The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Division of Preservation and Access is accepting applications for the Humanities Collections and Reference Resources program.
Donor Name: National Endowment for the Humanities
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 07/18/2023
Size of the Grant: up to $350,000
Grant Duration: 3 years
Details:
This program supports projects that provide an essential underpinning for scholarship, education, and public engagement in the humanities. It strengthens efforts to extend the reach of humanities collections and make their intellectual content widely accessible. Awards also support the creation of reference resources that facilitate the use of cultural materials, from works that provide basic information quickly to tools that synthesize and codify knowledge of a subject for in-depth investigation.
Projects may address the holdings or activities of a single institution or may involve partnerships between organizations. Collaboration between humanities experts and information professionals is essential to broaden the scope of, and audiences for, proposed collections or reference resources. You should design a project that facilitates sharing, exchange, and the interoperability of humanities information and products, and ensures their long-term availability. Projects should expand participation in cultural heritage and promote engagement with primary sources.
Funding Categories
The HCRR program includes two funding categories: Foundations and Implementation. Successful completion of a Foundations project is not a prerequisite for Implementation support in this program. While Foundations award recipients may choose to apply later for an Implementation award, they are not required to do so.
Foundations
Foundations awards support planning, assessment, and pilot activities that incorporate crossdisciplinary expertise in the formative stages of preserving and creating access to humanities collections or producing reference resources. Drawing upon the cooperation of humanities scholars and technical specialists, these projects might include efforts to initiate intellectual control of collections, to solidify collaborative frameworks and strategic plans for complex digital reference resources, or to produce preliminary versions of online collections or resources. Experts may be humanities scholars, archivists, curators, librarians, preservation specialists, and other information professionals, depending on your goals.
You may use a Foundations award for one or more of the following activities:
- analyzing and evaluating the content areas, intellectual control requirements, and preservation needs of significant humanities collections, including the development and distribution of collection-level descriptive information (projects to process or catalog collections at more detailed levels should apply instead for an Implementation award);
- identifying and prioritizing humanities materials for digitization, developing project specific selection criteria, evaluating technical requirements for digital preservation and access, reformatting, test-bed items, and/or exploring third-party service arrangements;
- developing plans and protocols to ensure the preservation of digital humanities content (previously digitized or born digital), which could include preliminary testing and evaluation of institutional and/or distributed digital repository systems;
- creating editorial plans, locating and assembling resources, devising strategies for technological and programmatic sustainability, and producing content exemplars for reference resources such as encyclopedias, databases, virtual archives, etymological dictionaries, or online atlases; or
- developing plans for and/or conducting collection surveys to inform future repatriation efforts, sustainable and inclusive collection development, or deaccessioning.
Foundations projects’ initial stages – for example, initial collections appraisal and accessioning for archival materials, conceptualization of scope and audience for reference resources, or consortium partner contact and cooperation – should be complete at the time of application. Any inter-institutional partnerships should also be in place at the time of application.
Partnership opportunity
In order to enhance access to humanities collections held by smaller institutions, Foundations applicants may request an additional $10,000 (for a total of $60,000) to support interinstitutional planning and pilot activities. Applicants may be small institutions proposing to work with a larger repository or larger institutions proposing to collaborate with one or more smaller partners. In either case, applicants must demonstrate that each participating institution is fully engaged in the project and is an equal stakeholder in its outcomes. Partnerships might be especially well suited for community-based cultural heritage initiatives but are not limited in geographic or topical scope.
Implementation
You may use an Implementation award for one or more of the following activities:
- arranging and describing archival and manuscript collections;
- cataloging collections of printed works, photographs, recorded sound, moving images, art, and material culture;
- digitizing and reformatting collections;
- preserving and improving access to born-digital sources, including updating existing digital resources;
- developing databases, virtual collections, other digital resources, or projectspecific tools to codify information on a subject or to provide integrated access to selected humanities materials;
- creating encyclopedias;
- preparing linguistic resources, such as historical and etymological dictionaries, corpora, and reference grammars (separate funding is available for endangered language projects in partnership with the National Science Foundation); or producing resources for spatial analysis and representation of humanities data, such as atlases and geographic information systems (GIS).
Because ensuring the longevity of humanities sources is critical to enabling their ongoing use, you may request support for implementing preservation measures – such as rehousing, item level stabilization, and conservation treatment – in the context of projects that also create or enhance access to humanities collections.
In recognition of the time-sensitive nature of reformatting sound recordings and moving images stored on degrading and obsolescent media, this program encourages applications that address the need to preserve and access these critically endangered sources.
In support of the U.S. Department of Interior’s ongoing investigation into the Federal Indian boarding school system, this program encourages applications that address preservation and access to boarding school and related records.
Funding Information
- You may request up to $50,000 for Foundations awards and up to $350,000 for Implementation awards. In order to enhance access to humanities collections held by smaller institutions, Foundations applicants may request an additional $10,000 (for a total of $60,000) to support inter-institutional planning and pilot activities. Award totals include direct and indirect costs.
- NEH anticipates awarding approximately $7,500,000 among an estimated 35 recipients.
Period of Performance
- You must request a period of performance up to two years for Foundations awards and up to three years for Implementation awards with a start date between June 1, 2024, and September 1, 2024.
- The period of performance is the span of time during which you may incur expenses to carry out the work under the award. It must start on the first day of the month and end on the last day of a month.
Eligible Applicants
- Special district governments
- Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized)
- Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education
- Public and State controlled institutions of higher education
- State governments
- County governments
- City or township governments
- Private institutions of higher education
For more information, visit Grants.gov.
