The Division of Preservation and Access of the National Endowment for the Humanities will be accepting applications for grants in its Humanities Collections and References REsources program. These grants support projects to preserve and create intellectual access to such collections as books, journals, manuscript and archival materials, maps, still and moving images, sound recordings, art, and objects of material culture. Awards also support the creation of reference materials, online resources, and research tools of major importance to the humanities. Maximum awards are $350,000 for up to three years.

Eligible activities include:

• arranging and describing archival and manuscript collections
• cataloging collections of printed works, photographs, recorded sound, moving images, art and material culture
• implementing preservation measures, such as basic rehousing, reformatting, deacidification, or conservation treatment
• digitizing collections, or preserving and improving access to born-digital resources
• developing databases, virtual collections, or other electronic resources to codify information on a subject field or to provide integrated access to selected humanities materials
• creating encyclopedias
• preparing linguistic tools, such as historical and etymological dictionaries, corpora and reference grammars
• developing tools for spatial analysis and representation of humanities data, such as atlases and geographical information systems (GIS)
• designing digital tools to facilitate use of humanities resources

The new guidelines, which include sample proposal narratives, can be found at http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/HCRR.html  The application receipt deadline of July 15, 2009 is for projects beginning May 2010. All applications to NEH must be submitted electronically through Grants.gov; see guidelines for details.

Preservation Assistance Grants for Smaller Institutions help small and mid-sized institutions, such as libraries, museums, historical societies, archival repositories, town and county recors offices, and colleges, improve their ability to preserve and care for their humanities collections. Awards of up to $6000 support preservation related collection assessments, consultations, training and workshops, and institutional and collaborative disaster and emergency planning.

All applications to the NEH must be submitted through Grants.gov. See the application guidelines for details at http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/pag.html

Small and mid-sized institutions that have never received an NEH grant are especially encouraged to apply.

The deadline for applcations is May 14, 2009. For more information, contact the staff of NEH’s Divison of Preservation and Access at 202.606.8570 and preservation@neh.gov