[Air-l] Digital Cultural Institutions Project - Summer 2004 Awards Competition

[dcip]

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Digital Cultural Institutions Project - Summer 2004 Awards Competition
Social Science Research Council

The Social Science Research Council is pleased to announce a 2004 summer awards competition to support research on digital cultural institutions - institutions involved in aggregating digital cultural resources and developing models of access to them.  

About the Project

The project will seek to integrate lines of research on a range of providers and mediators of cultural goods and services-from digital libraries and online museums to commercial online vendors of music and books, search engines and portals, open and collaborative knowledge archives, and peer-to-peer networks, among others.  This includes consideration of the technical, architectural, and cross-institutional issues that shape aggregation and access, such as metadata standards and digital rights management. 

In so doing, the project will encourage a more comprehensive understanding of the emerging institutional landscape of digital culture and toward a clearer account of the choices we face as participants and stakeholders in that culture.  The project will contribute to what is arguably the most important and most impoverished cultural conversation of our time: that of understanding the practical requirements of an equitable, creative, and sustainable digital cultural future, in the U.S. and across an increasingly global cultural network.

Project activities in 2004

For 2004, the project will offer up to 10 awards of $5,000 to fund research over the summer.  

Eligibility

The fellowship competition is open to advanced graduate and professional-degree students in any field, and to post-doctoral, faculty, and practitioner candidates within 7 years of their terminal degree.

Applicants must be resident in the United States. There are no nationality restrictions.

Applicants must be able to attend the project workshop, Sept. 23-25, 2004, at the University of California - San Diego.  The SSRC will cover travel and accommodations.

Selection Criteria

(1) Consistency with the topics and goals described above.  This implies a relatively broad definition of what constitutes an institution (e.g., search engines, portals, or standards bodies could qualify as institutional mediators of access), but a potentially narrower definition of what constitutes a cultural resource, focusing on aggregation and access to (and potentially collaborative production of) forms of expressive culture (writing, music, film/video, etc.). 
(2) Social scientific grounding.  Although the fellowship is open to all fields, applicants must show how their projects yield generalizable social-scientific knowledge broadly construed, including engagement with existing lines of social and/or socio-technical research.  Although applicant projects can include software development or other applied activities, the fellowships will be awarded on the basis of the social research outcomes likely to be derived from them.
(3) Broader implications.  Although we expect that many applications will focus on specific institutions, applicants should show how their projects contribute to understanding the broader conditions of access to digital cultural resources (whether technical, legal, or social).
(4) Projects already underway.  Due to the short time-horizon of this year's activities, projects will be preferred that are likely to result in publishable research findings by early 2005.

Requirements of Award Recipients

(1) Submission of a 2,000-3,000 word brief on the project by mid-August, including preliminary findings and larger questions posed about the institutional ecology of digital culture.  These will support the project workshop and be published on the SSRC website.
(2) Attendance at the project workshop (Sept. 23-25, 2004), UC-San Diego, travel and accommodations paid by the SSRC) 
(3) Interest in participation in an edited volume and other follow-up activities, to be discussed at the workshop.

Application Procedures

All application materials must be sent via email, with attached files, to dcip at ssrc.org

Please make all materials available in one of the following electronic formats - MS Word (or Word compatible), Word Perfect, or RTF.

Required materials for application:

(1) Cover letter (please include email address)
(2) Project Description (2000 words maximum, plus a 150 word abstract)
(3) Curriculum Vitae
(4) Pointers to or electronic copies of other published work (no more than two)

Competition Schedule

Applications due:  March 5
Notification of awards: May 10

More Information

Information about the Digital Cultural Institutions Project can be found online at www.ssrc.org/ccit/dcip/ .  The project is part of the SSRC's Culture, Creativity, and Information Technology Program, www.ssrc.org/ccit/ .

For fellowship questions or other project information, please contact us at dcip at ssrc.org or 212 377-2700 ext.606

Project Funders

Funding is provided by the Culture and Creativity division of the Rockefeller Foundation.