National Archives Awards $2.97 Million in Grants for Documentary Editing and Archival Projects
Press Release · Friday, June 21, 2013

Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero has awarded 30 grants totaling $2.972 million for historical records projects in 18 states and the District of Columbia.   The National Archives grants program is carried out through the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). A complete list of the approved grants is online.

Grants totaling $1.26 million were recommended for 15 documentary editing projects to publish the papers of key American figures, including Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Martin Luther King, Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt, Thomas Edison, and the Presidential Recordings project.  The Association for Documentary Editing received a grant for three years of support for the Institute for Historical Editing, a weeklong training camp for historical documentary editors, now in its 40th year.

Grants totaling just under $900,000 were recommended for 10 archival projects, including three archives in South Carolina; African American women’s collections at Emory University; historical New England manuscript collections at the Society for the Preservation New England Antiquities; Pacifica Radio’s American Women Making History and Culture collection; and a manuscripts collection process at the University of Guam comprising the premier holdings of materials related to the U.S. territory of Guam and the Marianas, as well as Micronesia.

Four projects received funding under the new Innovations funding category: Simmons College for a program of archival education for municipal clerks; a new email archives model program designed at Stanford University; strategies for enhancing digital graphics description and discovery created by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; and a digital-only edition of the George Washington Financial Papers project at the University of Virginia.

The Commission also announced the public launch of Founders Online a website that will provide access to 175,000 documents of the papers of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin.

Kathleen Williams, Executive Director of the NHPRC, presented the grant applications and policy issues to the full Commission.  The Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero, is the Chairman of the Commission. The NHPRC is the sole federal funding agency whose only focus is the documentary heritage of the United States.  Established in 1934, it awards grants for preserving, publishing, and providing access to vital historical documents.

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For press information, contact NHPRC Communications Director Keith Donohue at 202-357-5365 or email: Keith.Donohue@nara.gov.

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