SCWAReD Advanced Collaborative Support Application FAQs
Can I apply as an individual, or do I need to apply with a team?
Individuals are welcome to apply, though our experience with previous ACS projects has shown that working in a team of 2 or more (in addition to HTRC support) often makes projects more successful.
Can my project team be made up of individuals affiliated with institutions or organizations other than my own?
A project team can be inter-institutional, but keep in mind that splitting the funding across institutions may be tricky depending on how your budget is devised.
Do I have to be at a college or university to apply?
No, scholars at non-profits or other organizations are welcome to apply, though the ACS program is offered with a research focus that anticipates awardees will utilize the kinds of text and data mining methods in which HTRC specializes.
Are graduate students eligible to apply?
Yes, graduate students are eligible to apply. Depending on your institution you may need a faculty member to serve as a PI in order to receive funding, though.
Must I be in the US to apply?
The call is open to scholars anywhere.
Should I apply through my university’s Office of Research?
It will depend on your campus, though given that the program involves the remittance of funds, the answer is likely yes.
Will you read a draft of my proposal?
We are able to read a draft of your proposal as well as provide input about your project ideas via email or phone consultation.
SCWAReD Projects
What do you mean by collaborative scholarship?
HTRC’s Advanced Collaborative Support program offers support to scholars who need extra assistance to use HTRC tools or data, often because they are doing advanced work that stretches the bound of existing systems or functionality. The nature of the collaborations can vary based on the needs and expertise of the project team, but the program intends for both the awardees and HTRC to contribute as equal partners toward the research goal described in the project’s proposal.
What do you mean by “textual communities that have been historically under-resourced or marginalized”?
We don't have our own specific definition—we hope our selected scholar-curators for this project will help us define these textual communities through their research—but examples include texts from indigenous, minority-language, or dissident communities, or texts that are missing, neglected, hidden, or silenced in the digital record.
What do you mean by scholarly curation of a workset?
Worksets are user-created collections of HathiTrust volumes that are intended to be analyzed using computational methods, such as machine learning or text mining. We believe that the selection decisions involved in curation are a scholarly activity. By partnering with scholars via this round of ACS to curate these collections, we hope to learn from awardees’ expertise to find coherent collections of content within the very large HathiTrust Digital Library.
What can go in my workset?
The HathiTrust Digital Library contains only print materials, and the SCWAReD projects should be focused on curating and analyzing primarily text-based materials.
Will this program fund digitization of ________?
The main goal for the SCWAReD project is to generate subsets of HathiTrust collections that can be used within the HathiTrust and HathiTrust Research Center services and tools for further research. If the bulk of the materials to answer your research question are likely already present in HathiTrust, and there are small gaps that could be filled through targeted digitization in aid of investigating a specific research question, then it’s likely to be a fit for the program, especially if the materials are under-utilized, or if the area of scholarship is traditionally under-resourced. If the main intent of the project is to digitize materials, then it’s not a great fit for this program, which is not focused on digitization.
Should the materials I want to work with be previously and/or partially digitized?
Please see above.
Can I work with materials from across collections?
The bulk of the content in your workset, which will be analyzed in the project, should come from HathiTrust. The HathiTrust collection contains materials which come from partner libraries, primarily in the United States. There may be opportunities to fill gaps in your collection through targeted digitization of materials, or you may be able to analyze the HathiTrust data along with data from another source.