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Society of Georgia Archivists Preserving the past and the present for the future...

Volume 42 Issue 2 Summer 2010

National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC),

A statutory body affiliated with the National Archives and Records Administration, NHPRC supports a wide range of activities to preserve, publish, and encourage the use of documentary sources relating to the history of the United States. Through its grant program, training programs, research services and special projects, the Commission offers advice and assistance to individuals and non-Federal agencies and institutions committed to the preservation and use of America's documentary resources. Grants include archival grants, educational programs and fellowships, electronic recordation grants and publications grants.  For more information, visit www.archives.gov/nhprc or call 202-501-5610.

See below for a listing of grants that NHPRC has recently funded in Georgia and sources for upcoming grant opportunities.   Grant recipients, Nora Lewis of the Georgia Historical Society and Gretchen Greminger of the Jekyll Island Authority share their experiences and advice for Georgia institutions considering NHPRC projects.

Nora Lewis, Director of Library and Archives at Georgia Historical responds to questions posed:

How can Georgia institutions take advantage of NHPRC grants?

The NHPRC has a fairly wide selection of grants for 2010. They can be useful to archives of all sizes and staffing levels and for a variety of projects depending on where your institution falls on the accessibility spectrum. GHS is completing a 2 yr Basic Projects grant which allowed us to cut our processing backlog in half.

What advice would you give to a prospective Georgia applicants?

Discuss project ideas with NHPRC program officers and get feedback. Give yourself plenty of time to complete a comprehensive proposal. The proposal will require significant leg work and content development. Look at narratives or descriptions of other successfully funded projects. Write a proposal that is right for your organization – don’t attempt to bite off more than you can chew. Keep your budget clean and tight – be able to justify every expense you request.

What grant programs are more likely to be applicable?

That depends on your institution and organizational goals. I can’t think of any repository that doesn’t have a backlog of some kind, so the Basic Projects grant has wide applicability.
For Gretchen Greminger, Curator for the Jekyll Island Authority, the NHPRC grant proposal was the first she had written.

When Greminger reflects on why their project was chosen by NHRPC, she believes it benefited from several factors:
  • The diversity of their collection, both modern records and archival records were to be processed.
  • Their proposal included a clearly illustrated, concrete plan for processing the records; they had a good idea of what needed to be done to make their collections accessible, could quantify their needs and demonstrate that their plan was feasible.
  • Greminger also found it easy to illustrate that no alternative to this project was available; also the time needed to retrieve records, and to comply with open records requests, would change from days to minutes due to the project.
The NHPRC grant greatly improved accessibility of the Jekyll Island Authority's records and archival holdings, benefiting their community and visiting researchers. While carrying out the project,  they discovered items in collections they did not know they had, hidden treasures.  Greminger concludes: it was a great process!











































Recently Funded NHPRC grants to Georgia institutions:

Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System, Atlanta, GA
$58,710 to support a project to digitize eleven manuscript collections documenting the role of African Americans in educational institutions. (RD10037-10)

Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, GA
$75,189 to support a two-year project to cut in half its backlog of unprocessed collections, including a survey of collections and processing of at least 500 cubic feet of records. (RB50022-08)

Atlanta Historical Society, Atlanta, GA
$87,465 to support a two-year project to reduce its backlog of unprocessed collections and providing access to 528 cubic feet of records contained in 23 collections.(RB50024-08)

Jekyll Island State Park Authority, Jekyll Island, GA
$35,000 to support a 13-month project to arrange and describe the records of the Jekyll Island State Park Authority (1950-present) and the Jekyll Island Club (1886-1947). (RA10028-07))

Troup County (Georgia) Historical Society
$75,000 to support a 17-month project for digitizing County Court and Government Records. (RD-10013-07)

Atlanta Historical Society, Atlanta, GA
$37,639 to arrange, describe, catalog 11,200 photographic images and 32 linear feet of manuscript collections in the James G. Kenan Research Center on such topics as 20th century photojournalists Boyd Lewis and Bill Wilson; the papers of Lester Maddox, Ivan Allen, Jr., and Leo Frank; and the Civil War letters and diaries relating to the Atlanta Campaign. (2005-45)

Georgia State University Research Foundation, Atlanta, GA
$82,000 for the Southern Nursing Associations Records Project, to process, preserve, and make available 250 cubic feet of records of southern nurses associations. The collections are the most extensive papers available on the nursing profession in the South related to both white and African American nurses. (2004-095)

NHPRC grant opportunities

The NHPRC describes several grant opportunities on their website, most with deadlines in June and October; in December grant projects for the next year are presented. http://www.archives.gov/nhprc/announcement/

Grant opportunities with October deadlines include: Archives Basic Projects (basic processing, preservation planning, collection development and establishing archives), Archives detailed processing projects, and several grants related to publishing.

The website also describes, in general terms, what types of projects that NHPRC does, and does not,  fund. http://www.archives.gov/nhprc/apply/eligibility.html

[Editor’s Note: Thanks to Elizabeth Barr her ideas and providing much of the information for this article, although mistakes and omissions are mine. I thank those recipients  able to respond to my request for feedback,  at short notice and during summer vacation time; My apologies to other recipients unable to respond because out of the office (much deserved break, I think!) and would be happy  to share their perspectives in later issues of the Newsletter.]

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