Wiktenauer:Fundraiser/2014

As you may have suspected, running Wiktenauer isn't free. While neither I nor sysadmin Christian receive any compensation for our efforts, the costs associated with hosting Wiktenauer come to about $500 a year. For the past year and a half, the HEMA Alliance has kindly absorbed that cost (before that it was out of pocket), but this year the Alliance general council has asked us to run a quick fundraiser to see if our community of users would be willing to cover some of it.

So from now until the end of January, you can click the link below to contribute via paypal (or click the paypal button that resides at the bottom of the sidebar, as usual).

Our initial goal is $500 to cover hosting costs for the next twelve months. If we exceed that sum, we'll set aside the additional funds for future manual acquisitions. Our current push to pair transcriptions with manuscript scans has brought us in contact with various libraries and institutions who only ask for a small consideration of €50-100 in exchange for permanent hosting rights for a full manuscript, which we're more than happy to pay when funds are available. In other cases, scans don't yet exist but the cost of commissioning those scans is low enough that it might also become feasible for us to bankroll. Funds beyond $500 will be earmarked for these projects, and we'll make announcements as they proceed. (If we vastly exceed that sum--triple or quadruple it--we'll also look into investing in additional server resources to improve the speed and responsiveness of the site.)

So if Wiktenauer is useful to you, please consider sending a couple bucks our way. If you can't afford a direct donation at this time, you can also help by passing word to other members of your schools and clubs.

Cheers, and here's to another year of manual research!

Michael Chidester Wiktenauer Director HEMA Alliance, WMAC