A Foundation grant in 2000 provided funds to George Mason University (GMU) to foster the recent history of science and technology in new media. GMU has become a center for interactive history web sites, emphasizing opportunities for “those who were there” to contribute to an enduring, accessible archive. A “Memory Bank” that encourages visitors to the GMU site to submit recollections has recorded about 1,000 notable contributions. Visitors who explored the site in some detail numbered about 100,000 in 2003. The GMU Center for History and New Media has also trained about 50 people to construct web-based historical archives. With this new grant, the Center will publish a practical guide to doing digital history, train practitioners in depth, expand the role of its site as a portal to valuable online sources in history of science and technology, and create new interactive sites on important topics, including the open source/free software movement. The Center aims to increase contributions that recount the history of science and technology within business and industry. The leadership of GMU has committed to raising the endowment of the Center, now at $2 million, to $5 million over the next three years. Project Director: Roy Rosenzweig, Director, Center for History and New Media, Department of History.

To develop a strategy involving eleven institutions for a Philadelphia center for the history of science and technology. Project Director: Mary Maples Dunn, Executive Director.

To develop a “Memory Board” to capture the recent history of science and technology online. Project Director: Ludmilla Pollock, Director of Library & Archives.