Since 2014, Coptic Scriptorium has benefitted from funding from the United States government through the National Endowment for the Humanities. Our natural language processing tools, digitized and annotated corpora, and other resources were only possible with this funding. A joint grant from the NEH and the German DFG supported the collaborations that produced the Coptic Dictionary Online. Our work is used by academic researchers at all levels, by industry researchers, and by the general public, including many members of the Coptic community.
On April 2, our contract with the U.S. government for our latest NEH grant was abruptly cancelled. The University of Oklahoma received the letter on NEH letterhead, albeit through irregular channels, with a contact email address that is not an official governmental email. Cutting off the approximately $100,000 remaining was deemed an “urgent priority for the administration.” (The entire budget of the NEH is .01% of the federal budget.) Many other research projects have also been canceled. This article in Pasts Imperfect celebrates the NEH and describes projects on antiquity that have been canceled. The Association for Computers and the Humanities created a database documenting all canceled NEH grants. In addition, soon after the cancellations most of the employees at the NEH were put on administrative leave leading to permanent dismissal.
Since this announcement, we have received an outpouring of support. Everyone on the project deeply appreciates all of this good will. We also express our solidarity with the NEH employees. They are the kindest and most professional people with whom one could ever hope to work. We also call attention to the great work of the Institute for Museum and Library Services, which has been gutted, as well.
We are committed to keeping Coptic Scriptorium resources available to everyone, open-source and open access as always.
Nonetheless, our ability to to do so, and to improve and expand these resources, is now severely curtailed.
We are asking for your help to keep the project growing and to ensure its long-term availability. We recognize that the crises on our planet are numerous, with many much more severe than this one. If you have the capacity for a donation, we welcome your support. (Several people have asked about volunteering, and we may follow-up on this when the academic semester winds down–thank you!)
There are two ways you can donate:
- A charitable contribution to Coptic Scriptorium via the University of Oklahoma.
- The link will provide instructions to ensure your donation goes directly to Coptic Scriptorium.
- You may also send a paper check to the Women’s and Gender Studies Department, The University of Oklahoma, 731 Elm Avenue, 101 Robertson Hall, Norman OK 73019. (Caroline Schroeder, one of the project’s founders, is a Professor in that department.)
- A charitable contribution to the St. Shenouda Society, one of our research partners. Mention Coptic Scriptorium, and President of the Society Hany Takla will ensure your donation goes toward our work.
Our immediate financial priorities are: paying for our servers, with enough capacity to maintain a good user experience; continuing to employ our part-time post-doctoral researcher, who works on digitizing and annotating Coptic texts and building Bohairic Coptic natural language processing tools.
- Donations of any amount are most welcome.
- We will recognize all our donors on our website.
- Supporters can adopt a server for a week at $30, and for a month at $120.
- You can underwrite our researcher for a week at $600 and for a month at $2500
Thank you for your empathy and solidarity.
