CONTACT:
Jeff LaLiberte
305-899-4877
WASHINGTON -- The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has announced that more than 230 libraries, museums, and institutions of higher learning have been awarded a Preservation Assistance Grant. Barry University’s Archives and Special Collections was one of the organizations chosen for the grant which encourages presidentially designated institutions, such as Hispanic-serving institutions, to apply.
The NEH’s Preservation Assistance Grants help small and mid-sized institutions—such as libraries, museums, historical societies, archival repositories, cultural organizations, and colleges and universities—improve their ability to preserve and care for their significant humanities collections. The preservation may extend to special collections of books and journals, archives and manuscripts, prints and photographs, moving images, sound recordings, architectural and cartographic records, decorative and fine art objects, textiles, archaeological and ethnographic artifacts, furniture, historical objects, and digital materials.
Barry was awarded a total of $6,000 for a preservation needs assessment of collections within Barry University’s Archives and Special Collections. Additionally the grant will support the purchase of equipment to monitor environmental conditions for a collection of 5,400 rare books, along with 2,400 linear feet of manuscripts, photographs, sound recordings, maps, and other sources dating from the 17th century to the present. Materials include the records of “Operation Pedro Pan / Cuban Children’s Program,” and the papers of William Lehman, who served as a Florida congressman from 1972 to 1993.
In the past five years, the Preservation Assistance Grants program received an average of 313 applications per year and has made an average of 106 awards per year. This is the first time Barry has received a Preservation Assessment Grant from the NEH. In 2013, Barry was awarded the Muslim Journeys Bookshelf grant from the NEH.
About the National Endowment for the Humanities:
Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at: www.neh.gov.