Sponsored Projects

I have successfully applied for many grants over the years of my career, amounting to several million dollars in sponsored funding. Many of these sponsored projects were collaborative efforts involving a number of institutional partners who received portions of the overall funding.

The following is a list of projects for which I have received funding and served as Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator, as well as a brief description of the project and its goals. The list is organized by funding agency.

Institute of Museum and Library Services

2019 Carolina Digital Library Network Pilot Project

$ 238,169 grant to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, in collaboration with six other libraries in North and South Carolina to explore the possibilities of collaboratively created and maintained shared digital scholarship offerings in a broad geographic area. Digital scholarship services and systems investigated include natural language processing tools combined with repository functions for textual corpora.

2018 Library Diversity Institutes Pilot Project:

$ 211,783 grant to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, in collaboration with the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Diversity Alliance to undertake a two-year project to pilot a national Library Diversity Institutes (LDI) program that will address the needs of professionally underrepresented racial and ethnic groups and broadly advance diversity in U.S. academic libraries.

2017 Preservation of Electronic Government Information National Forums:

$ 87,000 grant to the University of North Texas, in collaboration with the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of Missouri, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, Yale University, the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), the Educopia Institute, and the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) to hold national forums in 2018 to address national concerns regarding the preservation of electronic government information (PEGI) by cultural memory organizations for long term access by citizens of the United States.

2011 Lifecycle Management of Electronic Theses and Dissertations:

$ 268,458 grant to the University of North Texas from the Institute for Museum and Library Services to work with the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD), the Educopia Institute/MetaArchive Cooperative, and other partners to develop and disseminate guidelines, educational materials and an associated workshop, and a set of software tools for life-cycle data management and preservation of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs).

2011 DataRes: Research on Emerging Research Data Management Needs:

$ 226,786 grant to the University of North Texas from the Institute for Museum and Library Services to work with the Council on Library and Information Resources to investigate how the library and information science profession can best respond to emerging needs of research data management in universities, addressing broad new issues concerning the emerging roles, expectations, and practices arising from requirements announced by NIH, NSF, IMLS and other funding agencies for data management plans as part of proposals. I served as lead PI on the project.

2011 Digital Information Curation for 21st Century Science and Scholarship: Experience-Based Learning for Information Professionals and Disciplinary Researchers:

$ 624,663 grant to the University of North Texas from the Institute for Museum and Library Services to address challenges for ensuring sufficient practical training and real-world problem engagement in library and information science education as we prepare new information professionals for digital curation and data management responsibilities, specifically in the context of academic libraries. Served as Co-PI (Dr. William Moen was lead PI).

2007 Recruiting and Educating Librarian's for the Digital Age: Diversifying Librarianship in the South:

$ 773,336 grant to Emory University from the Institute for Museum and Library Services to work with the University of North Texas to address the need for professional librarians with contemporary skill sets in north Georgia. No ALA-accredited graduate library program existed in the state of Georgia at the time of this project. The project recruited, educated, and prepared an Atlanta-based cohort of more than forty diverse graduate students for library careers with an emphasis on digital knowledge management. Upon receiving a master’s degree in library and information science from the ALA-accredited program at the University of North Texas via distance learning, the graduates became a skilled workforce of librarians with specialized training in digital librarianship. This project was undertaken in collaboration with the University of North Texas and the Atlanta University Center. The program had a strong diversity promotion goal, aiming to recruit new librarians from under-represented groups.

2004 Study of User Quality Metrics for Metasearch Retrieval Ranking Project:

$ 182,382 grant to Emory University from the Institute for Museum and Library Services for a 2 year project to gather foundational data concerning user quality metrics for metasearch retrieval systems. Virginia Tech serves as a subcontractor on this project. This research project undertook a series of studies to determine what criteria underlie the preferences and assumptions of different groups of scholars regarding metasearch systems. The project team augmented existing open source search engines, adding algorithms and interfaces to handle custom search ranking metrics based on the attributes of resources and collections. Building upon this testbed, we experimentally assessed the reactions of users to different retrieval algorithms and different quality metric weightings.

2004 The Distributed Library: OAI for Digital Library Aggregation:

$ 290,220 grant to the Digital Library Federation for a 2-year project to research, design, and prototype “second generation” OAI finding systems and standards, capitalizing on the lessons learned from the first wave of OAI harvesting and using as its raw material collections drawn from across the DLF membership. I served as a Co-PI on this project. $ 14,000 of this award came to Emory University. Other institutions collaborating on this project include the Universities of Michigan and Illinois. This project served as the cornerstone of the DLF Aquifer Project.

2003 Music of Social Change Project:

$ 52,160 grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Service for a 2 year project to explore collaborative models for information and metadata sharing between libraries and museums. All funding came to Emory University. This was a fruitful project, which led to both new technology such as the Metadata Migrator software, as well as an exhibit and online website exploring the ways that music was used in the African American Freedom Struggle.

National Endowment for the Humanities

2011 Chronicles in Preservation:

$ 300,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to the Educopia Institute, with the San Diego Supercomputer Center and the libraries of University of North Texas, Penn State, Virginia Tech, University of Utah, Georgia Tech, Boston College, and Clemson University, to study, document, and model the use of data preparation and distributed digital preservation frameworks to collaboratively preserve digitized and born-digital newspaper collections. I was one of the principals that developed the proposal and $ 186K of the award came to UNT for project work.

2008 Identifying the Origins of the Transatlantic Slave Trade from Diasporic Communities:

$ 350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop a multimedia digitization technical infrastructure prototype that will enable researchers and members of the African diaspora to participate in the identification of the linguistic and geographic origins of liberated captives from the slave trade.

2006 The Expanded On-Line Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database:

$ 325,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to create a scholarly portal for the canonical, comprehensive collection of quantified primary research records concerning slave voyages from archives around the trans-Atlantic basin. The portal has GIS, timeline, and statistical display capabilities. This project was praised by NEH as one of the most successful NEH projects of its time and held up as a model for other NEH applicants. Project URL: http://www.slavevoyages.org

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

2014 Chrysalis Project:

$ 50,000 planning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a one year project to explore the design and implementation of vertically integrated research alliances (VIRAs) comprising scholars, libraries, and scholarly presses, and for improving the sustainability of digital scholarship productions. This project funded the creation of two white papers that will be published in 2016 by the Educopia Institute.

2006 Cyberinfrastructure for Humanities Project:

$ 616,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a three year project to create a sustainable cyberinfrastructure program for scholars based on focused interdisciplinary subject domain portals. The portal produced for the project was termed SouthComb, a portal for Southern Studies. This project formed a capstone to the cumulative series of metasearch projects undertaken by Emory University to advance scholarly communication which have been sponsored by the Mellon Foundation.

2003 MetaCombine Project:

$ 435,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a two year project to explore the application of several new digital technologies for scholarship, including semantic clustering, combined searching of web and open archives metadata, and born digital humanities publications. All funding came directly to Emory University. The project developed new models for several key digital library technologies such as automated subject taxonomy generation and focused web indexing. It also led to the creation of Southern Spaces, a peer-reviewed online journal of Southern Studies, URL: http://www.SouthernSpaces.org.

2001 MetaArchive I Project:

$ 290,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a two year project to explore applications of metadata harvesting to scholarly portals, especially for Southeastern repositories. All funding came directly to Emory University. This project involved Emory in the Mellon metadata harvesting initiative. The project worked with dozens of other institutions to create a metadata provider network using the OAI protocol.

2001 AmericanSouth Project:

$ 300,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a two year project to explore applications of metadata harvesting to scholarly communication, with a special focus on Southern Studies. The original award went to SOLINET, which asked Emory to undertake the project on its behalf. I served as the project Principal Investigator, and all work was conducted at Emory.

National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program

The NDIIPP was created by act of Congress to act as the national preservation program for digital cultural materials (URL: http://www.digitalpreservation.gov). The NDIIPP is administered by the Library of Congress.

2007 MetaArchive of Southern Digital Culture Project, Phase II:

$ 562,500 cooperative agreement between the Library of Congress and the MetaArchive Cooperative, to expand the network with new members, formalize the organizational structure of the cooperative, and undertake new research into digital preservation techniques. (Project URL: http://www.MetaArchive.org)

2004 MetaArchive of Southern Digital Culture Project, Phase I:

$ 690,365 cooperative agreement between the Library of Congress and the MetaArchive Cooperative. (Project URL: http://www.MetaArchive.org) Emory served as the initial lead institution of the MetaArchive Cooperative, which also included as founding members GA Tech, FSU, Auburn, Louisville, and VA Tech. $185,151 of this award came to Emory University. This project is one of eight foundational NDIIPP projects chartered in 2004.

National Historic Publications and Records Commission

2007 MetaArchive: A Sustainable Digital Preservation Service for Cultural and Historical Records:

$ 400,000 grant from the National Historic Publications and Records Commission to formalize and extend the MetaArchive distributed digital preservation network and service framework. The resulting service provides to political, cultural, and historical repositories a full array of distributed digital preservation services, including ingesting, storing, preserving, and retrieving born digital and digitized collections comprised of electronic records including websites, email, databases, and text, image, sound, and video files. The MetaArchive Cooperative Service also provides consulting and host workshops for member institutions and other organizations interested in distributed digital preservation methodology.

National Science Foundation

The National Science Digital Library (NSDL) program was created by the National Science Foundation to provide organized access to high quality resources and tools that support innovations in teaching and learning at all levels of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. URL: http://nsdl.org

2003 OCKHAM Project:

$ 425,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for a collaborative inter-institutional 2 year project between Emory and three other universities for research into digital library technologies. $ 186,000 of this award came to Emory University. This project pioneered techniques for automated interoperation frameworks for digital library infrastructures at separate institutions.