National Archives Grants -- May 2022
PUBLISHING HISTORICAL RECORDS
For projects to publish documentary editions of historical records.
Indiana University
Indianapolis, IN
$117,781 to edit the Frederick Douglass Papers, a leading orator, abolitionist, social reformer, writer, and statesman. Project staff will advance editorial work on the Correspondence Series, completing and submitting the Volume 4 manuscript to press, and continuing annotation work for Volume 5; complete all remaining annotation for Volume 2 of Journalism and Other Writings Series; and continue the migration to its new Frederick Douglass Papers Digital Edition. (PE-103394)
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN
$150,000 to support the Papers of Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States. Project staff will complete all final production work on Volume 12 (1834); advance editorial work on Volume 13 (1835); and expand the New Jackson Document Discoveries and Native Voices sections of the Papers of Andrew Jackson website. (PE-103395)
Ramapo College of New Jersey
Mahwah, NJ
$150,000 to support the Jane Addams Papers, American settlement activist, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator, and author. Project staff will digitize, transcribe, verify metadata, and proofread documents from 1927-1928; submit the selective print edition Volume 4 manuscript to press; and complete research and annotation work on Volume 5. (PE-103401)
Cumberland University
Lebanon, TN
$149,968 to support the Papers of Martin Van Buren, eighth president of the United States. Project staff will publish the remaining documents in Series 3 and 4; verify metadata for ~2,500 documents in Series 6; transcribe 1,000 documents in Series 12; and complete the front matter, appendices, and index for Volume 1 of the Selected Papers of Martin Van Buren. (PE-103402)
Stanford University
Stanford, CA
$150,000 to support the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers, a national leader in civil rights. Project staff will annotate, incorporate reader comments, and complete the introduction and front matter for Volume 8 (Sept. 1962 – Dec. 1963); complete edit of the calendar of documents, complete outstanding research tasks, and fact check front matter, annotations, and chronology for Volume 8; and conduct research and document collection for Volume 9 (1964). (PE-103405)
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC
$110,000 to support a selective digital edition of the Papers of William Short. After serving as Jefferson’s secretary, William Short (1759-1849) became a career diplomat and successful financier and philanthropist. Project staff will complete the identification and collection of the Short correspondence and papers held in smaller repositories; catalog documents spanning the period 1778-1810; select documents to be published online; and complete all preparations and planning. (PE-103407)
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC
$100,000 to complete the Pinckney Statesmen of South Carolina digital edition. The completed four-volume “born-digital” edition will include an estimated 3,000 fully transcribed and annotated documents related to the brothers Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Thomas Pinckney, and their cousin, Charles Pinckney, for the period 1769-1828. Project staff will complete final selection of addenda documents, calendar items, and financial records related to enslaved people on Pinckney plantations for inclusion in the Pinckney-Horry and Pinckney Statesmen editions; complete all transcription, summaries, final review and other pre-publication work for all addenda documents and financial records; and acquire permissions for all selected materials to be added to the Pinckney-Horry and Pinckney Statesmen editions. (PE-103417)
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ
$124,880 to support the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States. Project staff will add Volume 45 to its electronic editions (UVA Press/Rotunda and Founders Online); publish Volume 46 in print format; bring Volume 47 to near completion and add documents to the “Selected Documents” section of the project’s website; complete all pre-publication work for print Volume 48; and advance editorial work for Volumes 49-51. In addition, the project will continue to work with the UVA Center for Digital Editing (CDE) to add content related to the Jefferson’s Weather and Climate Records Digital Edition. (PE-103421)
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation
Springfield, IL
$148,000 to support the Papers of Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth president of the United States. Project staff advance editorial work for the Campaign Digital Edition and associated digital library; tandem oral-proof and annotate 600 documents; write biographies of associated people, places, organizations, and events found in the same 600 documents; fact check, sense read, and publish 600 documents and associated biographies; and capture images of new documents in repositories and private collections as they become available. (PE-103422)
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Piscataway, NJ
$150,000 to support the Thomas A. Edison Papers, noted American inventor and entrepreneur. Project staff will advance editorial work on the Edison General File for the years 1925-1926; add 23 Edison Pocket Notebooks to its digital image editions, and upload approximately 41,000 images; add outside repository collections and Edison-Miller Family Papers; and complete the Volume 10 manuscript. (PE-103425)
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA
$150,000 to support the Papers of James Madison, fourth president of the United States. Project staff will Publish volumes 13 and 14 of the Secretary of State Series and commence editorial work on volumes 15 and 16; edit volume 5 of the Retirement Series and commence work on volume 6; plan a new edition of the 1840 text of The Papers of James Madison; and complete editing of Madison’s “Notes on Salkeld.” (PE-103433)
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA
$150,000 to support the Papers of George Washington, first president of the United States. Project staff will publish volumes 30 and 31 of the Revolutionary War Series; submit the manuscript for volume 32 to press; advance editorial work on volumes 33-35; complete index integration of volumes 28-29 to the digital edition; and add at least 40 newly found George Washington letters. (PE-103434)
University of Southern Mississippi
Hattiesburg, MS
$150,000 to support the Civil War & Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi Digital Documentary Edition. This edition will ultimately contain nearly 20,000 documents sent and received by the Mississippi governors from late 1859 to early 1882. Project staff will advance editorial work on nearly 5,500 documents in the Postwar Governors Collections; Clark Correspondence & Telegrams; and Sharkey Letters and Petitions; and complete technical planning for creation of subject-based data visualizations. (PE-103444)
University of West Florida
Pensacola, FL
$87,500 to support the Papers of Roger Taney: A Digital Documentary Edition. Project editors are developing a free, publicly accessible, annotated, 9-volume digital edition of the personal and professional papers of jurist and Fifth Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. During the proposed grant year, project staff will accession an additional 1,250 documents; transcribe an additional 1,500 manuscript pages; and advance editorial work on Volume 1: The Bank War. (PE-103449)
University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Lincoln, NE
$130,544 to support “Walt Whitman’s Complete Correspondence,” bringing together for the first time all incoming and outgoing correspondence from the poet. Project staff will catalog and transcribe 80 “new” letters; complete cataloging for the Reconstruction and Post-Reconstruction periods; complete all remaining annotation work for the Complete Correspondence, including links to relevant resources; and publish 605 newly completed letters on the Walt Whitman Archive. (PE-103450)
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA
$150,000 to support the Einstein Papers Project, a print and electronic edition of the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, scientist and humanitarian. Project editors will add Volume 16 (June 1929-Nov. 1930); advance editorial and translation work on Volume 17 (June 1929-Nov. 1930), bringing that volume to near completion; and complete transcription of ~1,700 documents for Volume 18 (Jan.-Dec. 1931). (PE-103459)
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA
$140,048 to support The Chinese American WWII Veterans Online Resource, an online resource and archive that will bring together information drawn from U.S. military service records, including enlistment, separation, and discharge records, as well as information from private records on the more than 22,000 Chinese and Chinese Americans who served in World War II. During the proposed first year of work, project staff will aggregate all existing project content and metadata into a new Drupal database and build the associated search capabilities of the digital edition. (PD-103373)
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
For projects that encourage public engagement with historical records.
Villanova University
Villanova, PA
$112,500 to support curriculum development for the Last Seen: Finding Family after Slavery project which aims to identify, digitize, transcribe, and publish ads placed in newspapers across the United States (and beyond) by formerly enslaved people searching for family members and loved ones after emancipation. To date, the project has published 4,000 ads online spanning eight decades drawn from 267 newspapers. The project will host teacher workshops, and create lesson plans and teaching materials for primary and secondary school classroom use, using materials drawn from the Last Seen digital documentary edition. (DP-103404)
See Stories
Anchorage, AK
$149,250 to support a project that will provide 6th-12th grade educators with professional development focusing on the use of archival material that documents the history of enslavement of the Indigenous People of Alaska. See Stories is a nonprofit organization that seeks to build inclusive communities through film and storytelling. (DP-103427)
Hunter College
New York, NY
$150,000 to support a project to create a mobile version of the Puerto Rican Heritage Cultural Ambassadors (PRHCA) program: a free self-paced, multimedia online course on Puerto Rican history and culture based on archival holdings at Hunter College’s Center for Puerto Rican Studies (Centro) Library. Since 2016, PRHCA has been a collaborative endeavor that brings together in-house archivists, librarians, and documentarians with external historians, scholars, and cultural and civic organizations. (DP-103446)
Eastern Educational Television Network/dba
American Public Television
Boston, MA
$90,788 to support a collaborative project of American Public Television, Field Studio, New American History, and PBS Learning Media for Explaining Today: The Future of America’s Past, a multi-year professional learning and content development project focused on engaging grade 6-12 teachers and their students in exploring American history and geography through digital humanities projects and scholarship, gaining access to archival collections, primary sources and public documents via inquiry-based learning resources and open educational resources. (DP-103464)
Chinese Historical Society of America
San Francisco, CA
$150,000 to support a project will create a series of augmented reality walking tours centered around the history and archives of Chinese American heritage in San Francisco and Northern California. The project will allow users to experience archival assets in their original historic locations, using more detailed storytelling and interpretive audio and video accompaniments from local historians and audio and visual filmmakers. The public will also be able to make direct contributions to enhance the connection between artifacts and documents with particular sites. (DP-103465)
ACCESS TO HISTORICAL RECORDS: ARCHIVAL PROJECTS
For projects that ensure online public discovery and use of historical records collections.
Museum of New Mexico
Santa Fe, NM
$149,921 to digitize and make available online 24 linear feet of manuscript material, describe 12 linear feet of photographic material, and digitize approximately 8,000 images from the collection of Edgar L. Hewett, educator and archeologist, whose work focused on Native American communities of the Southwest. (RH-103400)
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO
$149,430 to process 47 linear feet, digitize 7,216 pages, and provide online access to the finding aid and digital images from the collection of Joe Ben Wheat, archaeologist, curator, teacher, and author known for his expertise on textiles of the Navajo and other tribes in Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. (RH-103411)
Jewish Theological Seminary of America
New York, NY
$142,549 to process two collections of audiovisual recordings that document the Jewish experience and digitize 1,750 audiovisual recordings that fall into five categories: American politics, law, and ethics; interfaith relationships; arts and literature; discussions with Jewish leaders; and the life and work of theologian Abraham Heschel. (RH-103412)
Illinois Supreme Court Historic Preservation Commission
Springfield, IL
$135,830 to digitize 46 cubic feet of Illinois Supreme Court case files (approximately 110,000 pages) dating from 1818 to 1865 and make the digital images available online. (RH-103418)
Amistad Research Center
New Orleans, LA
$120,000 to process 112 linear feet of the records of Alternate ROOTS, a regional arts service organization, from 1975-2017. The project will create an online finding aid to the record, digitize and create metadata for all of the collection’s moving image and sound recordings, and digitize 10% of the photographs in the collection and make them available through the Louisiana Digital Library. A series of online webinars that support community-based archiving will be offered. (RH-103419)
Museum of Ventura County
Ventura, CA
$95,000 to process the Robert Martin and Associates Collection, which constitutes the institutional records of one of the county’s longest-serving civil engineering firms. The collection includes engineering and architectural drawings, maps, and the planning documents for residential, commercial, and government buildings from the 1920s to 2013. About 1,000 items will be digitized and workshops will be provided for local cultural heritage organizations. (RH-103424)
The American Jewish Historical Society
New York NY
$146,461 to arrange and describe the records of the Greater New York Conference for Soviet Jewry (215 linear feet) and digitize selected documents from the collection and make them available online. The project will also arrange an accretion to the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews collection and arrange and describe the personal papers of Ann Polunsky, an activist in the Soviet Jewry movement. (RH-103431)
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Blacksburg, VA
$149,842 to process 17 collections from the Archives of American Aerospace Exploration (506 cubic feet) that document the period 1885 to 2008, improve the online description available for seven additional collections, and create two physical exhibits and an accompanying digital exhibit. (RH-103436 )
California State University Dominguez Hills
Dominguez Hills, CA
$149,900 to process, describe, and start to digitize approximately 150 linear feet of material from the Los Angeles Free Press and from Art Kunkin, its publisher. The Los Angeles Free Press is one of the first, and largest, of the underground newspapers of the 1960s. (RH-103442)
Sila M. Calderon Foundation, Inc.
San Juan, PR
$22,790 to digitize approximately 128,000 pages produced and received by the Office of Governor Sila M. Calderon from January 2001 to January 2005. (RH-103443)
University of Southern Mississippi
Hattiesburg, MS
$135,828 to process 12 collections (totaling 288 cubic feet) related to children’s literature, women and people of color, and politics, and create 1,200 digital images and make them available online. Collections include the papers of artists such as Tana Hoban, civil rights activist Sue Sojourner, and photojournalist Mary Ann Wells. (RH-103448)
Columbia University
New York, NY
$148,789 to acquire and upload state and local government records related to the coronavirus pandemic and upgrade the access tools for Documenting COVID-19, a publicly available online repository. (RH-103448)
Arizona Corporation Commission
Phoenix, AZ
$140,624 to digitize 3.5 million microfiche images of business filings for the period 1912-1980, index the digital records by business entity name, and upload the digital records to a repository system and enable online public access. (RH-103452)
Regional Plan Association, Inc
New York, NY
$65,470 to improve access to the records of the Regional Plan Association from the 1960s through the 1980s. The project will digitize 70 cubic feet of documents and 20 bound publications that total approximately 150,000 pages, 20 maps, five cubic feet of 35mm slides and photographs, and 18 audiovisual tapes with a total runtime of approximately 400 minutes. (RH-103455)
B&O Railroad Museum
Baltimore, MD
$92,039 to process and describe 15,000 employee case files from the records of the B&O Railroad Relief Department that cover the period 1880 to 1963. (RH-103466)