In the humanities as in the sciences, digital technology has changed the way in which scholars perform their work. Technology allows humanists to raise new questions and radically changes the ways in which archival materials can be searched, mined, displayed, taught, and analyzed. Digital technology has also had an enormous impact on how scholarly materials are preserved and accessed, generating challenging issues related to sustainability, copyright, and authenticity. ODH therefore supports projects that employ digital technology to improve humanities research, education, preservation, access, and public programming. To that end, ODH works with the scholarly community, and with other funding agencies in the United States and abroad, to encourage collaboration across national and disciplinary boundaries. In addition to sponsoring grant programs, ODH also works collaboratively with the field, participating in conferences and workshops with scholars, librarians, scientists, and other funders to learn more about how to best serve digital scholarship. To read the reports from these conferences and workshops as well as detailed white papers on many of the grants funded by the office, please visit the ODH Web site.

Brett Bobley is the Chief Information Officer for the National Endowment for the Humanities. He also serves as the Director of the Office of Digital Humanities. Brett has a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and an M.S. in computer science from the Johns Hopkins University. In 2006 Brett received a Chief Information Officers (CIO) Council Leadership Award from the Office of Management and Budget.  In 2007 he received a Presidential Rank Award from the President of the United States in recognition of his exceptional long-term accomplishments, such as cofounding the federal government’s Small Agency CIO Council and establishing the NEH Office of Digital Humanities.

  78       Digital Humanities Start-up Grants, 2007-2009 (small
              grants encouraging the development of innovative
              projects that promise to benefit the humanities)

  12       Digital Humanities grants made together with
              international partners (the Deutsche
              Forschungsgemeinschaft [German Research
              Foundation] of Germany, and the Joint Information
              Systems Committee of the United Kingdom), 2008-2009

  81       Digital Humanities grants made together with domestic
              partners (the Institute of Museum and Library Services
              and the Department of Energy), 2007-2009

    8       Awards for Digital Humanities institutes supported
              (2008- 2009), offering advanced training for scholars
              wishing to advance their knowledge of digital
              humanities