July 1 Grants under the Division's Preserving and Creating Access to Collections program fall into three categories. Grants for Preservation Microfilming of Brittle Books and Serials supports the preservation of knowledge contained in brittle books and other deteriorating paper-based research materials. Over a twenty-year period beginning in 1989, the division anticipates supporting projects that will preserve on microfilm the intellectual content of approximately three million volumes printed between 1800 and 1950. Grants for the United States Newspaper program will support the location, cataloging, and preservation on microfilm of the nation's newspapers. The National Heritage Preservation Program responds to the problems facing institutions holding significant collections of archaeological and ethnographic objects, decorative art, textiles, and historical artifacts.
Grants fall into two categories.
Such a grant enables an institution to establish a level of intellectual control over its holdings that will significantly increase their availability. April 3 Preservation Assistance Grants support projects that will preserve and increase the availability of resources important for humanities research, education, and public programming. These resources include collections of books, journals, manuscript and archival materials, maps, still and moving images, oral histories, recorded sound, and objects of material culture. Applicant organizations must be nonprofit and tax exempt, care for and own humanities collections, have at least one professional staff member, and be open and provide services at least 120 days per year. The Division offers support for projects to create dictionaries, encyclopedias, historical or linguistic atlases, databases, textbases,bibliographies, and other research tools and reference works of major importance to the humanities.