Research in Information Technology (RIT) is dedicated to supporting the thoughtful application of information technology to a wide range of scholarly purposes. The Foundation is interested in promoting the study of uses of digital technologies that can be applied to research and online and distance learning and teaching. The Foundation also supports investigations of new technical approaches to the archiving of textual and multimedia materials that require improved search and storage techniques and improvements in user-interfaces. The impact of information technology (and especially digitization) on scholarship, scholarly communication, and libraries is indisputable.

The Foundation seeks proposals related to technology that benefits one or more of its constituencies and/or multiple institutions, can realistically be developed by the grantee within the proposed timeframe and budget, provides a significant cost savings, is shareable, reliable, and objectively assessible, and has available IP.

Deadlines: 1/28/09 for projects starting 9/09; 8/26/09 for projects starting 4/10

Grants for America’s Media Makers support media projects that explore significant events, figures, or developments in the humanities and offer creative and new approaches to humanities content.

• offer cross-platform distribution of humanities content that combine radio or television programs with programs using emerging technologies, museum exhibitions, reading and discussion programs, and other formats that expand and enhance the program’s humanities content, deepen the audiences’ experience of the content, engage audiences in new ways, and expand the distribution of programs;
• advance the role of cultural repositories in online teaching, learning, and research for public audiences, teachers, students, and scholars;
• include but are not limited to DVDs, Web sites, games, virtual environments, streaming, video on demand, and podcasts, as well as user-generated content;
• engage in simultaneous production of a broadcast program and interactive companion content in order to extend the educational experience of the program’s audience, use resources efficiently, and keep the humanities ideas at the center of the project as the broadcast program and the interactivity are designed;
• engage public audiences interactively in exploring humanities ideas and questions by using new ways to contextualize, interpret, and distribute content;
• result in large-scale, collaborative programs featuring multiple formats; and
• build new programs around previously funded NEH projects using complementary formats that will add new dimensions to the original project and take advantage of new formats and technologies to reach audiences that were not served by the original project.