The Modern Endangered Archives Program, a UCLA Library initiative, has announced 30 new grants awarded to communities and archives around the world. The funds will help grantees document and digitize at-risk cultural heritage materials in order to preserve them and make them available to other scholars.
The program was launched in 2018 with support from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. To date, it has supported 116 projects in 53 countries.
The fifth cohort of grantees expands the portfolio of organizations, archivists and scholars the program has funded, including, for the first time, projects focused on Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Tanzania, Mozambique and Ukraine. Topics include music and oral traditions, the struggle for human rights, and the history of photography and visual culture.
All digitized materials produced by the grantees are made publicly available for researchers around the world, allowing for new lines of scholarly inquiry, and facilitating communal exploration and public dialogue. Digitizing the materials allows the collections to remain in their home countries.
MEAP also has issued a call for applications for 2024, expanding opportunities for funding for those seeking to preserve, digitize and publish unique collections.
- Planning grants of up to $20,000 are available for evaluating or surveying collections for digitization and/or curation for organization and inventory work.
- Project grants of up to $70,000 are available for digitizing archival content or curating assets that are already in digital form.
- New regional grants of up to $100,000 are available for creating digital collections that include cultural heritage materials from three or more institutions, families or archival repositories. Regional grants are also available to past grantees.
Read more about the new grantees and funding opportunities on the UCLA Library Modern Endangered Archives website.