NEH Announces $30.5 Million in New Grants

295 NEH-funded projects encourage Americans to rediscover America's cultural heritage, preserve it for future generations

WASHINGTON, April 5 - William R. Ferris, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), today announced the awarding of 295 NEH grants totaling $30.5 million. The grants--the second of three rounds for the 2000 fiscal year--promote NEH's interconnected goals of preserving America's cultural heritage, enabling scholars to expand knowledge about it, helping humanities teachers incorporate the best high-tech educational materials in their classrooms, and reaching all Americans through dynamic public humanities programming on public television and radio, in museums and libraries, and on the web.

"The National Endowment for the Humanities is committed to reaching every American--students and adults alike--with learning opportunities about American history and culture," said Chairman Ferris. "Through NEH support for cultural preservation, educational technology, curriculum development, public programs and scholarly research, we are creating ways for Americans of all ages and backgrounds to rediscover America by exploring the events and achievements of our national story."

Awards lists are available from the Recent Awards page. Some highlights among the grants are:

• ongoing microfilming of historic U.S. newspapers in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Illinois, New York and Tennessee;
• development of a website featuring online teaching materials on the American Revolution, the Civil War era and the 1920s by Massachusetts's Assumption College;
• creation of an educational website featuring historic maps for grades K-12 by Chicago's Newberry Library;
• development of digital resources for teaching the Underground Railroad by the University of Pennsylvania;
• development of a digital sourcebook for teaching Russian history from 1917 to the present, including access to primary sources from recently opened Soviet archives, by Minnesota's Macalester College;
• and excavation of a 5th-century B.C. shipwreck off the coast of Turkey by Texas A&M University.

The spring round also includes NEH's annual "preservation and access" grants. The 67 projects totaling $18.8 million will advance the Endowment's preservation mission in several critical ways: by supporting preservation microfilming of historic U.S. newspapers and brittle books, stabilization and documentation of fragile collections of rare objects, digitization of materials for access to collections by Internet, creation of research tools and reference works, field testing of high-tech programs to control environmental conditions in storage space, and training programs for conservators.

Programs, number of projects, and dollar amounts this round are:

Preservation and access (67) $18,821,000

• microfilming of brittle books (8) 4,637,612
• development of research tools and reference works (20) 4,585,150
• training of conservators (9) 2,929,876
• microfilming of historic U.S newspapers (6) 2,459,727
• digitization of materials for Internet access (16) 2,403,850
• stabilization and documentation of artifact collections (7) 1,449,335
• field testing of high-tech environmental controls in storage space (1) 355,450

Research projects (187) $6,876,000

• collaborative research (editions, archaeology, conferences, etc.) (37) 4,213,000
• fellowship programs at independent research institutions (15) 2,123,000
• summer stipends (135) 540,000

Education projects (22) $4,069,000

• materials development and curriculum development (22) 4,069,000

Public programs (19) $727,000

• museum exhibitions (7) 239,000
• Digital Parallel Production Grants (interactive television projects) (4) 200,000
• documentary film and radio projects (5) 149,000
• website development (2) 100,000
• library projects (1) 39,000

NEH grants are awarded on a competitive basis. Throughout the year, humanities experts outside of the Endowment assess all applications and judge the quality and significance of each proposed project.