NHPRC-Mellon Start-Up Grants for Collaborative Digital Editions in African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and Native American History

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Event Date

FY 2022 Grant Announcement (Initial)

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) of the National Archives supports projects that promote access to America's historical records to encourage understanding of our democracy, history, and culture.

The following grant application information is for NHPRC-Mellon Start-Up Grants for Collaborative Digital Editions in African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and Native American History.

Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) Number:   89.003

Funding Opportunity Number:   DIGITALEDITIONS-202106

Deadline

  • Draft (optional):   April 1, 2021
  • Final Deadline:   June 9, 2021

NHPRC support begins no earlier than January 1, 2022.

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Grant Program Description

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), with funding provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, seeks proposals for its new program for Collaborative Digital Editions in African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and Native American History.  With an overarching goal to broaden participation in the production and publication of historical and scholarly digital editions, the Start-Up grants program is designed to:

  • Provide opportunities that augment the preparation and training of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) new to the work of historical documentary editing, especially those currently working in history or related area and ethnic studies departments.
  • Encourage and support the innovative and collaborative re-thinking of the historical and scholarly digital edition itself—how it is conceived, whose voices it centers, and for what purposes.
  • Encourage and support the early planning and development of significant, innovative, and well-conceived digital edition projects rooted in African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and Native American history and ethnic studies.
  • Stimulate meaningful, mutually beneficial, and respectful collaborations that help to bridge longstanding institutional inequalities by promoting resource sharing and capacity building at all levels, and that build into their plans a variety of means for achieving meaningful community and user input and engagement.

Grants are awarded to collaborative teams consisting of at least two scholar-editors, as well as one or more archivists, digital scholars, data curators, and/or other support and technical staff, as appropriate to fulfill the planning goals and early-implementation needs of the proposed edition. We strongly encourage applications from collaborative teams that include BIPOC faculty and staff in key positions, and that include editorial, archival, and technical staff at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Tribal Colleges, and/or other Indigenous and Native American tribal scholars and community members, and members of the Asian American community. We also encourage projects to seek out community members as well as undergraduate and graduate students to contribute to (and benefit from) participation in all phases of the project.

Eligible projects in this category typically focus on collecting, describing, preserving, compiling, transcribing, annotating, editing, encoding, and publishing original manuscript or typewritten documents, and/or historical records in other formats, such as analog audio and/or born-digital records.  

Eligible activities in this category may include:

  • Travel and related costs for planning meetings (intended for geographically-dispersed collaborations). 
  • Relevant training for project directors and staff, including but not limited to NHPRC-supported training opportunities through its Institutes for Historical Editing program.
  • Associated costs for technical planning, wire-framing, and testing and evaluation with target audience(s) to determine needs and priorities.

For projects undertaking an extensive or supplementary document search, funds also may be used for initial surveying of collections, document imaging and collection, canvassing, community outreach, and related travel.

This grant program does not support the production of film or video documentaries. For a comprehensive list of the Commission's limitations on funding, please see What We Do and Do Not Fund. Applications that consist entirely of ineligible activities will not be considered. 

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