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Narrative Section of a Successful Application Narrative Section of a Successful Application The attached document contains the grant narrative and selected portions of a previously funded grant application. It is not intended to serve as a model, but to give you a sense of how a successful application may be crafted. Every successful application is different, and each applicant is urged to prepare a proposal that reflects its unique project and aspirations. Prospective applicants should consult the Office of Digital Humanities program application guidelines at http://www.neh.gov/grants/odh/humanities-open-book-program for instructions. Applicants are also strongly encouraged to consult with the NEH Office of Digital Humanities staff well before a grant deadline. Note: The attachment only contains the grant narrative and selected portions, not the entire funded application. In addition, certain portions may have been redacted to protect the privacy interests of an individual and/or to protect confidential commercial and financial information and/or to protect copyrighted materials. Project Title: Humanities Open Book Program – Cornell University Institution: Cornell University Project Director: Dean J. Smith Grant Program: Humanities Open Book Program 1. Table of Contents 2. List of Participants ...................................................................................................... 2-1 3. Abstract ........................................................................................................................... 3-1 4. Narrative a. Intellectual Significance of the Collection of Books .......................... 4-1 b. History and Overview of the Publisher ................................................. 4-2 c. Dissemination ................................................................................................. 4-3 d. Service Provider and Technical Standards .......................................... 4-4 e. Work Plan ......................................................................................................... 4-4 f. Licenses ............................................................................................................. 4-7 g. Marketing Plan ............................................................................................... 4-7 5. Project Budget .............................................................................................................. 5-1 6. Resumes .......................................................................................................................... 6-1 7. Letter(s) of Commitment .......................................................................................... 7-1 8. List of Books and Other Appendices .................................................................... 8-1 1-1 GRANT11933901 - Attachments-ATT1-1234-contents.pdf 2. List of Participants/Advisory Board Terry Ehling, Associate Director, Project MUSE Mahinder Kingra, Marketing Director, Cornell University Press Karen Laun, Digital Publishing Manager, Cornell University Press Oya Rieger, Associate University Librarian, Cornell University Library Dean Smith, Director, Cornell University Press Frank Smith, Director, Books at JSTOR Kizer Walker, Director, Collection Development, Cornell University Library 2-1 GRANT11933901 - Attachments-ATT2-1235-participantslist.pdf 3. Abstract The Cornell University Press seeks $83,635 in funding support for a twelve-month effort to make twenty outstanding works of scholarship in foundational disciplines accessible to the world. We will use the funding to 1) test and refine a methodology for selecting out-of-print titles for the program 2) gain experience in the digitization, delivery, rights clearance and dissemination of OA monographs in EPUB3.0.1 format and 3) analyze the results of maximizing the discovery and usage of ebooks across multiple platforms including the Press website, institutional repositories, JSTOR and Project MUSE. Cornell University Press, the first university press in the United States, was established in 1869. Its reputation for publishing high-quality books in the humanities and social sciences resonates with the strengths of its home institution. Many groundbreaking works remain out-of-print and are no longer accessible to the current generation of scholars. The NEH Open Book Program provides the Press with an excellent opportunity to leverage current ebook technologies and mine an extensive and rich backlist. Our plan is to make these books widely discoverable to the global scholarly community as we progress toward the Press’ sesquicentennial celebration in 2019. Working closely with the Cornell University Library, we have outlined a methodology for title selection in the initial phase of this effort that combines library circulation statistics, citation data and subject-level curation with Press strengths in the core disciplines of Literary Criticism and Theory, Slavic Studies and German Studies. We also engaged scholars for their input on these selections. Utilizing this selection process, we have identified twenty titles across disciplines to digitize and convert into the EPUB3 format for the first year of the program. One goal of this collaboration will be to identify possible relationships between title-level usage trends and library circulation and citation data over time. We are also keen to exchange knowledge with our library colleagues in areas such as rights clearance and digitization. Over the past several years the Press has brought a limited number of print titles back into circulation as e-books and print-on-demand titles. Our staff has gained valuable expertise in workflow, rights clearance, metadata generation, and marketing efforts surrounding ebook conversions. In collaboration with Cornell University Library and the Department of Classics, we worked with JSTOR to add the Cornell Studies in Classical Philology series (more than sixty titles dating back to 1887) to its online e-book archive. The Press prepared metadata and rights, while JSTOR completed the digitization—all of which has given us a base of experience in the process of clearing rights for complex titles. Our policy of publishing simultaneous ebooks for most of our new titles has enabled the Press to develop relationships with vendors who can produce EPUB3 files. In 2010, with support from The Andrew Mellon Foundation, Cornell University Press, Cornell University Library, and the Cornell University Department of German Studies launched a book series, Signale: Modern German Letters, Cultures, and Thought, which follows a print-to-open-access publication model. Cornell University Press is honored to reintroduce the titles proposed here into the scholarly debate and for readers, teachers, students and scholars to access around the world in digital form. After this initial phase of exploration, our plan is to accelerate the digitization process over the next three to five years and expand access into more disciplines such as anthropology, political science and philosophy. 3-1 GRANT11933901 - Attachments-ATT3-1236-abstract.pdf 4. Narrative 4a) Intellectual Significance of the Collection of Books In selecting the first group of twenty titles for inclusion in the NEH Open Book Program, we focused on three areas in which Cornell University Press (CUP) has consistently demonstrated innovation and influence during recent decades: literary criticism and theory, Slavic studies, and German studies. We began by curating our out-of-print titles to produce a long list of initial candidates that would show how Cornell University Press books have served to influence the subsequent development of these foundational disciplines. We were drawn to early books by scholars who have since gone on to distinguished careers (and who have in some cases published later books with Cornell University Press), books by authors with continuing ties to Cornell University, and books on topics linking them to some of our recently published books in fields for which the Press is especially well known. The links to our current publishing program will ensure that the resulting ebooks will be marketed alongside our existing list thereby enhancing our presence in those fields and allowing the next generation of scholars to access them. After this internal selection process, we collaborated with our colleagues at Cornell University Library who provided library circulation statistics for all Cornell University Press books in the library’s collection including out-of-print titles. The CU Library then invited library subject specialists in our selected fields to review out-of-print titles and propose books for the program on the basis of their holistic understanding of the fields in question and with an eye to the library usage statistics. We are convinced that the expertise of library subject specialists in daily contact with student and faculty researchers ensures that our candidate titles are of continuing interest and relevance to scholars and other potential readers. The circulation report the librarians used to support their decisions included all Cornell University Press (and Comstock Publishing Associates imprint) books in the Cornell University Library catalog with a tally of historical circulations since 1990, when the Library began registering circulation electronically. We feel that this approach, which blends subjective and objective factors, has yielded highly fruitful results. While the current circulation report is a simple tally, the Press and the Library are discussing prospects
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