Dear Colleagues;
I would like to call your attention to a grant opportunity designed
to encourage and support new developments in the broad field of web
archiving. This program, made possible by a grant from the Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation and administered by Columbia University
Libraries/Information Services, will provide financial support for
projects to develop tools and applications to improve the process of
web archiving or the use of archived web content. A fuller
description is provided in the Call for Proposals (below and
attached.)
If this grant is of interest, I would encourage you to submit a
preliminary proposal prospectus according to the procedures described
in the Call. Please also assist us in getting the word out by
redistributing this Call for Proposals to other potential applicants.
Information about this program is also available on this web page:
https://library.columbia.edu/bts/web_resources_collection/call_for_proposals.html[1].
Regards,
Bob
Web Archiving Incentive Program
Call for Proposals
1. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
Thanks to a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation,
Columbia University Libraries / Information Services (CUL/IS) will
administer a Web Archiving Incentive Program intended to support new
developments in the broad domain of web archiving. We now invite
proposals from qualifying institutions for projects that improve,
enhance or innovate in the areas of web harvesting and use.
a. TYPES OF PROJECTS IN SCOPE
The Program welcomes projects that involve analyses, improvements and
innovations in areas that include (but are not limited to):
1. Development of new tools for web harvesting, web archive
curation and use
2. Improvement/extension of existing web platforms in
collaboration with publishers/developers to support archiving
3. Improvement/extension or innovative implementation of
existing web archiving tools/services
4. Packaging/bundling of existing tools to assist creation, or
use of web archives
Please see the appendix at the end of this call for proposals for
examples of projects in scope.
A wide diversity of proposals within the projects in scope is being
sought. Projects must focus on automated tools and provide thorough
documentation of expected behavior of the tools. Preference will be
given to projects that will modularly extend an existing tool, produce
a fully functional tool, demo site or working prototype. When
appropriate the creation of a full technical specification will be
considered a final deliverable (an accompanying product specification
is desired but secondary).
A set of sample data from Columbia University’s web archives will
be made available for funded projects, but it is not required that the
sample data set be used to complete the work funded.
b. TYPES OF PROJECTS NOT IN SCOPE
The current grant will not support proposals for educational or
training programs, internships or residencies.
c. PROVIDING ACCESS TO GRANT PRODUCTS
All software developed must be fully documented and made available
under one of the open-source software licenses approved by the Open
Source Initiative (preferably a GNU General Public License) with code
deposited in an open-source repository such as GitHub or SourceForge,
or licensed Creative Commons (Attribution-NonCommercial), as
applicable. If building on existing open source code, the license
already assigned to the code will be applied to additions.
2. AWARD INFORMATION
Awards amounts are expected to range from $20,000 to $25,000, but
proposals requesting smaller or larger amounts will be considered.
Allowable expenses under these awards include salary and fringe for
project staff as well as travel. Indirect costs will not be assessed
or covered.
All work must be completed and final reports submitted by October
30, 2014. Earlier completion dates are encouraged.
3. ELIGIBILITY
Grants must be institutionally sponsored by a college, university or
non-profit organization (501(c)3 or 501(c)4) in the United States of
America, with final proposals submitted through the institution’s
sponsored research process. International applicants are eligible to
apply only in conjunction with a qualified institution in the United
States. Some work under the award may be subcontracted to third
parties.
4. APPLICATION AND SUBMISSION INFORMATION
An initial one page prospectus is requested. In this prospectus,
please include: a brief description of the project and its intended
outcomes and benefits, an overview of methodology and standards that
will be employed, and a brief summary of the qualifications of the
project staff. This prospectus is due September 30, 2013. At this
stage, evidence of approval by the institution’s sponsored research
(grants) office is not required; however, applicants should be
prepared to obtain all necessary approvals should a full proposal be
requested.
If the project is approved for further consideration, a full
application will be requested by October 30, 2013. The full proposal
will be due December 30, 2013 and should include the following:
a. Project description -- Abstract
b. Project description -- Full
i. Overview and significance of work proposed
ii. Background of applicant(s)
iii. Scope and duration for project
iv. Examples of related past work (if applicable)
v. Methodology and standards
vi. Work plan
vii. Staff
viii. Budget
ix. Institutional letter of endorsement
x. Appendices (bibliography, resumes, intellectual property
agreement, complete list of participants, consultants & advisers)
Application materials in each round must be submitted in a single
.pdf file (please do not send multiple attachments or submit materials
in other file formats).
Awards will be announced by February, 2014. A mid-project progress
report will be required and the deadline for completion of projects is
October 30, 2014.
5. APPLICATION REVIEW CRITERIA
Proposals will be evaluated by an Oversight Panel of individuals
with expertise in web archiving. Successful proposals will
demonstrate the how the project is innovative, feasible and has the
potential for wide benefit. Preference will be given to tools that
are generalizable such that they will useful to web archiving programs
at multiple institutions.
6. HOW TO SUBMIT
Applicants should submit the initial one-page prospectus as a pdf
email attachment to [log in to unmask][2] no later
than September 30, 2013. Detailed instructions for submitting full
proposals will be sent to selected applicants no later than October
30, 2013.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding this call for
proposals, please contact the Web Archiving Project Librarian for this
grant, Anna Perricci, at [log in to unmask][3].
_APPENDIX _
EXAMPLES OF TYPES OF PROJECTS IN SCOPE
The Program welcomes projects that involve analyses, improvements
and innovations in areas that include (but are not limited to):
Development of new tools for web harvesting, web archive curation and use
Examples:
? Scoping crawls, analysis of website archivability
? Capturing web content difficult to harvest via traditional
crawling (rich media, database-driven features, dynamically generated
content, changing URIs)
? Automated QA analysis of harvests
? Automated metadata extraction/generation
? Data mining of web archives
? Data visualization in web archives
? New APIs for analysis or discovery of web archives
? Browser extensions for harvesting websites on demand
Improvement/extension of existing web platforms in collaboration
with publishers/developers to support archiving
Examples:
? WordPress plugin for archiving
? Drupal optimization for archiving
? Solr 4 optimization for indexing contents of .warc files,
improving full-text search relevance, result clustering,
multi-language support
? APIs (i.e. Twitter)
? Browser configuration to improve navigation of archived
websites (i.e. Chrome)
? Promoting native compliance with Memento
? Integration of discovery services (such as widely adopted
metasearch products)
Improvement/extension or innovative implementation of existing web
archiving tools/services
Examples:
? Memento
? SiteStory
? WAIL
? WebCite
? ArchiveReady
Packaging/bundling of existing tools to assist creation, or use of
web archives
Examples:
? Supplementing crawlers with headless browsers or modules for
capturing special content, e.g. streaming media
? Providing a suite of data mining and/or data visualization options
A wide diversity of proposals within the projects in scope is being
sought. Projects must focus on automated tools and provide thorough
documentation of expected behavior of the tools. Preference will be
given to projects that will modularly extend an existing tool, produce
a fully functional tool, demo site or working prototype. When
appropriate the creation of a full technical specification will be
considered a final deliverable (an accompanying product specification
is desired but secondary).
--
Robert Wolven
AUL for Bibliographic Services and Collection Development
Columbia University Libraries/Information Services
513 Butler Library
535 W. 114th St.
New York, NY 10027
Links:
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[1]
https://library.columbia.edu/bts/web_resources_collection/call_for_proposals.html
[2] mailto:[log in to unmask]
[3] mailto:[log in to unmask]
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