Beach Birds (1991), Merce Cunningham Dance Company
Copyright: Michael O'Neill Videos

Allen Innovation Awards Granted

The University of Washington Libraries has awarded the first Kenneth S. Allen Endowment Innovation Awards to four creative projects. Designed to support exceptional ideas and concepts that move the UW Libraries beyond the routine, these awards feature collaboration between a Libraries staff member and a faculty member, student, or non-Libraries staff member.

• Paul Tobin, Meany Hall, and Elizabeth Fugate, Drama Library, received funding to purchase Merce Cunningham dance videos; to acquire and demonstrate LifeForms software which will support choreography design during a UW residency by Cunningham in April and May 1996; and to help sponsor an event by the visiting Cunningham company.

• Gunter Krumme and Timothy Nyerges, Geography, and Anne Zald, Reference and Research Services, will use their award to develop electronic library resources for upper-division geography courses. The collaboration will support geography students working in groups to develop World Wide Web resources describing social and economic conditions of Washington state counties.

• Blake Hannaford, Electrical Engineering, and Dorothy Smith, Research Express, will extend haptic exploration (human sensory-motor activity associated with recognizing and classifying objects by feeling and manipulating them with the fingers) to interaction with bibliographic databases. They will develop a prototype electronic haptic interface for searching.

• Paul Remley, English, and Helene Williams, Reference and Research Services, will complete and implement an online, comprehensive guide to post-classical and medieval literary works, including texts, manuscripts, and secondary scholarship on these works. They will employ hypertextual links to aid ad-hoc searching by both novice and advanced users.