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Planning & Implementation Begins August 2012
2012 Awards
Peter Enns, Government – Campaign Funding and Political Speech
Digitization and OCR (conversion of images into machine-readable text) of a sample of newspapers will allow the textual analysis of how changes in campaign sources influence candidates' political speech. Supporting research and teaching, this project will encourage collaboration with computer scientists at Cornell who are developing content analysis tools. The pilot will also support a grant proposal to the NSF in order to broaden this research to additional political districts.
Cheryl Finley, Art History – Lowentheil Collection of African-American Photographs
Collaborators: Katherine Reagan, Cornell University Library
This collection of African-American photographs stands to make a major impact on the study of African American visual culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as they reveal volumes about black life and struggles in uncommonly rare photographs. Through digitization this resource will be widely available to scholars of African American Studies, Art History, American Studies and the History of Photography. These materials complement already existing Cornell collections, including the May Anti-Slavery, Hip Hop, Noyes and Rudin materials.
Fred Gleach, Anthropology – Anthropological Collections
Collaborators: Eilis Monahan, Graduate Student, Near Eastern Studies
The Anthropology Collections (Department of Anthropology) include objects covering much of the range of human history and activities. The objects are used both for teaching and research purposes but are not regularly accessible due to facility and staffing limitations. The project will focus on a set of sub-collections for digitization to improve accessibility for students and faculty, increase awareness and use of the overall collections, and lay the framework for future education and research developments.
Travis Gosa, Africana Studies and Research Center – Obama Visual Iconography
Collaborators: Katherine Reagan, Cornell University Library
In 2008 Cornell Library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections (RMC) began building a collection of political campaign publicity and memorabilia documenting the campaign and election of President Barack Obama. Online access to these materials will provide a unique visual iconography of the election of America's first black President. It will constitute an important teaching and research resource for understanding modern campaign strategies and political mobilization. The resulting digital collection will be of interest to multiple disciplines, including art, art history, history, American studies, Africana studies, media studies, visual studies, political science, and government.
Peter Uwe Hohendahl, German Studies, Comparative Literature – Warburg's "Atlas" Panels
Collaborators: Kizer Walker (Cornell University Library), Peter J. Potter (Cornell University Press), Christopher D. Johnson (Comparative Literature, Harvard University)
The goal of the project is to build an interactive resource for the exploration of the fragmentary "atlas of images" left by German Jewish art historian Aby M. Warburg (1866-1929). The Atlas involves the assemblage of hundreds of images juxtaposed on wood panels. An interactive, web-based treatment of the Atlas will realize Warburg's ideal, namely, that each viewer makes his or her own connections between the myriad images presented in the Atlas. This website will serve as a multimedia companion to "Signale: Modern German Letters, Cultures, and Thought" (http://signale.cornell.edu) and will support exploration of new technologies and new partnerships in creating economically viable channels for disseminating scholarship.
Tamara Loos, History – Maps of Southeast Asia
Collaborators: Gregory Green, Cornell University Library
The goal of the project is provide online access to the early maps of Southeast Asia, which are very unique and quite well known. Currently they are available only for onsite use. The maps are of great value to courses covering the history of Southeast Asia, both at Cornell and elsewhere, providing online access will be a service to the academic community researching the region.
Kathryn March, Anthropology – Digital Tamang
The goal is developing a Digital Tamang Study Center by creating an online archive for both original and secondary source materials, organized in such a way that it is accessible to members of the local Tamang village community. Initial contents will include field research material, based upon 37 years of research among the Tamang of central highland Nepal. The project will address important cultural heritage issues pertaining to privacy and rights of access by identifying public access materials and those which remain restricted to Tamang community.
Tim Murray, Society for the Humanities/Comparative Literature & English – Experimental Television Center
Collaborators: Sherry Miller Hocking, Experimental Television Center
This project will enable the continuation of an exciting ongoing project to digitize and preserve the video collection of the Experimental Television Center (ETC), a prominent video art collection. Second phase will also include associated ephemera and print material. Access at Cornell will provide an invaluable resource to students and faculty studying the history of the contemporary media arts. Wider use is anticipated once the collection is advertised, since the tapes have value for English, Africana, Latino Studies and Asian American Studies. Over time, video art is likely to become an important component of core coverage courses in twentieth-century art history.
Steve Pond, Music and Travis Gosa, Africana – Hip Hop Collection/Conzo Archive
Collaborators: Katherine Reagan, Cornell University Library
Founded in 2007, Cornell's hip hop collection is now the largest archive on early hip hop culture in the United States. A key foundational element of the collection is an assemblage of photographic prints by Bronx photographer Joe Conzo, Jr., taken between 1977 and 1984. Conzo is one of the few photographers known to have captured the early years of hip hop on film. Online access to the collection will be of interest to multiple disciplines, including art, art history, dance, music, American Studies, Africana. One of the project goals is to provide learning and teaching materials for a new Cornell course on hip hop.
Steve Pond, Music – Hip Hop Collection/ Flyers
Collaborators: Katherine Reagan, Cornell University Library
Hip hop party and event flyers contain the raw data of hip hop, from the days when hip hop was a performance based, localized culture from the streets of New York City. Digitization of additional flyers will build upon the online collection of Breakbeat Lenny, digitized in 2011 and we will seek to add crowdsourcing and mapping capabilities to enable students and others to better manipulate data and add to our knowledge. Online access to the founding artifacts of hip hop culture is a topic of keen interest to multiple constituencies around the globe, both academic and community based.
Deborah Starr – Near Eastern Studies – Waguih Ghali Diaries
Collaborators: Ali Houissa, Middle East & Islamic Studies Bibliographer
The goal is to digitize the only known complete copies of diaries and manuscripts of Waguih Ghali, an Egyptian Coptic Anglophone writer who spent his adult life as a political exile. There is a dearth of information about Ghali's life and the diary entries will provide insights to his time in exile. Recently fragments of the diaries have been translated and published in the Egyptian press. Scholars around the world will have access to the complete set of diaries and unpublished manuscripts. The online archive will provide an invaluable source in support of teaching and research, especially within the context of Arab Diaspora.
2011 Awards
2011 awards were announced in May 2011 and the projects are in progress. See the Cornell Chronicle story about the initiative.
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