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March 2009
Inside the Commission
New Commission Member
The Society of American Archivists has appointed Timothy Ericson as its new representative to the Commission. Ericson has served in a variety of leadership positions within SAA, including as President in 2003-2004. He formerly directed the graduate Archival Studies Program in the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and remains an adjunct faculty member in that program. Tim divides his time between Wisconsin and Arizona. He replaces Lee Stout, who had served on the Commission since 2002.
Honoring Alfred Goldberg
In February, the Commission Members met for a discussion on policies and procedures, and their session was followed by a salute to Alfred Goldberg, who retired in 2008 after 35 years serving as representative from the Department of Defense on the Commission. A special luncheon was held in his honor, and among the many people thanking Dr. Goldberg were former Commission Members Allen Weinstein, Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter, and outgoing Members Charles Cullen, Barbara Fields, and Margaret Grafeld.
(L to R) James W. Ceaser, Stuart Rochester, Julie Saville, and Ray Smock.
Joining the Commission for their first meeting were new Members James W. Ceaser, Presidential appointee; Stuart Rochester, representing the Department of Defense; Julie Saville, representing the Organization of American Historians, and Ray Smock, representing the Association for Documentary Editing.
New Director for Technology Initiatives
Mahnaz Ghaznavi, currently Records Manager at the J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles, has been appointed as the Director for Technology Initiatives at the NHPRC, beginning March 30, 2009. In addition to her duties at the Getty Trust, she also has served on the adjunct faculty at UCLA in the Information Studies Department, teaching graduate courses in archives and information management. Prior appointments include Archivist at the California State University system and Associate Director for Planning and Development with the Urban and Environmental Policy Institute, Occidental College, Los Angeles.
Ms. Ghaznavi holds a Masters in Library and Information Science from the University of California, Los Angeles and has advanced to candidacy for a doctoral degree in Literature, University of California, San Diego.
Upcoming Conferences and Meetings
Executive Director Kathleen Williams will be traveling to Chapel Hill, North Carolina to speak at the DigCCurr 2009: Digital Curation Practice, Promise and Prospects that takes place April 1-3. Ms. Williams also will be attending the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference Spring Meeting in Charleston, West Virginia, April 16-18 and the Midwest Archives Conference Spring Meeting in St. Louis on April 30-May 2.
Dr. Lucy Barber will be attending the National Council on Public History meeting in Providence, RI, held April 2-5.
Legislative Update
PRESIDENT APPROVES $11.25 MILLION FOR NHPRC
Under the omnibus appropriation bill passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama on March 11, 2009, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission received $11,250,000 for the current fiscal year, of which $2,000,000 will be transferred to the National Archives Operating Expenses appropriation for administrative costs. This new funding level will allow NHPRC to continue its work on the Founding Fathers projects, publish historical records, and support archives preservation, access and digitization grants. The NHPRC budget is part of the overall National Archives budget, which received a 12 percent increase to $459 million for FY 2009. Full details are available in this NARA press release.
Grant Deadlines and the Application Process
The following Grant opportunities are currently available and online:
Two annual competitions:
- Final Deadline: June 5, 2009
- Final Deadline: October 5, 2009
Two annual competitions:
- Colonial and Early National Period Final Deadline: June 5, 2009
- New Republic through the Modern Era Final Deadline: October 5, 2009
Two annual competitions:
- Deadline: June 5, 2009
- Deadline: October 5, 2009
Applicants wishing to submit drafts against the June 5th deadlines must do so by April 1, 2009. Submitting drafts is not required but comments are often useful in guiding project development. Drafts are submitted to the contact person listed in each announcement.
Go to Grant Opportunities for more information.
Grants.gov Technical Difficulties
Due to a sudden increase in applications for funding in response to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Grants.gov is currently experiencing some difficulties. Some applicants are finding it difficult to search for grant opportunities, download forms, or file electronic applications. NHPRC staff members are monitoring the Grants.gov situation carefully. We are developing alternative methods for applying and will ensure that application materials remain available now through the June deadline. We will use the NHPRC website, the professional listservs, the funding opportunity descriptions on Grants.gov, NHPRC News, and other suitable means to keep all interested parties informed as this issue develops. Interested parties may want to follow or subscribe to updates from the blog maintained by grants.gov at: grants-gov.blogspot.com.News from our Grantees
Troup County (Georgia) Goes Online
The Troup County Historical Society and Archives received a $75,000 grant from the NHPRC in 2007 to digitize 19th century court and county records, and now those records are online via the Georgia Digital Library.
First organized in 1985-86, with the aid of an NHPRC grant, the records are among those saved from the Troup County Courthouse during the devastating November 5, 1936 fire. Two women died in the fire, but still local citizens organized themselves into bucket brigades of sorts and passed historical documents from the burning building to safety. During that 1980s grant, records formerly in boxes marked simply "old cases" and in no order were reorganized and put into chronological order. A detailed finding aid was produced which gives folder level control over the records.
NYU Digital History Across the Curriculum
New York University's Archives and Public History (APH) Program received a NHPRC Professional Development grant for "Digital History Across the Curriculum," an effort to integrate digital technology into the Program's offerings, including its Historical Editing and History in the New Media courses.
Amanda French was hired as the Digital Curriculum Specialist. She earned her doctorate in English from the University of Virginia in 2004, where she was a research assistant on the Rossetti Hypermedia Archive and where she encoded texts in XML at the Electronic Text Center. From 2004-2006, Amanda held the Postdoctoral Fellowship in Academic Libraries for Humanists offered by the Council on Library and Information Resources; during that time, Amanda studied and worked on digital repositories, library website and application design, and a digital audio archive of sociolinguistic recordings while at the same time teaching undergraduate and then graduate courses on how to do academic research in the digital age.
Four students were given "digital internships" to coordinate independent study projects around the following topics:
- Hillel Arnold will conduct his spring internship at the New York Public Library to assist in developing a site-wide search feature involving EAD finding aids.
- Emily Chu will work with Peeling , an avant-garde Asian-American performing arts group to help them create a digital archive of their collections.
- David Benjamin is working with Dr. Robin Nagle, the Anthropologist-in-Residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation to create a "Museum of Sanitation" web site.
- Andrea Meyer will be creating a web-based project on "The Culper Spy Ring" the Long Island-based Revolutionary War group that discovered Benedict Arnold's collaboration with the British.
For more information, contact Dr. Peter Wosh, the director of the APH or Amanda French.
Preserving the H-Net Academic Electronic Mail Lists
Lisa M. Schmidt of Michigan State University recently completed "Preserving the H-Net Academic Electronic Mail Lists," a study that assesses the existing state of preservation of the organization, H-Net, Humanities and Social Sciences Online, wide array of email lists and implements improvements to make sure these discussions are saved in a trusted digital repository. The H-Net Electronic Mail List project received NHPRC funding through a $189,067 grant to Michigan State University. The study set out to assess the existing state of preservation for the H-Net e-mail lists using 1) digital preservation theory and 2) the Trusted Repositories Audit and Certification: Criteria and Checklist (TRAC) evaluation tool. You can read the full article at SAA's ePubs pages.
WGBH Media Library and Archives Assessment for Scholarly Use Report
WGBH, Boston's public television station, recipient of two direct grants and one collaborative partnership from the NHPRC, has issued a new report on the scholarly use of its archives. Open Vault is a searchable online digital library featuring 1,200 multimedia clips drawn from 50 years of WGBH programming. Visitors can also view media production organizational tools and participate in a discussion forum where they can post comments and responses. Funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the project sought to determine the educational value of WGBH's archival collection for academic research and instruction by designing a model assessment tool and methodology available to any organization seeking to survey its audio-visual collections.
Processing Lowell Thomas
A 2007 Archives Processing grant of $139,149 to Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, went to support a two year project to arrange and describe the Lowell Thomas papers. Thomas (1892 1981) was a well known journalist, explorer, and radio personality. Project director John Ansley shares this discovery of the connection between Lawrence of Arabia and the intrepid Lowell Thomas:
During a seemingly ordinary Friday afternoon, Angelo Galeazzi, the Project Archivist processing the Lowell Thomas Papers at Marist College, was in the midst of arranging and describing the 968 cubic foot collection. While examining one of the numerous WWI scrapbooks kept by Thomas documenting his activities as a War Correspondent and the spectacular success of his travelogues, Angelo discovered a few items tucked within its pages. The first was a copy of a Lowell Thomas Travelogue poster advertising the multi-media lecture that made T.E. Lawrence known world-wide as "Lawrence of Arabia" and launched Thomas's career. The poster is seven feet high when unfolded and invites all and sundry to see "With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia." The next surprise came a few pages later, and in the form of a letter from General Edmund Allenby, leader of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force that defeated Palestine and Syria. This is the only piece of correspondence personally signed by Allenby in the collection. The third surprise slipped into this scrapbook nearly a century ago was a letter from T. E. Lawrence to Lowell Thomas (see transcription below). Five other letters were known to exist in the collection, but this is perhaps the most interesting of the group. It shows without a doubt that the Thomases and Lawrence were sociable, despite Lawrence's misgivings about Thomas putting him in the limelight. The Lawrence letter was the final surprise in the scrapbook, but the punch-line to this story is that Angelo was the only one working in the Archives and Special Collections that afternoon. It was one of those days that archivists live for. . .but nobody else was there to appreciate it!
Dover St.
X1-19Dear L.T.,
As you guessed, I went off for a week: Dover for two days, Canterbury two, Oxford three. Got back last night, to find your letters waiting for me. Poor Mrs. Thomas has had many tramps up here for nothing. I'm sorry.
The main result of the "cow + 27 proposals" [marriage proposals] disclosures has been the separate calling of six reporters (all broken on my landlady's first line of defense) and a lot of tender letters from my friends hoping I'll accept the 28th!
The Cow was told very discreetly. I wonder if Feisal [Emir Feisal] will deny it!
Apologies again to Mrs. Thomas + yourself. I hope you're fit still.
Yours, TEL.
SAA Education Workshops
The Society of American Archivists offers a series of workshops for archivists and records managers around the country. A full list can be found at SAA website - however, these upcoming events may be of particular interest to NHPRC grantees.
Grant Proposal Writing
April 24, 2009; Early-Bird Registration Deadline: March 24, 2009
Bowling Green, KY
In this era of budget cuts, attending this offering might just pay for itself over and over! This seminar surveys the types of state, federal, and private foundation grants available and provides information about researching and writing grant proposals. Topics include types of grants, types of funders, elements of a grant proposal, the grant review process, managing your grant project, reporting requirements, and funding resources.
The Essentials of Digital Repositories
June 19, 2009; Early-Bird Registration Deadline: May 19, 2009
East Lansing, MI
Truly a Digital Repositories 101 seminar! Participate in knowledge-building discussions and activities that focus on defining, selecting, and implementing digital repositories (DRs). The instructors address the role of the archivist in DR construction and deployment; standards, best practices, and realities of content and metadata deposit; strategies for developing administrative structures; policies; long-term preservation concerns; and marketing.
NHPRC and the National Archives
Our 75th Anniversary
On June 19, 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the legislation to establish a National Archives and the NHPRC.
To celebrate this milestone, the National Archives has planned a number of special activities and free public programs throughout the year. The anniversary web site www.archives.gov/75th shines a spotlight on defining moments in the agency's history through the decades with photo galleries, notices of special events at the National Archives Building in Washington, DC, as well as at the 14 regional archives and 12 Presidential libraries located throughout the nation.
To celebrate this milestone anniversary, Prologue, the National Archives flagship quarterly publication, will feature a specially-themed issue tracing the emergence of the National Archives as the nation's recordkeeper and steward of the documents of its history. In the milestone issue, an article on the history of the NHPRC will be featured, and we are planning a special publication to mark the anniversary.
Lincoln at 200
Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation
The 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln is being celebrated with a series of special exhibitions and lectures at the National Archives through June 13, 2009. View the complete list of public programs.
The NHPRC has also played an important part in preserving and making available the documentary legacy of the Great Emancipator. The Papers of Abraham Lincoln, a project of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, received NHPRC support for the landmark Lincoln Legal Papers now online and the Lincoln Papers, a freely accessible comprehensive electronic edition of documents written by and to Abraham Lincoln, as well as reports of his speeches and other writings.
NHPRC News is published every other month. If you have news you wish to share or would like to receive an e-mail alert when the next issue is available, please contact Keith Donohue, Director for Communications, at keith.donohue@nara.gov.
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