How to Apply for this Grant
- Read this Announcement
- Read the Application Instructions
- Download the Application from Grants.gov
Questions?
- Contact the NHPRC
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Fax: 202-357-5914
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Grant Announcement:
Transcribing the Founders Papers for Online Access: Pilot Project
The National Historical Publications and Records Commission supports projects that promote the preservation and use of America's documentary heritage essential to understanding our democracy, history, and culture.
The following grant application information is for Transcribing the Founders Papers for Online Access: Pilot Project
NHPRC support begins no earlier than December 15, 2008.
See the Application Cycle for additional information.
Grant Program Description
These documents will come from the papers of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington (contact information for these documentary editions is provided below).
This pilot project supports the goals in the Commission's Strategic Plan and the National Archives 2008 report to Congress, The Founders Online.
Requirements and Criteria for the Pilot Project:
Management:
The successful grantee must be able to complete this project in the shortest amount of time possible. The staff must be capable of doing this work reliably and accurately. The grantee must track costs of each stage and create benchmarks for similar tasks in a larger-scale project. Regular reports must be filed on the project.
Document Selection:
The grantee must convert at least 20,000 pages of unpublished documents from the Founders papers into English-language transcriptions encoded for publication online. The originals of these documents were hand-written in the late 18th or early 19th century; expertise in the reading and interpretation of such documents is necessary to complete this project. Included in the selected documents for the pilot project must be a representative sample of documents in foreign languages that must be translated into English.
Relationship with the Founders editions:
The grantee must involve the participation of two or more of the five Founders documentary editions. The grantee must work with them to select the documents to be transcribed and encoded during the pilot. In addition, the grantee must help the editors enhance their productivity by providing preliminary transcriptions in a digital form.
- John Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, www.masshist.org/adams_editorial/
- Benjamin Franklin Papers, Yale University, www.yale.edu/franklinpapers/
- Thomas Jefferson Papers, Princeton University, www.princeton.edu/~tjpapers/
- James Madison Papers, University of Virginia, www.virginia.edu/pjm/
- George Washington Papers, University of Virginia, gwpapers.virginia.edu/
Transcription:
The grantee must develop a standard approach for preliminary transcription and basic review. All the sample documents must be transcribed and proofread. Applicants must be explicit about the qualifications of the people who will do the transcriptions and proofreading.
Encoding:
The project must have a standard for the encoding the transcriptions that is compatible with the current guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative (http://www.tei-c.org/Guidelines/index.xml). The amount of encoding must reflect the Commission's dual goals of making these documents accessible to the public in a searchable format and of providing the editions with encoded transcriptions that they can annotate as they move forward with their editorial work. The document header must be complete enough to allow searches by authors, recipients, dates, and locations. Users should be able to see the source of the document. The transcription must have sufficient encoding tags to allow users to understand the format of the original document. Applicants may find useful the guidelines from the Model Editions Partnership (http://adh.sc.edu/MepGuide.html).
Interoperability:
The grantee must demonstrate that its approach is compatible with the requirements of the Founders editions' online and print publishers.
Online Access:
The grantee must indicate how the transcriptions can be made available to the public online.
Award Information
Applicants may apply for funding for a project that takes up to one year. A single award of up to $250,000 will be made. Proposals that include cost sharing from applicants may be considered more competitive.
Cost sharing is the financial contribution the applicant pledges to the cost of a project. Cost sharing can include both direct and indirect expenses, in-kind contributions, non-Federal third-party contributions, and any income earned directly by the project.
Eligibility
- Nonprofit organizations and institutions
- Colleges, universities, and other academic institutions
- State or local government agencies
- Federally-acknowledged or state-recognized Native American tribes or groups
How to Prepare an Application
Applicants must use the Grants.gov application process. See How to Apply.
Applicants are encouraged to contact the Director for Technology Initiatives at the NHPRC who may:
- advise the applicant about the review process;
- answer questions about what activities are eligible for support;
- read and comment on a preliminary draft. Applicants should submit a draft at least 2 months before the deadline.
Completing the Application
A complete application includes a Project Narrative, Summary, Supplementary Materials, and Budget.
Before beginning the process, applicants should review the rules and regulations governing NHPRC grants under the Administering an NHPRC Grant section.
Project Narrative
The Project Narrative is a description of the proposal. It should be no more than 20 double-spaced pages in 12-pt type with standard margins. Address the requirements listed above, as well as following questions in your narrative:
Question 1:
How does the applicant propose to transcribe and provide online access to the selected Founding Fathers papers?
Begin with a brief overview of the project and its goals. Describe your qualifications to accomplish the project, especially in terms of project management, knowledge of TEI guidelines, and experience with 18th- and 19th-century document transcription, including translations of such documents into English. Identify with as much detail as possible the documents (20,000 pages minimum) you will use for the pilot project.
Name the Founders editions with whom you will partner and explain how they will work with you on this project. Include in the supplementary materials letters of support from the editions' project directors.
Describe how you will build on the editions' existing work with these documents, such as their control files and related data. Indicate what type of content management system you will use to manage the documents and workflow of this project.
Identify the methods you will use to convert the documents to transcriptions, including an overview of your transcription guidelines. Specify the level and type of TEI encoding you will use and the proofreading methods you will employ. Describe the qualifications of those who will carry out various stages of the transcription and encoding work, and where transcription and encoding work will take place. In your supplementary materials, provide examples of at least five documents that you have transcribed and encoded. These documents should illustrate your ability to handle documents of varying degrees of complexity.
Describe how the project will assist the Founders documentary editions in preparing print and online editions. Explain how your content management system can be integrated into their work. Describe models that will allow the public to use these transcriptions online.
Question 2:
What is the plan of work for the grant period?
Provide evidence of your preliminary planning and demonstrate that you have a realistic grasp of the scope of the project. Describe in detail the types of activities and processes you intend to engage in and the relationships among them. Outline each stage of the planned work including who will carry it out and the costs. Types of activities expected include document acquisition from the documentary editions, scanning, transcription, proofreading, encoding, and review and testing of the results by the documentary editions and the public. Be specific about how you intend to track the costs associated with each of these activities so that it will be possible to estimate the costs of similar projects. Interim and final evaluations must include an assessment of how and why the grantee did or did not meet its goals and must recommend possible improvements when applicable. Include, in the supplementary materials, charts that identify the people, time, and resources needed for each stage.
Question 3:
What products will be produced during the grant period?
List the products you plan to produce. Products will include your transcriptions, web site(s), the transcription and encoding guidelines, and the analysis of costs and benchmarks. In addition, you may produce software and documentation; manuals; and articles. Explain how you will make these products available.
Question 4:
What are the qualifications of the personnel?
Provide a narrative explanation of the qualifications of the staff necessary to conduct the project. Explain the roles of all staff named in the project budget, both for those already on staff and for those to be hired. Identify outside project advisors, reviewers, and evaluators. In the supplementary materials, provide résumés of not more than two pages per person for all staff named in the project budget. For those staff or vendors to be hired for the project, provide position descriptions or requests for proposals.
Question 5:
What are your performance objectives?
List at least six quantifiable objectives that you plan to achieve and that the Commission will use in part to evaluate your application. Objectives must address:
- the number of documents and pages you will transcribe and encode;
- which Founders editions will participate in your project;
- the time and cost per page for transcription and encoding (excluding start up costs).
Project Summary
The Project Summary should be no more than 3 double-spaced pages in 12-pt type with standard margins and should include these sections:
- Purposes and Goals of the Project
- Plan of Work for the Grant Period
- Products and/or Publications to be completed during the Grant Period
- Names, Phone and Fax Numbers, and E-Mail Addresses of the Project Director and Key Personnel
- Performance Objectives
Supplementary Materials
You should attach Supplementary Materials to your Narrative, including:
- Résumés of named staff members (required)
- Position descriptions for staff to be hired with grant funds (required, if applicable)
- Request for proposals to vendors (required, if applicable)
- Detailed plan of work (required)
- Five encoded transcriptions, along with facsimiles of the original documents (required)
- Statements of commitment to the project by two or more documentary edition directors (required)
- Your institution's mission, goals, and objectives statement
If these materials are available on a web site, please provide a URL.
Applicants should compute the project costs to be charged to grant funds as well as those that will be provided by the applicant through cost sharing, which includes both direct and in-direct expenses, in-kind contributions, non-Federal third-party contributions, and any income earned directly by the project. All of the items listed, whether supported by grant funds or cost-sharing contributions, must be reasonable and necessary to accomplish project objectives, allowable in terms of the applicable federal cost principles, auditable, and incurred during the grant period. Applicants should review the appropriate Office of Management and Budget circulars on cost principles.
Charges to the project for items such as salaries, fringe benefits, travel, and contractual services must conform to the written policies and established practices of the applicant organization.
- You must submit a budget on the NARA/NEH Budget form found in the Grants.gov application package. Note that the form itself contains additional instructions. You may include with your application a narrative budget supplement for budget categories not otherwise explained in the project narrative.
- Provide specific budget figures, rounding to the nearest dollar.
Budget Categories
In preparing the budget, please follow the suggestions below in each of the categories:
Salaries: List each staff position and the full salary to be charged to the project and show the percentage of time each staff member will devote to the project.
- Indicate which positions are to be filled for the proposed project and which personnel are already on the staff of the applicant institution.
- Grant funds may be used only to pay the salaries of individuals actually working on the project.
- You may include the time provided to the project by advisory board members and volunteers.
Fringe Benefits: Include employee benefits using your organization's standard rates. No separate benefits should be included for positions that are computed at a daily rate or using honoraria.
Consultant Fees: Include payments for consultant services and honoraria.
- Provide justification for large or unusual consultant fees.
- Include consultant travel expenses in the "Travel" category.
Travel: Include transportation, lodging, and per diem expenses. The NHPRC does not fund staff travel to professional meetings unless the travel is essential to accomplish the goals of the project.
Supplies and Materials: Include routine office supplies and supplies ordinarily used in professional practices. Justify the cost of specialized materials and supplies in a supplemental budget narrative.
Services: Include the cost of duplication and printing, long-distance telephone, equipment leasing, postage, contracts with third parties, and other services that you are not including under other budget categories or as indirect-cost expenses. The costs of project activities to be undertaken by each third-party contractor should be included in this category as a single line item charge. Include a complete itemization of the costs in a supplemental budget narrative.
Other costs: Include costs for necessary equipment above $5,000, stipends for participants in projects, and other items not included in previous grant categories.
- The NHPRC does not provide grant funds for the acquisition of routine equipment such as office furnishings and file cabinets, but we may allow for the purchase of archival equipment, such as shelving units, and technical equipment, such as computers and peripherals, essential for a project.
- Include specifications for equipment over $5,000 in a supplemental budget narrative.
Indirect costs: Include reasonable or negotiated "overhead" costs. See the Budget Form instructions to determine how to calculate indirect costs.
- You should not include indirect costs that exceed your cost sharing obligation.
- You may waive indirect costs and instead include specific overhead costs in the appropriate budget categories.
Application Review
The NHPRC staff will acknowledge receipt of the application soon after we receive it. The following evaluation criteria and weights will be used by NHPRC staff and other reviewers to form recommendations:
- Ability to meet the designated objectives, as demonstrated through the project narrative and relevant previous experience with the processes of transcribing and encoding historical documents or similar processes that demonstrate an ability to meet the project's goals (20 percent).
- Ability, demonstrated through the project narrative and relevant previous experience, to develop and implement the most cost-efficient process that transcribes the largest number of documents, with the highest level of quality and verification (25 percent).
- The likelihood that the applicant, as described in the project narrative, will meet the goals that are listed in the proposal and be able to complete those goals with available funds within one year (30 percent).
- Ability, demonstrated through the project narrative, to create a process and end product that are interoperable with previous work from the Founding Fathers projects (25 percent).
NHPRC Staff makes overall recommendations based on the review criteria to the Commission. After reviewing proposals, Commission members deliberate and make funding recommendations to the Archivist of the United States who has final statutory authority. Throughout this process, all members of the Commission and its staff follow conflict-of-interest rules to assure fair and equal treatment of every application.
Application Cycle
- August 15, 2008 - Submit draft to the NHPRC.
- October 15, 2008 - Deadline - Final proposal due.
- November 2008 - Commission meets.
- December 15, 2008 - Earliest possible starting date for project.
Notification
Grants are contingent upon available appropriated funds. In some cases, the Commission will adjust grant amounts depending upon the number of recommended proposals and total budget. The Commission may recommend to the Archivist to approve the proposal and extend an offer of a grant with applicable terms and conditions, or it may recommend rejection of the proposal.
Grant applicants will be notified within 2 weeks after the Archivist's decision.
Grant Administration
For more information on how to comply with Federal regulations, see our Administering a Grant section.
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