The Centre for Medieval Studies is thrilled to announce that the Dictionary of Old English (DOE) has been awarded a prestigious grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The grant (US $160,000/CAN $210,000) will be administered through the NEH’s Division of Preservation and Access and will allow the DOE to continue to make progress over the next two years, particularly in the areas of technological innovation and sustainability.
The DOE is one of a very few projects outside the United States to enjoy the support of the NEH, which has been one of the DOE’s most important backers for many years. The support of agencies outside Canada is a clear indicator of the international importance of the DOE’s work.
The NEH’s evaluators for this grant hail the DOE as “one of the most significant scholarly lexical projects” of the last 50 years and “a model project in every way.” Singled out for particular praise are the project’s efforts to link to related entries in the Middle English Dictionary and Oxford English Dictionary, as well as the recent incorporation of links to manuscript images, which is commended as “an innovative approach to ‘problematic citations,’ changing the nature of evidence for historical dictionaries.”
Half of the new NEH grant will be awarded outright, while the other half must be matched by other third-party contributions in order to be released. If you would like to contribute to the DOE to help raise the matching funds, you may make donations online through credit card or by mail.
ABOUT THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES
Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at: www.neh.gov.