Monthly Archives: November 2013

Doing the Grant: High Points

Posted on by
Reply

Part Two: Flap Book Hunting with a Partner

As I mentioned earlier, other trips I have taken have been with colleagues from the library. One such trip was to Philadelphia in September 2011 to participate in a THAT Humanities and Technology Camp with Linda Friend. As an adjunct to our presentation about our emerging prototype of the turn-up book we went Metamorphosis hunting. Since I had been focusing on the early British texts, at this time I had only a vague idea about how many American editions and copies of the text there were in English and in German from the late 18th to mid 19th century. I was not prepared to ask specific questions, nor was I able to do so.

We visited two research libraries in Philadelphia that we knew had copies of the text: The Library Company and the Free Library-with mixed results.  The Library Company is an elegant building located in the beautiful cobbled streets of the old city and the more utilitarian Philadelphia Free Library is in the newer portion downtown. The trip to the former library was not overly successful since I turned up without an appointment as if I were an academic tourist (which I was)—a protocol error at a major repository! They gave me facsimiles to look at—always a bad sign—and hastened us away after showing only a few examples. I was better organized in my visit to the Free Library since I had established the extent of their holdings better before I arrived. We took our viewing grid that I had developed, sharpened our pencils, Linda took her camera and we went to work with one eye on the watch, and the other on trying to capture the objects in relation to the questions on our papers. Thankfully the curator was Canadian and he took pity on my ignorance of American texts.

Between the two repositories they have a nice representative collection of published texts and manuscripts, some that are black and white and some that are coloured; some of the coloured versions appear to be hand coloured by readers, and one at least appears home made.

A Flickr post by the Library Company shows a comparison between two beautifully coloured texts, a published Metamorphosis and a manuscript.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library-company-of-philadelphia/2919840061/lightbox/

 

 

Doing the Grant: High Points

Image

1

Part One: Traveling to Rare Books Rooms

I received the grant several years ago with an official end date of December 31, 2013. Since the deadline is looming closer every day, I hope to complete enough of my project on time in order to launch the site early in 2014. It will be a work in progress, but I need enough completed to spark further thinking and doing.

Doing and trying to do the project has resulted in high points and low points. Taking field trips to rare books has been one of my greatest pleasures and some of the funds from the grant have allowed me to visit or revisit spectacular libraries in England and North America, such as the Bodleian, the British Library, the Haughton library at Harvard University; and libraries closer to Penn State, such as the Library Company and the Free Library in Philadelphia. Sometimes I take these trips alone, sometimes with colleagues.

A. Flap book hunting alone

One memorable trip I made as part of the grant was in May 2010 to the Haughton Library at Harvard University. I stayed nearby in a small hotel in Harvard Square. Walking the cobbled streets around the university was a joy and a time-travel adventure in itself. A number of the streets had perfect 17th century people’s names. As I wandered around I looked at the street signs and the architecture, especially the churches. My favourite walk was down Dunster Street, the family name of the British publisher for the 17th century religious flap book I was making a pilgrimage to see. I almost expected to see some learned 17th cleric or a harried printer emerging onto the street as I sauntered by.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Harvard owns the second earliest known religious flap book, the 1654 Beginning, Progress and End of Man. While the first version was printed by B. Alsop, when he died, his widow E. Alsop inherited his business, as was usual in that period, and she printed the second version. Significantly, it has five parts showing a Cain and Abel episode, and the image of the Lion is enhanced in my eyes to look even more like Charles 1 (who had been beheaded in 1649). The curator of Printing and Graphic Arts, Hope Mayo, took me to a workspace and showed me the exquisite text. I had not seen one that was presented as a strip, not folded into a little book, nor had I seen a religious one with the flaps cut since the other early ones I had seen were pasted into large folios.

Receiving the Grant: Thrill and Horror; or: Jacqui Goes to Washington

Posted on by
Reply

Over the fall and winter, I tried not to worry about the success of the proposal. In fact, I only succeeded in almost forgetting what it was about—an opposite process to gestation—while still having periods of intermittent fretting.  I was back at home with my family in Montreal over March break in 2010 when I received news that I had received the grant. It was one of 18 Digital Start up grants given out that spring. http://www.neh.gov/divisions/odh/grant-news/awards-digital-humanities-start-grants-march-2010

I felt thrill and horror in quick succession.

The first time I had to talk about the grant in public was early in the fall of 2010. I had to go to Washington to give what they called an elevator talk. Since I have lived on the first level of an old stone triplex in Montreal for many years, I was not familiar with the term. It was to consist of a cover slide, three explanatory slides and take two minutes! Talk about compression! And I thought the proposal was hard!

Since it was a quick trip for one night, I drove down to Washington with my then graduate research assistant Julianne Guillard. She stayed with friends and I stayed in a quaint hotel near a downtown university, Georgetown I think.

In the morning we went to the lovely old building the NEH is housed in – a renovated post office I think. I was a bit startled when we had to go through security as if we were in an airport! All the grantees for the year presented to one another and to the NEH officials and a selected group of assessors and referees.  Surprisingly, the speed of the presentations inspired a sense of communal energy in the collected group.

Looking over that powerpoint now I am intrigued by my energy and passion, and still inspired despite not quite meeting my sometimes blithely stated aims! It is a blueprint of what I would still like to accomplish.

Learning as Playingrev2

Drafting the Grant: Excitement and Trepidation

Posted on by
1

With excitement and trepidation I began working on a Digital Startup Grant to submit to the NEH, The National Endowment for the Humanities in the US. Like all grant proposals the process was exacting. In essentially five pages of single spaced print I had to produce a narrative that covered all the aspects of the project:  these included Aims and Scope and innovative approach; Value to scholars, students, general audiences; Environmental Scan; History and Duration of Project; Work Plan; Staff;          Final Product and Dissemination. This exercise in compressed and controlled imagination was supplemented with a budget, supporting letters from known scholars and curators, and attachments including images and a link to Dave’s virtual book experiment using Flash. The brief document swelled to a package of almost forty pages!

On the final versions of the proposal I worked with Linda Friend who served as an editor. Also, since she is experienced with writing grants for American funding, she knew the language and logic to employ more than I did with my experience in crafting grants for Canadian funding.  Significantly, she also knew when to encourage me, and when to check me. Since I tend to become thrilled about the topic, at times she had to pull me back to earth as I floated off on a balloon of ideas. Other times, when I became too grandiose in my thinking and dreaming she had contain me. Sometimes, the mode of these interactions made me think back to the end of Alice in Wonderland, during the court scene, when the guinea pigs cheer and the officer puts a bag over their head to “suppress” them. Like Alice I came to understand the meaning of the term in a different context, but now I was not an observer but the (metaphorical) guinea pig!

At last we succeeded in putting our assemblage together and submitted it for the October deadline.

Then a long period of waiting began …