Category: Awards

Roy Prize 2010

This Friday, May 14, 2010, is the deadline for submitting your digital history project for the Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Innovation in Digital History, known around here at the Center for History and New Media (one of the sponsors of the prize, along with the American Historical Association) simply as the Roy Prize. The prize is in honor of Roy Rosenzweig, the founder of CHNM and a pioneer in social history and digital history (and also the nicest person I’ve ever met), who passed away in 2007.

There was a little confusion last year (the inaugural year of the award) engendered by the use of the word “Fellowship” instead of “Prize,” and the AHA and CHNM hope that the revised name will make it crystal clear that the Roy Prize is for the best work in digital history, period. If you have a project that you feel is ready to be nominated for the award, please see the AHA’s page on how to submit your project for the prize.

The American Historical Association Announces the Roy Rosenzweig Fellowship for Innovation in Digital History

A very special announcement:

Roy RosenzweigIn 2009, George Mason University and the American Historical Association will offer the first Roy Rosenzweig Fellowship for Innovation in Digital History. This award was developed by friends and colleagues of Roy Rosenzweig (1950–2007), Mark and Barbara Fried Professor of History and New Media at George Mason University, to honor his life and work as a pioneer in the field of digital history.

This nonresidential fellowship will be awarded annually to honor and support work on an innovative and freely available new media project, and in particular for work that reflects thoughtful, critical, and rigorous engagement with technology and the practice of history. The fellowship will be conferred on a project that is either in a late stage of development or which has been launched in the past year but is still in need of further improvements. The fellow(s) will be expected to apply awarded funds toward the advancement of the project goals during the fellowship year.

In a 1-2 page narrative, entries should provide a method of access to the project (e.g., web site address, software download), indicate the institutions and individuals involved with the project, and describe the project’s goals, functionality, intended audience, and significance. A short budget statement on how the fellowship funds will be used should be attached. Projects may only be submitted once for the Rosenzweig Fellowship.

The entry should be submitted by e-mail to rosenzweigprize@historians.org. Questions about the prize and application process should be directed to rtownsend@historians.org. The deadline for submission of entries is May 15, 2009. Recipients will be announced at the 2010 AHA Annual Meeting in San Diego.

Omeka Wins $50,000 MATC Award

FAIRFAX, Va., December 8, 2008 — The Center for History and New Media at George Mason University received a $50,000 Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration (MATC) for Omeka, a software project that greatly simplifies and beautifies the online publication of collections and exhibits. The award was given at the Coalition for Networked Information meeting Dec. 8 in Washington, D.C.

MATC awards recognize not-for-profit organizations that are making substantial contributions of their own resources toward the development of open source software and the fostering of collaborative communities to sustain open source development.

Omeka is a free and open source web publishing platform for scholars, librarians, archivists, museum professionals, educators and cultural enthusiasts. Its “five-minute setup” makes launching an online exhibition as easy as launching a blog. Omeka is designed with non-IT specialists in mind, allowing users to focus on content and interpretation rather than programming. It brings Web 2.0 technologies and approaches to academic and cultural web sites to foster user interaction and participation. It makes top-shelf design easy with a simple and flexible templating system. Its robust open-source developer and user communities underwrite Omeka’s stability and sustainability.

“Until now, scholars and cultural heritage professionals looking to publish collections-based research and online exhibitions required either extensive technical skills or considerable funding for outside vendors,” said Tom Scheinfeldt, project co-lead and managing director of CHNM. “By making standards-based, serious online publishing easy, Omeka puts the power and reach of the web in the hands of academics and cultural professionals themselves.”

Scheinfeldt accepted the award from Vinton Cerf, vice president and chief Internet evangelist at Google, who chaired the blue-ribbon prize committee. The committee also included Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web; John Gage, chief researcher and director of the Science Office at Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Mitchell Baker, CEO of the Mozilla Corporation; Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media; John Seely Brown, former chief scientist at Xerox Corp.; Ira Fuchs, vice president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; and Donald J. Waters, program officer in the Program in Scholarly Communication at the Mellon Foundation.

2008 James Harvey Robinson Prize

I’m delighted to announce that the Center for History and New Media, along with the Stanford History Education Group, has won the 2008 James Harvey Robinson Prize for Historical Thinking Matters. This prize, awarded by the American Historical Association, is offered biennially for the teaching aid that has made the most outstanding contribution to the teaching of history in any field.

CHNM is humbled by this award, especially since it is our third straight Robinson Prize. Our prior winning projects are History Matters and World History Matters. (For a History Matters franchise near you, contact us.)

Congratulations go out to our collaborators from Stanford, including Sam Wineburg and Daisy Martin, and to the CHNM team that did such a terrific job on the site: Sharon Leon, Mike O’Malley, Jeremy Boggs, Stephanie Hurter, Josh Greenberg, Rikk Mulligan, Meagan Hess, and Ammon Shepherd.

2008 Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration

It’s that time of year to help out open source projects you love by nominating them for the Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration (MATC Awards), sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Prior recipients include beloved FOSS projects that have greatly benefited academia, including Moodle and Scriblio.

The deadline for nominations for the 2008 Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration (MATC Awards) is April 14, 2008. The MATC Awards consist of up to ten $50,000 or $100,000 prizes, which a receiving institution can use in a variety of ways to continue its technology leadership. The awards honor not-for-profit institutions that have demonstrated exemplary leadership in the development of open source software for one or more of the constituencies served by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation: the arts and humanities in higher education; research libraries, museums; performing arts organizations; and conservation biology.

Awardees are selected by a distinguished committee of technology leaders, including Mitchell Baker, Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, John Seely Brown, Vint Cerf, John Gage, and Tim O’Reilly. Previous winners include higher education institutions, libraries, and museums from North America, Europe, and Asia.

An online nomination form and more information may be found at http://matc.mellon.org.

Roy Rosenzweig Prize in History and New Media

A very special announcement of a new prize from the American Historical Association and the Center for History and New Media. The Rosenzweig Prize will be awarded annually for an innovative and freely available new media project that reflects thoughtful, critical, and rigorous engagement with technology and the practice of history.