What’s New with Preservation Assistance Grants? Updated Guidelines Out Now!
Preservation work on collections of the Muñoz-Marín house. Preservación de las colecciones de la casa de Muñoz-Marín.
Credit: Image courtesy of the Fundación Luis Muñoz-Marín.
Preservation work on collections of the Muñoz-Marín house. Preservación de las colecciones de la casa de Muñoz-Marín.
Credit: Image courtesy of the Fundación Luis Muñoz-Marín.
NEH’s Division of Preservation and Access welcomes applications for its Preservation Assistance Grants for Smaller Institutions (PAG) program, with a deadline of January 11, 2024. These awards help small and mid-sized organizations preserve and manage humanities collections, ensuring their significance for a variety of users, including community members, humanities researchers, students, and the public, by building their capacity to identify and address physical and intellectual preservation risks.
Since 2000, NEH has made almost 2,500 awards for Preservation Assistance Grants to libraries, museums, historical societies, archival repositories, cultural organizations, town and county records offices, and colleges and universities that want to improve their ability to preserve and care for their humanities collections. In all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia, PAG awards have enabled many small and mid-sized cultural repositories to hire consultants to do preservation assessments of both their physical and digital collections; purchase preservation supplies, including shelving and archival folders; and acquire environmental monitoring equipment. PAGs also support cultural heritage institutions in developing disaster or environmental monitoring plans or training their staff in the care and storage of humanities collections and best practices for cataloging, arranging, and describing collections.
Application Information
Preservation Assistance Grants provide up to $10,000 of funding for activities in preservation and collections management including assessments, consultations, development of plans and policies, purchase of preservation supplies and equipment, development of environmental monitoring and disaster plans, education and training, and initial steps that improve the management of collections and knowledge of the contents of collections.
We encourage small and mid-sized cultural heritage institutions with humanities collections to consider applying, especially those that have never received an NEH grant, presidentially designated institutions (Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities), Native American Tribes and tribal organizations, and Native Alaskan and Native Hawaiian organizations with humanities collections.
New in 2024!
This year PAG is expanding how it can help organizations build their capacity to perform preservation and collections management-related activities. New fundable activities include:
- consultations with source communities and scholars;
- development or revision of digitization plans, collection management plans, collecting plans, loan policies, and processing manuals;
- and format surveys, inventories, condition reports, and/or other preparatory steps in the description of collections.
An example of a fully processed box of photographs from the Delaware State University Archives. All the photographs were placed into polypropylene sleeves, arranged by subject and described to the folder level in an extensive finding aid.
Credit: Image courtesy of Delaware State University Archives
An example of a fully processed box of photographs from the Delaware State University Archives. All the photographs were placed into polypropylene sleeves, arranged by subject and described to the folder level in an extensive finding aid.
Credit: Image courtesy of Delaware State University Archives
Peter Jones and Karita Coffey in the Ceramics Studio at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, c. 1965. Kay V. Weist Negative Collection, IAIA Archives.
Credit: Image courtesy the Institute of American Indian Arts
Peter Jones and Karita Coffey in the Ceramics Studio at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, c. 1965. Kay V. Weist Negative Collection, IAIA Archives.
Credit: Image courtesy the Institute of American Indian Arts
Several of the most recent awards from the PAG program are described on NEH’s Funded Projects database. Sample narratives, frequently asked questions, and other resources are available on the PAG program landing page. Details on the full slate of funding opportunities in Preservation and Access, along with news and features, can be found on the division’s website.
If you have an idea for a project that you think could benefit from a Preservation Assistance Grant, or if you simply want to find out more about the program, please contact us at @email or by phone at 202-606-8570. A Notice of Funding Opportunity for the program is available here.
A pre-application webinar for prospective applicants will be held on November 3, 2023, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Register using this link: Preservation Assistance Grant Webinar. The webinar will be recorded and available online.