Grants for Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives 2017

Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives Grants in in Cultural Memory 2017

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has generously awarded the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) funds to support a 2017 cycle of the Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives program. The purpose of this program is to digitize and provide access to non-digital collections of rare or unique content in cultural heritage institutions. Its aims are to enhance the emerging global digital research environment in ways that support new kinds of scholarship for the long term and to ensure that the full wealth of resources held by memory institutions becomes integrated with the open Web. A list of the projects funded through this program is on the program's website.

The Digitizing Hidden Collections program coheres around these six core values:

• Scholarship: The program is designed to maximize its impact on the creation and dissemination of new knowledge.
• Comprehensiveness: The program supports digitization projects that will provide thorough coverage of an important topic or topics of high interest to scholars, in ways that help those scholars understand digitized sources’ provenance and context.
• Connectedness: The program supports projects that make digitized sources easily discoverable and accessible alongside related materials, including materials held by other collecting institutions as well as those held within the home institution.
• Collaboration: The program promotes strategic partnerships rather than duplication of capacity and effort.
• Sustainability: The program promotes best practices for ensuring the long-term availability and discoverability of digital files created through digitization.
• Openness: The program ensures that digitized content will be made available to the public as easily and completely as possible, given ethical and legal constraints.

Eligibility  

To receive funding through this program, all grant recipients will be required to adhere to the following stipulations:

• A head administrator at each recipient institution, including partnering institutions in cases of collaborative projects, must sign an intellectual property agreement with CLIR, through which they will assume full responsibility for any violations of intellectual property or other applicable laws resulting from project activities.

• All metadata created through the program must be explicitly dedicated to the public domain through a Creative Commons Public Domain Declaration License (CC0). Exceptions may be made for culturally sensitive metadata.

• Recipient institutions, including partnering institutions in cases of collaborative projects, must not claim additional rights or impose additional access fees or restrictions to the digital files created through the project, beyond those already required by law or existing agreements. Exceptions may be made for those materials in the public domain without the express wishes of local, traditional, and indigenous source communities.

• Materials that are in the public domain in analog form must continue to be in the public domain once they have been digitized. CLIR strongly encourages grant recipients to share digitized collections as public domain resources or with Creative Commons licenses, as appropriate.

Generally speaking, to be eligible for this program applicants must be recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as tax-exempt under one of the following:

• IRS Code Section 501(c)3

• IRS Code Section 115

• IRS Code Section 170(c)1

Grants may be made to government units and their agencies or instrumentalities not organized under IRS Section 501(c)3, provided that collecting and disseminating scholarly and cultural resources are among the primary functions of the unit and grant funds will be used for charitable purposes within the scope of the Digitizing Hidden Collections program. We recommend that government units wishing to apply for the Digitizing Hidden Collections grant contact us at hiddencollections@clir.org to ascertain their eligibility.

The applicant institution(s) must be located in the United States or in an associated entity, e.g., the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico or American Samoa. CLIR also accepts proposals for collaborative projects that include partnerships between U.S. and Canadian institutions. Collaborators at Canadian institutions may serve as co-principal investigators, but the lead institution (i.e., the institution that will lead the work; that will manage the project, including assuming financial responsibility for any funds awarded; and that submits the application) must be a U.S. institution that meets the criteria listed above. To facilitate international collaboration, U.S.-Canadian partnerships will be allowed to request additional travel funding (up to $10,000). Note that all materials proposed for digitization must be owned and held by academic, research, or cultural heritage institutions in the United States or Canada; the materials themselves must also be located in the United States or Canada. Materials held in repositories outside these two countries are not eligible for digitization through this program at this time, even if the owner institution is itself a U.S. or Canadian entity.

Limitations: Single-institution applications

• Minimum allowable request for 2017: $50,000

• Maximum allowable request for 2017: $250,000

• Minimum allowable project term: 12 months

• Maximum allowable project term: 24 months

• Projects must begin between January 1 and June 1, 2018

• Projects must be completed by May 31, 2020

Limitations: Collaborative, multi-institution applications (partnerships/consortia)

• Minimum allowable request for 2017: $50,000

• Maximum allowable request for 2017: $500,000

• Minimum allowable project term: 12 months

• Maximum allowable project term: 36 months

• Projects must begin between January 1 and June 1, 2018

• Projects must be completed by May 31, 2021

Sample Proposals

Below are links to excerpts from successful proposals from previous cycles of the Digitizing Hidden Collections program. These samples do not include any budget information, letters of support, cover letters, or CVs; additional sensitive information within the proposals has been redacted or removed.

Sample Proposals:

• Photographic Collections of the Erie Canal - Erie Canal Museum and the Canal Society of New York State
• Sharing "Gabo" with the World: Building the Gabriel Garcia Marquez Online Archive from His Papers at the Harry Ransom Center - The University of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom Center
• The Digital Archive of Native American Petitions in Massachusetts - Harvard University and Yale University
• Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis: Toward A Comprehensive Online Library of Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts in PACSCL Libraries in Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware - Lehigh University, Linderman Library; Free Library of Philadelphia; University of Pennsylvania Libraries; Bryn Mawr College; College of Physicians of Philadelphia; Haverford College; Library Company of Philadelphia; Rosenbach Museum and Library; Swarthmore College; Temple University; University of Delaware; Chemical Heritage Foundation; Franklin & Marshall College; Villanova University; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Key Dates in 2017

The application process has two phases. The deadline for initial proposals is April 3, 2017, at 5:00 PM EST. The final proposal round is by invitation only. Applicants will be notified and issued feedback on initial proposals on July 14, 2017. Only those applicants whose proposals are approved by the program's review panel will be able to submit a final proposal, due Wednesday, September 20, 2017, at 5:00 p.m. ET.

Links to the application form, associated templates, and the program guidelines can be found in the application guidelines. For questions about the proposal process that are not answered in the guidelines or the Questions and Answers section below, email us at hiddencollections@clir.org. We regret that we cannot answer questions by telephone.

Program Timeline

Below is the full timeline for the 2017 Digitizing Hidden Collections program, including applicant webinars, staff office hours, and key dates. All webinars are first come, first served. Prior registration is an option but is not required. If you are unable to attend the webinar or the room is at capacity, complete recordings of each session will be posted here shortly following their conclusion. In addition to the two webinars, there will be three “office hour” sessions, during which applicants can ask additional questions to Digitizing Hidden Collections staff. Webinars will be about one hour each, and are intended to help orient applicants and to answer questions that are general or broadly applicable. Office hours will be conducted via live chat, and applicants may drop in at any time during the scheduled office hours to ask more specific questions related to individual projects.

• Thursday, February 2, 2017, 2:00 pm Eastern time: CLIR hosted a webinar on applying to the Digitizing Hidden Collections program in Adobe Connect. A recording and slides from the webinar are now available. 

• Thursday, March 2, 2017, 2:00 pm Eastern time: CLIR will host an informational Q & A webinar for prospective applicants in Adobe Connect. Preregistration will be available at 2:00 PM EST on Thursday, February 23, 2017. 
• Thursday, March 9, 2017, 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm Eastern time: CLIR will host an office hours session for prospective applicants in Adobe Connect via chat.
• Thursday, March 16, 2017, 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm Eastern time: CLIR will host an office hours session for prospective applicants in Adobe Connect via chat.
• Tuesday, March 21, 2017, 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm Eastern time: CLIR will host an office hours session for prospective applicants in Adobe Connect via chat.
• Monday, April 3, 2017, 5:00 pm Eastern time: Deadline for submission of initial proposals.
• Friday, July 14, 2017: Initial proposal feedback issued to applicants. Comments will be emailed to the Principal Investigator(s) and/or primary contact listed in the initial proposal. At this time, the online application system will be re-opened to applicants who have been invited by the review panel to advance to the final round.
• Wednesday, September 20, 2017, 5:00 pm Eastern time: Deadline for submission of final proposals.
• Friday, December 29, 2017: Applicants will be notified of their application's final status by this date.

For more information please click "Further Official Information" below.

This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:

https://www.clir.org/hiddencollections/applicants