Commission Recommends $3.7 Million in Grants for Documentary Editing and Archival Projects
Press Release · Friday, June 3, 2005

Washington, D.C. . . At its Spring meeting, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission recommended to the Archivist of the United States grants of $3.7 million for 56 projects in 30 states and the District of Columbia.

These recommendations included $1.9 million for 27 documentary editing projects on the papers and records of remarkable Americans such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Edison, Ulysses S. Grant, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Presidential Recordings Project covering the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. Four subventions were awarded to university presses to defray the cost of publishing new volumes.

Twenty-five grants, totaling $1.75 million, were recommended for a variety of projects to preserve and make accessible the records of leading institutions such as the American Heritage Center in Wyoming, the Kentucky Historical Society, and Princeton University's archives of leading U.S. economists.

Because of funding cuts, the Commission was not able to fund any new publishing projects and all of ongoing projects were reduced to 75 percent of the requested amounts. In addition, the Commission was limited to funding only the first year of several multi-year records access projects and turned down several recommended projects.

The Archivist of the United States, Allen Weinstein, is the Chairman of the Commission, and Max J. Evans is its Executive Director. Other Commission members present at the May meeting included: Charles T. Cullen, Association for Documentary Editing; Barbara Fields, Organization of American Historians; Alfred Goldberg, Department of Defense; Margaret P. Grafeld, Department of State; Dr. J. Kevin Graffagnino, American Association for State and Local History; Stanley N. Katz, American Historical Association; Deanna Marcum, Library of Congress; Timothy Slavin, the National Association of Government Archivists and Records Administrators; Associate Justice David H. Souter, United States Supreme Court; Lee Stout, Society of American Archivists.

Two new Presidential appointees were sworn in at the May meeting: Ronald Faucheux, American Institute of Architects and Daron R. Shaw, University of Texas.

The NHPRC is the only funding agency whose only focus is the documentary heritage of the United States. Established in 1934, it has awarded grants for preserving, publishing, and access to vital historical documents. Twice each year, the Commission recommends grants to the Chairman, some of which are conditional on the basis of final project budgets and other information. Its appropriations for FY 2005 are $5 million, down from $10 million in FY 2004.

Recommended Grants

Documentary Publishing Projects

George Washington University
Washington, DC
Documentary History of the First Federal Congress     $25,000

University of Wisconsin
Madison, WI
Ratification of the Constitution     $25,000

Duke University
Durham, NC
The Jane Addams Papers     $54, 105

The College of William & Mary
Williamsburg, VA
Charles Carroll of Carrollton Family Papers     $11,288

Rice University
Houston, TX
The Papers of Jefferson Davis     $85,672

Indiana University
Bloomington, IN
The Papers of Frederick Douglass     $16,832

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Rutgers, NJ
The Papers of Thomas A. Edison     $82,675

University of Maryland
College Park, MD
Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation     $77,453

University of California
Berkeley, CA
Marcus Garvey and the UNIA Papers     $54,070

University of California
Berkeley, CA
The Emma Goldman Papers     $115,659

University of Maryland
College Park, MD
The Samuel Gompers Papers     $82,775

Ulysses S. Grant Association
Carbondale, IL
The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant     $79,764

University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN
The Papers of Andrew Jackson     $108,560

Columbia University
New York, NY
The Selected Papers of John Jay     $112,875

Stanford University
Stanford, CA
Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.     $74,272

Christine S. Patrick
The Journals of Samuel Kirkland Endorsement*

Illinois Historic Preservation Agency
Springfield, IL
The Lincoln Legal Papers     $80,746

George C. Marshall Foundation
Lexington, VA
The Papers of George Catlett Marshall     $39,130

Institute of Early American History
Williamsburg, VA
The Papers of John Marshall     $37,625

SUNY/College at Old Westbury
Old Westbury, NY
Clarence Mitchell, Jr., Papers     $45,150

University of Mary Washington
Fredricksburg, VA
The Papers of James Monroe     Endorsement*

University of Arizona
Tempe, AZ
O'odham-Maricopa/Southwest Relations Project     $36,833

Indiana University
Bloomington, IN
Plains Indian Cultures Library Project     Endorsement*

University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN
The Correspondence of James K. Polk     $63,235

University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA
Presidential Recordings Project     $96,003

George Washington University
Washington, DC
Eleanor Roosevelt and Human Rights     $189,180

New York University
New York, NY
The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger     $75,328

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Rutgers, NJ
The Stanton/Anthony Papers     $45,150

Morehouse College
Atlanta, GA
The Papers of Howard Thurman     $97,385

Indiana Historical Society
Indianapolis, IN
The Lew Wallace Papers     Endorsement

East Stroudsburg University
East Stroudsburg, PA
The Papers of the War Dept., 1784-1800     $65,000

University of Nebraska
Lincoln, NE
Whitman and the Civil War     Endorsement*

*Projects in the initial stages of development may receive Commission endorsement in lieu of grant funds.

Publishing Subventions

University of Virginia Press
The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War, Vol. 15     $10,000
Louisiana State University Press
The Papers of Jefferson Davis      10,000
University of North Carolina Press, Inc.
Papers of John Marshall, Vol. XII      7,850
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
The Moravian Spring Mission, Vol. 2      10,000

State Historical Records Advisory Boards Administration

Idaho State Historical Records Advisory Board     $18,280
Minnesota Historical Society     7,368
Friends of the Missouri State Archive     2,419
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission     16,700
Utah State Archives and Records Services     6,700

Records Access Projects

Art Center College of Design
Pasadena, CA
College Archives Project.     $46,470
To expand its recently created college archives, including a survey of records held by college departments and transferring appropriate records to the archives; arranging and describing these and other records already in the archives, including collections received from alumni; developing a policies and procedures manual for processing records; and training college staff in records management.

Big Pine Paiute Tribe of the Owens Valley
Big Pine, CA
Records Consultant Project     $4,012
To undertake a seven-month project to utilize the services of a consultant to assess the tribe's records needs. The consultant will meet with tribal staff, conduct a preliminary survey of tribal records, and provide recommendations concerning establishing a comprehensive records program.

Stanford University
Stanford, CA
Monterey Jazz Festival Preservation Project     $93,393
To support Stanford's Archive of Recorded Sound effort to preserve in digital format 654 audio recordings of Monterey Jazz Festival concerts and other activities for the period 1970-2001, create metadata to better describe and administer the recordings, and provide access copies of the recordings on CDs and in MP3 format.

California State University
Dominguez Hills, CA
Dominguez Family History Collections Project     $98,919
To arrange and describe 285 linear feet of collections relating to the presence of the Dominguez family in the Rancho San Pedro/South Bay area of Los Angeles County.

Regents of the University of California
Berkeley, CA
Kem Lee Photograph Archives Project     $67,654
To support the Ethnic Studies Library's project to process and make available the Kem Lee Photograph Archive, which consists of 153 boxes of photographs and 14 additional boxes of business records and personal papers.

Bessemer Historical Society
Pueblo, CO
Colorado Fuel and Iron Co. Microfilm Project     $34,812
To copy 1,000 reels of deteriorated 16mm microfilm produced by the company and transfer the images onto archival quality 35mm film.

District of Columbia Public Library
Washington, DC
Washington Star Photograph Project     $42,000
To fund the third year of a project to preserve and improve access to the Washington Star photograph collection. The collection, which contains over a million images, documents life in the nation's capital from the 1930s to 1981, when the Star closed.

Atlanta Historical Society, Inc..
Atlanta, GA
Arrangement & Description of Historical Collections     $37,639
To arrange, describe, catalog and, in some cases, transcribe approximately 11,200 photographic images and 32 linear feet of manuscript collections contained in 13 collections in the James G. Kenan Research Center, including 20th century photojournalists, Boyd Lewis and Bill Wilson; 20th century politics and public policy, including papers of Lester Maddox, Ivan Allen, Jr. and Leo Frank; and the Civil War, encompassing letters and diaries relating to the Atlanta Campaign.

Office of the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County
Chicago, IL
Microfilm & Indexing Project     $141,001
To microfilm and index over 400,000 Declarations of Intention (791 vols.), 1906-1929. The Declarations were the first papers to be filed by individuals who wished to become U.S. citizens, and may be the only naturalization record about some individuals.

Society of American Archivists
Chicago, IL
Strengthening Tribal Archives     $65,820
To support the ongoing development of the professional knowledge of tribal archivists. In addition to providing financial support for tribal archivists to attend the next two annual meetings of SAA, the project will offer pre-conference planning workshops that will address the particular problems faced by tribal archivists, plan for a revision of Native American Archives: An Introduction (1984), and develop a structure to facilitate communication among tribal archivists.

Kentucky Historical Society
Frankfort, KY
Business and Military Records Processing Project     $76,641
To process and catalog 470.5 cubic feet and ninety-five volumes (22 collections) in its custody relating to Kentucky business and military records.

City of Boston
Boston, MA
Archives and Records Management Project     $113,861
To arrange, describe, and publish a finding aid on the Internet to approximately 250 cubic feet of records relating to the desegregation era of the Boston City Schools.

City of Newton
Newton, MA
City Archives Project     $20,237
To preserve and make accessible to the public three centuries of municipal records in the Newton City Archives.

Northeastern University
Boston, MA
African American and Latino History Project     $89,985
To process and make available 436 cubic feet of manuscripts relating to Latino and African-American communities in Boston. The records from the six non-profit organizations under consideration will add to the considerable body of material in the archives.

Detroit Symphony Orchestra
Detroit, MI
Archives Development Project     $110,964
To establish an institutional archives program by developing a detailed plan, inventorying all extant records (in excess of 1,000 linear feet and dating from approximately 1914 - present), equipping the archives room, appraising the records, identifying those with the highest research value and with conservation needs, accessioning records, and beginning to process records, including sound and video dating from 1950s onward, and make them available for researchers.

Southwest Missouri State University
Springfield, MO
University Archives Processing Project     $49,260
To arrange, describe, and create finding aids using Encoded Archival Description (EAD) for seventeen collections (293 cubic feet). This project continues the efforts of the University Archives to organize and make available its records.

Princeton University
Princeton, NJ
Economists Papers Processing Project     $62,444
To appraise, arrange, and describe 28 collections, totaling 1,146 linear feet, of personal papers of economists and demographers, and the organizational records of institutions involved in international development and finance, monetary policy, population research, public finance, economic policy, and business.

Hebrew Union College/Jewish Institute of Religion
Cincinnati, OH
World Jewish Congress Collection Project     $47,073
To support microfilming the records of the New York office of the World Jewish a collection spanning 1918-1982 and measuring 222 linear feet.

Citizen Potawatomi Nation
Shawnee, OK
Tribal Archives and Records Project      up to $40,000
To begin the development of an archives and records management program.

Portland State University
Portland, OR
Great Tribal Leaders Oral History Project      up to $45,000
To build the institute's Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times Collection of videotaped oral histories.

Pennsylvania Hospital
Philadelphia, PA
Financial Records Project      $45,000
To arrange and describe approximately 145 linear feet of institutional financial records from c.1751-1950.

Kalispel Tribe of Indians
Usk, WA
Tribal Archives and Records Management Project      $50,577
To create a comprehensive records program.

Whitworth College
Spokane, WA Northwest Archives Processing Initiative, Phase II      $178,001
On behalf of a consortium of Northwestern archival repositories, requests funding for a two-year grant to organize, describe, catalog, and submit EAD encoded finding aids to the Northwest Digital Archives for approximately 1,100 linear feet of archival and photographic collections. The other participating institutions are: the Alaska State Library, Eastern Washington State Historical Society, Lane Community College, Pacific Lutheran University, the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Western Washington University, and Whitman College.

Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
Madison, WI
Survey of Upper Midwest Folk Heritage Collections      $45,643
On behalf of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, to identify and describe multi-format ethnographic materials that document traditional culture in the Upper Midwest.

University of Wyoming, American Heritage Center
Laramie, WY
Cataloging and Deaccessioning Project      $142,900
To catalog 800 collections not currently represented in on-line catalogs, place 400 preliminary collection inventories on the Center's Web site, and deaccession 200 collections totaling at least 2,000 cubic feet of records, offering these collections to other repositories.

FOR MORE INFORMATION – please visit the Commission's website at www.archives.gov/nhprc/

CONTACT:
Keith Donohue, Communications Director
National Historical Publications and Records Commission
National Archives and Records Administration
700 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Room 106
Washington, DC 20408-0001
keith.donohue@nara.gov
202.501.5600 x 248

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