{"id":114968,"date":"2020-10-26T08:00:56","date_gmt":"2020-10-26T12:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/?p=114968"},"modified":"2023-11-27T15:10:09","modified_gmt":"2023-11-27T20:10:09","slug":"ucfs-center-that-helps-preserve-share-history-awarded-national-grant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/ucfs-center-that-helps-preserve-share-history-awarded-national-grant\/","title":{"rendered":"UCF\u2019s Center that Helps Preserve, Share History Awarded National Grant"},"content":{"rendered":"

History is a great teacher, but in the age of electronic media<\/a>, making history accessible is almost as important as preserving it.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where UCF\u2019s Center for Humanities and Digital Research (CHDR) comes in. The center is made up of a group of faculty members and staff who help train humanities researchers to properly digitize what they are studying and make it readily available anywhere in the world. Sometimes thinking about how information and artifacts can be displayed digitally will mean collecting it a certain way, so getting faculty to think about electronic displays and communication is key to effective digital preservation.<\/p>\n

Since 2007, the CHDR has helped strengthen several project proposals that have gone on to win funding and garner attention for innovative approaches to preservation. The effort has been successful. As  of July this year, the center has been involved in $2.7 million worth of funded grants. And this year, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded the center a $193,736 Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge grant to expand its work. The independent federal agency is one of the largest funders of humanities programs in the United States, disbursing $30.9 million so far in 2020.<\/p>\n

The NEH grant, which requires UCF to contribute matching funds, will enable the expansion of a digital humanities collaboratory in UCF\u2019s Trevor Colbourn Hall and update CHDR\u2019s equipment to support collaborative research, digital preservation, digital access and public programming.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe grant will help increase the number of faculty and students learning design, programming and digital archiving skills; generate new collaborative projects and scholarship; and accelerate institutional and public humanities programming,\u201d says Bruce Janz, a humanities professor and co director of the center with Professor Mark Kamrath.<\/p>\n

Examples of projects that benefited from CHDR expertise include the:<\/p>\n