Financial assistance for digitization and online publication of scholarly texts

Financial assistance for digitization and online publication of scholarly texts

During recent years several foundations have provided funds to digitize images of art works in museum collections. In some instances the images have been made available online. For more details click here.

Less emphasis has been placed on digitizing paper-published scholarly texts owned by museums. Relatively few museums have paced these texts online. To bridge this gap, TFAO provides free digitization of texts for museums. After digitization, TFAO places these texts online, available to the public without charge.

Area of special interest

TFAO is interested in providing to museums funding for digitization of paper-printed texts that critique, interpret and add to the body of knowledge of American representational art. Biographies of artists and scholarship on related topics are both of interest. Funds may be provided for:

1. staff text conversion, proofreading, formatting and online publishing on a permanent basis.

2. contracting with interns or outside services for text conversion, proofreading and formatting. TFAO's Institutional Sources Study Project provides a way for contractors to provide text conversion for Web publishing. For more information about this project please click here. For proofreading there are a number of specialty specialty service bureaus. Canyouproofthis.com charges a minimum of $50 as of November, 2006. They provide an online rate calculator. Wordsru.com provided an "instant estimate" of $78 for a 5,000 word document.

3. creation of a durable page in the museum's web site, if needed, to contain hyperlinks to converted texts.

Conditions

Grants will be provided upon these conditions:

converted text relates to American representational art;

text is permanently available online, free to the public, within the museum's web site in HTML format and accessible through public search engines;.

museum provides a copy of the converted text to TFAO in .doc format so that TFAO may convert it to HTML and co-publish the text in order to provide a backup resource for free and permanent access;

a commitment is made for routing of hyperlinks to relocated pages or new pages containing the texts so that future searches will always result in live hyperlinks and correct routing;

the converted text is forwarded to TFAO using the text presentation conventions in Resource Library's content presentation guidelines

the museum conducts a self-assessment prior to application and sends a letter of inquiry by email to TFAO;

upon TFAO's acceptance of the letter of inquiry, the museum and TFAO work together on further steps leading to project funding.

Additional funding

TFAO will partner with other in-kind or financial sources. TFAO has existing co-funding relationships with other sources of funds. There are further sources of funds with similar interests with which TFAO has no direct ties. These sources include:

Getty Foundation which provides Museum Interpretation Grants;

Henry Luce Foundation;

National Endowment for the Arts and its 56 state affiliates;

Other information

Please see TFAO's pages on acquisition and deselection of content for its digital library, non-profit and commercial digitizing initiatives, and benefits to museums and the public flowing from its online publication service.

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rev. 4/23/08

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