I’m very pleased to announce that World History Matters has won the American Historical Association’s James Harvey Robinson Prize, a biennial award for “the teaching aid that has made the most outstanding contribution to the teaching of history in any field.” Like all good digital history projects, World History Matters is a collaboration of many people. It started in 2002 as a three-way effort between me and my colleagues Kelly Schrum and Roy Rosenzweig and was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Gladys Krieble Delmas foundation. Once funded, the project grew to include contributions by dozens of scholars and CHNM staff (especially an undergraduate student intern named Kristin Lehner, now a key staffer at CHNM). We received a second raft of NEH funding in 2004 for the part of the project called Women in World History, added another crucial staff person, Sharon Leon, and recruited another large group of contributors. All told, more than 60 people wrote something for the two main parts of the project.
By the time the calendar year ends, somewhere in the vicinity of 275,000 unique visitors will have generated around 800,000 page views on the various pages of the project, with the traffic roughly evenly distributed between World History Sources and Women in World History.
Particular thanks for this award goes to the untiring efforts of Kristin and Sharon to make this project what it is. Without them, there would be no award.