Publicizing Your NHPRC Project

Publicizing Your NHPRC Project

Congratulations on your award from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. We want to help ensure that the public knows about your project and how to access your historical records, and to that end, we regularly issue press releases and feature stories on successful grantees, including our own online newsletter NHPRC News, Facebook page www.facebook.com/nhprc, National Archives publications such as Prologue and YouTube channel Inside the Vaults, and our annual reports and other publications.

We rely on grantees to keep us regularly informed about your progress through interim and final reports, and it is important that you keep us apprised of your news, particularly any interesting discoveries or public events surrounding your grant. We also rely on you to provide high resolution (at least 600 dpi) images of items from your NHPRC-supported projects.

We ask that you credit the NHPRC in any materials associated with the project and encourage you to download and use the NHPRC logo. We also can provide an eps file, upon request, if you need a larger version for signage.

Here are some steps you can take to help publicize your project:

1. Press Release/Announcement of the Award - once you have received official notification of your grant, you should issue a press release to local media announcing the project. Your release should include the amount of Federal support (and support from other sources) from the National Archives' National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
2. Websites, Blogs, and other Social Media - many projects develop special websites or pages within your organization's website to highlight the project. Others create a special blog using a free hosting service to feature new discoveries, finding aids, and the like. Perhaps easiest of all is to create a simple Facebook page where you can update project information on the fly.
3. Newsletters and professional journals - for those in the archives field, the Society of American Archivists provides handy links to virtually all of the major professional and regional association newsletters that are always on the lookout for good stories. Long-term publishing projects and research and development projects should look to writing articles for journals, such as American Archivist.
4. Public events - some organizations host public events marking the successful completion of their projects or a noteworthy milestone, such as the publication of a volume of documents, the launch of a website, Archives Month or National History Day, particularly when the public is invited to see and use the historical records you have preserved or processed. Such events are an excellent opportunity to invite the press to your institution.

We are always glad to help you publicize your project in any way we can, and please feel free to contact your program officer or Communications Director Keith Donohue, 202-357-5365, or keith.donohue@nara.gov for assistance. You can find a full staff list at http://www.archives.gov/nhprc/contact.html.