I went to a meeting yesterday where we talked to an independent researcher about his project. This guy has over 60 hours of good quality interviews that he’s like to create a documentary and web site with. He’s been funding the project for years himself and has releases for these videos- the problem is that he doesn’t have the institutional support to digitize and showcase the video. He’s applied for several grants, with no luck. He’s looking to us (and, I’m sure, others) to try and get some institutional support so he can get funding.So here’s the question – would this guy’s chances at getting funding be diminished if he created a free or very cheap website to start with and utilized a free streaming video service (I’m thinking Vimeo) to stream the content? What if he started small – released a few videos a month or week with some text – and utilized other social networking media to try and draw attention to the project? Would the NEH, NEA or other big funding agencies fund a project that started this way? Then there are the obvious questions about who really owns the content when you upload it. All these services are commercial, that may create problems, too. Is there a non-commercial alternative for educational content? Should there be?
I hate the idea of really great video staying locked away from the public because of a lack of funding. It seems to happen again and again. Educational institutions are afraid to just use the free services, and I believe they have good reason to do so. But not many places can afford their own dedicated media server. Funding agencies want materials from a project to be freely available to the public, but that often costs much more than the grant amount. What to do?
My advice, both from my previous life as a researcher at GMU’s Center for History and New Media and the new hat I’m wearing at the New York Public Library, is that a prototype *never* hurts a grant application. Having recently served on one of the NEH’s Digital Humanities Start-up Grant panels, I can tell you that something tangible often anchors the project, and frames the question of what’s possible now (sans money) vs. what the grant funding will enable in more concrete terms. In short, build away!
As for the non-commercial possibilities, check out both the Internet Archive and Ourmedia for potential places to stash video that’re less commercial (though read the terms closely nonetheless)…