching materials, best practices, policy and research, professional development and Teaching American History grants. Adding to this web-based resource will be off-line support for teachers, such as an annual two-day conference, a biannual newsletter, an annual report on the state of history education, and workshops around the country.

CHNM is also celebrating its IMLS funding for Omeka, a next-generation web-publishing platform for smaller history museums, historical societies, and historic sites. From the Swahili word meaning "to display" or "to lay out for discussion" Omeka is designed for these groups that they may not have the adequate resources or expertise necessary to create and maintain their own online tools. The free, open-source tool will allow many more museums to mount well-designed, professional-looking, and content-rich web sites without adding to their constrained budgets. It will also provide a standards-based interoperable system to share and use digital content in multiple contexts so that museums can design online exhibitions more efficiently. Beginning in October 2007, CHNM will plan, design, test, evaluate, and disseminate Omeka over four phases while working closely with our major partner, the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS). MHS represents a wide museum network and a broad range of history and heritage institutions of different sizes, audiences, and subject area interests. In addition, we will make Omeka available to other small museums through conference presentations, direct mailings, and the CHNM website.

Echo Grants, NYC Digital History Workshop

The Center for History and New Media is pleased to announce two exciting opportunities for historians of science, technology, and industry: Echo Online Collection Grants and a Doing Digital History Workshop in New York.

CHNM’s Echo project is pleased to announce the availability of up to five $1000 grants to fund current research projects involving the online collection of the recent history of science, technology, and industry. Echo offers tailored consulting services to institutions and individual researchers with online projects or ideas, including help with strategic project planning, technology, website design, and outreach in building digital history collections. Examples of projects that employ Echo methods and technologies can be found at the Echo Collecting Center and include A Thin Blue Line: The History of the Pregnancy Test Kit, a joint project by Echo and the National Institute of Health, and Remembering Columbia STS-107, an online exhibit by NASA. Please submit a grant proposal of no more than 500 words and a C.V. to chnm@gmu.edu with the subject line, Echo grant proposal,” by December 1, 2007.

CHNM also invites public historians of science, technology, and industry in the New York area to our next workshop on the theory and practice of digital history. The workshop will be held on January 17, 2008 at the New York Public Library. Participants will explore the ways that digital technologies can facilitate the research, teaching, and presentation of history; genres of online history and tools; website infrastructure and design; scholarly collaboration; digitization and online collecting; the process of identifying and building online history audiences; and issues of copyright and preservation. There is no registration fee, but spaces are limited. Please submit an application form by December 1, 2007 (available at http://chnm.gmu.edu/tools/surveys/3794/); accepted participants will be notified by December 10.

About Echo: Since 2001, the Echo project (Exploring and Collecting History Online—Science, Technology, and Industry) has promoted the collection and dissemination of the history of science and technology on the Web with the generous support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.