The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) invite applications from U.S. nonprofit organizations to a digital humanities grant competition sponsored by the two federal agencies. The grant program, "Advancing Knowledge: The IMLS/NEH Digital Partnership," seeks applications for projects that would explore new ways to share, examine, and interpret humanities collections in a digital environment and develop new uses and audiences for existing digital resources.   Grants are intended to spur innovation and new collaborations; advance the role of cultural repositories in online teaching, learning, and research; and develop collaborative approaches involving the scholarly community and cultural repositories for the creation, management, preservation, and presentation of reusable digital collections and products.  

Projects must be collaborative with at least one museum, library, or archive as an integral member of the project team. Awards normally are for two years and typically range from $50,000 to a maximum of $350,000. Nonprofit institutions interested in applying can find guidelines online at http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/Digital_Partnership.html.  The deadline for applications is March 18, 2008, and applications must be submitted through http://www.grants.gov  Applicants are encouraged to contact program officers who can offer advice about preparing the proposal and review draft proposals. Draft proposals should be submitted six weeks before the deadline. Questions and drafts may be submitted by e-mail to preservation@neh.gov

From the guidelines, "eligible projects might:

• advance the role of cultural repositories in online teaching, learning, and research for public audiences, teachers, students, and scholars;
• develop collaborative approaches involving the scholarly community and cultural repositories for the creation, preservation, use, and presentation of reusable digital collections and products;
• use innovative approaches in digital technology to provide new perspectives on humanities resources or offer new interpretive contexts for scholars, students, and public audiences; or
•  examine and coordinate community-based approaches and standards for making resources available online and allowing them to be widely shared."