The Perseus Project is pleased to announce that it has received a grant from the prestigious multiagency initiative, Digital Libraries Initiative, Phase Two. This program is sponsored by: National Science Foundation (NSF) Digital Libraries Initiative, National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Digital Library Initiative, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Technology Office, National Library of Medicine (NLM) Extramural Programs, Library of Congress (LOC) Digital Library Initiatives, National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in partnership with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Smithsonian Institution (SI), and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
The Perseus Digital Library for the Humanities will reexamine the nature of individual documents that form the building blocks of digital libraries. Some categories of publication are obviously radically new -- we can now, for example, imagine publishing archaeological reports as integrated multimedia databases including lavish imagery, 3D reconstructions, and the databases of all objects found as well as narrative text. But even well established documents (such as dictionaries) can be completely rethought if they are to take proper advantage of a digital environment. We will study the effect of new electronic publications on learning in a wide range of audiences, ranging from the general public to scholars conducting research.
Perseus already has in place a developed digital library on Greco-Roman culture and this provides us with a laboratory in which to begin studying the effects of the technology. At the same time, we have begun working with partners from a range of other areas in the humanities. These include a research institute in the history of science (the Max Planck Institute in Berlin), a major publication series supported by a professional association (the Modern Language Association), a world-class museum (the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), an electronic publication consortium (the Stoa publishing consortium), and special collections at three libraries (Brandeis, the University of Pennsylvania and Tufts). These partnerships will allow us to develop new testbeds in areas that include ancient Egypt, the text of Shakespeare and 19th century London.
The Principal Investigators of the project are as follows:
Gregory Crane, Principal
Investigator,
Department of Classics
Robert Jacob, Co-Principal
Investigator,
Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science Department
Holly Taylor,
Co-Principal Investigator, Psychology
Department
Ross Scaife, Co-Principal Investigator,
Kentucky Classics,
University of Kentucky
Nancy Allen, Co-Principal Investigator,
Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston
The text of the proposal is on-line here.
The members of the Perseus Project would like to thank our collaborators, the grants office at Tufts University, and all Perseus users for their support with this proposal.
Please direct any comments or questions to the Perseus webmaster.