In FY 2009, NEH made an award of $218,154 to the Bibliographical Center for Research in Aurora, Colorado, to support workshops on digital preservation designed specifically for leaders of collaborative digital library programs. Workshops participants will develop long-term preservation plans for their digital collections. Additionally, these plans will be shared with other organizations that are grappling with the challenge of preserving digital collections.

The Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation, the membership organization supporting conservation professionals, was awarded a grant of $202,243 in FY 2010 to support a professional development program for conservators. Workshops on a variety of conservation topics will be offered around the country for conservators responsible for the care of humanities collections.

George Washington University in Washington, D.C., received a grant in FY 2005 to develop a distance learning curriculum in collections care and management. The curriculum was tested by offering it to thirty participants from cultural repositories across the country.

In FY 2010, Heritage Preservation was awarded a grant of $248,527 to support three Alliance for Response forums, two national institutes, and an educational outreach campaign focused on developing and sustaining partnerships between cultural institutions and emergency management and response officials to enhance the protection of cultural heritage collections.

Lyrasis received a grant of $450,000 in FY 2010 to support a regional preservation field service program that provides preservation surveys, workshops, and educational materials to libraries, archives, and historical organizations in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.

In FY 2009, The Northeast Document Conservation Center in Andover, Massachusetts, was awarded $450,000 outright and $50,000 in federal matching funds to support a regional preservation field service program that provides preservation surveys, workshops, technical consultations, and educational materials to libraries, archives, museums, and historical organizations in the Northeast. The center will assist the staffs of cultural institutions in planning for the long-term preservation of collections, will improve the preservation skills of those responsible for the care of humanities collections, and will provide current information about preservation technologies and practices.

The Rochester Institute of Technology’s Image Permanence Institute received a grant of $248,480 in FY 2010 to support five workshops and nine webinars for staff of museums, libraries, and archives; the workshops and webinars will discuss managing collection environments in sustainable ways. Participants will examine the needs of collection materials and the environments conducive to preserving them, the impact of local climate, and the basics of operating environmental control systems. Participants will also learn about strategies for reducing energy cost and consumption in cultural repositories without sacrificing the capacity to preserve collections.

Spelman College in Atlanta received a grant of $240,829 in FY 2002 to support a training program in basic archival practices and policies for staff at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The program consisted of three week-long training sessions. Between sessions, participants worked on assignments at their home institutions with the help of the instructors and a mentor from a larger archival repository in the participant’s city or region.

The University of Delaware, Newark, was awarded a grant of $249,400 in FY 2010 to support graduate education in the conservation of humanities collections. The University of Delaware and the Winterthur Museum jointly sponsor the art conservation training program, which is designed to prepare students to meet the comprehensive preservation needs of works of art on paper; paintings; textiles; ethnographic, archaeological and decorative objects; furniture; photographs; library and archival records; and outdoor sculpture.

The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, received a grant of $300,000 in FY 2008 to offer four week-long workshops for advanced training in the preservation of digital materials in cultural institutions and six shorter topical workshops, addressing selected issues in depth. A total of 192 members of the managerial and technical staffs of collecting institutions are participating. In addition, an online introductory tutorial on the basics of digital preservation is being made freely available.