Preserving "Woody's Children" ensures the accessibility and longevity of a major collection of American broadcasting and performing arts history, as well as the creativity of the show's creator and host, Robert Sherman. Sherman's papers and recordings are housed at Special Collections in Performing Arts, University of Maryland. The show, featuring interviews, live performance, and commercial recordings, was originally broadcast by New York station WQXR, and is now heard on WFUV. Through digital conversion and common preservation actions for open reel tape (baking, splice repair, and mold remediation), this unique, information-rich content will be available to the public via the UMD's digital collections. The collection's curator selected programs to assure equitable representation of career status, gender, and race. These recordings are of significant interest to ethnomusicologists, popular music scholars, and historians, while maintaining broad appeal to general audiences of folk music.

The Corita Art Center (CAC) proposes a two-year project to digitize its photographic collection, which consists of approximately 18,000 35mm slides. Photographed primarily by Corita Kent, the CAC’s collection includes images of Kent’s years as an art professor with Immaculate Heart College, and documents many of Kent's exhibitions, source materials, and her travels in the United States and abroad. The CAC plans to: conduct an item-level inventory of the collection; digitize the collection; assign metadata; and upload the images to the CAC’s website for public display. This project will provide access into aspects of Kent’s life that have largely been inaccessible or unknown. The newly digitized collection will provide a wealth of new primary source material for scholars, curators, educators, and the general public and contains relevant content for those with an interest in arts education, women religious, Los Angeles history, and the life and legacy of artist Corita Kent.

This project will digitize approximately 75-100 hours of open reel, magnet tapes from speeches, conferences, and other programs from a wide variety of public figures who spoke out against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s. The current inadequate metadata records in the Peace Collection for these recordings will be extended to meet current standards. These recordings, almost all of which are unique, will be made available to the general public, via the Peace Collection web site. The words, sounds, and voices of Vietnam Veterans, anti-war activists, business leaders, religious leaders, civil rights leaders, women peace activists, entertainers, U.S. public policy figures, and Vietnamese activists, will be made available for the first time, richly adding to our understanding of the history of the U.S. in the middle of the twentieth century, to peace history, and the workings of social justice movements.

Wesleyan's World Music Archives holds 30 years of recordings deposited by Phil Ciganer, the owner of the Towne Crier Cafe in Pawling, NY (since relocated to Beacon, NY). For the pilot grant we would like to target approximately 56 hours of cassette recordings from the 1979 Great Hudson River Revival festival, held over two days at venues in Croton-on-Hudson, NY, as well as on the sloop, Clearwater. These concerts were recorded under the supervision of Ciganer, and feature prominent figures in the American folk music and singer-songwriter scene, as well as numerous other performers from around the world.

The Missouri Historical Society (MHS) will digitize and catalog 3,451 U-matic tapes from the KMOV/KMOX-TV News Tape Archive. In 1974, KMOX-TV (renamed KMOV-TV in 1986) was the first major-market station in the United States to abandon film-based newsgathering in favor of a fully electronic newsgathering (ENG) process. ENG rapidly became the national standard for television news stations, and KMOX-TV was at the forefront of this technologic shift. MHS will complete digitization of 60% of the U-matic portion of the archive, from 1977 to 1994. (Prior to 1977, KMOX-TV did not archive tapes; there is no record of what happened to these materials.) Many events of regional, national, and global significance occurred throughout these 17 years, from the oil crisis to the Rwandan genocide. The digitization process will include the production of a high-resolution master file and two derivatives, along with metadata. All videos and records will be publicly accessible.

The Museum of Flight will conduct a 12-month project to digitize a collection of interviews with American fighter aces and build an online repository of the digitized recordings and transcripts. The collection consists of 376 media items, mostly audio reels and cassette tapes, and features interviews with over 120 military aviators. The Museum is already working to digitize the cassette tapes using in-house equipment and are now seeking offsite digitization of the 143 audio reels, along with eight cassettes in need of specialized preservation attention. These interviews are rare historic records that feature candid conversations with fighter pilots as they discuss their training, missions, and experiences during World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. By preserving the contents of these oral histories, The Museum of Flight aims to provide a rich primary source for the study of aviation history, military history, and beyond.

Since 1995, The Exchange has been New Hampshire’s only state-wide radio call-in program. The public affairs program has been a place where policies and issues important to the state are discussed by knowledgeable guests; it is also a virtual “town common” where citizens ask questions of their elected officials and experts, and participate in the larger conversation. Recordings of the first 10 years (some 2,000 hours) of the program exist only on Digital Audio Tapes, and our goal is to continue the process of transferring those assets to uncompressed digital files. We have begun this process, as part of our larger commitment to ensure that all 21 years of this program are fully accessible to the public and for scholarly research.

This project will result in the digitization of 49 cassette tapes containing oral history interviews of Roslyn, New York residents recorded between 1965 and 1978. Containing the unique recollections of then-elderly residents, many whose families had lived and worked in Roslyn for generations, and members of Roslyn's small but longstanding African American community, the tapes include the words of “everyday men and women who can tell us about the way it used to be around here.” The words of historic preservationist Roger Gerry, whose efforts are visible in Roslyn’s historic district, and those of neighbors and friends of noted twentieth century author Christopher Morley, are also included. Digitization will allow these voices to be heard to the first time in over forty years. Comprehensive subject indexing and the creation of detailed descriptive metadata will make the content of these interviews discoverable and accessible to scholars, educators, and the general public.

The Frances Willard Historical Association (FWHA) proposes a one-year project to digitize and provide free, searchable online access to seventy years (over 58,000 pages) of the Union Signal, the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union’s official newspaper. From 1883 to 1953, the newspaper provided weekly coverage not only of the temperance/prohibition movement, but also of national and international social issues, including women’s rights, politics, and health. Today it represents a rich resource for humanities and social sciences scholarship, both traditional and digital. However, for most researchers—especially those outside the United States—access to the newspaper is either nonexistent or limited to incomplete, unindexed hard-copies or microfilms. For this project, vendor Northern Micrographics will digitize seventy complete volumes of the Union Signal held in the Willard Archives; the open-source document management system ResCartaWeb will make the searchable, shareable files accessible through the FWHA’s web-site to scholars of all ages, worldwide.

Boston College hosts internationally-known archival collections supporting the study of lrish traditional music, and one of these, the James W. Smith Irish Music Collection, includes open-reel tapes of unpublished music representing a classic case of high-value research content inaccessible without digitization and preservation. The 1950s/60s Irish music performances feature some of Boston's most prominent Irish musicians, and the informal nature and setting of the recordings - "jam sessions" in the living room of Mr. Smith - capture uniquely the time and spirit of this evolving traditional musical genre. The recordings are presently inaccessible and at risk of loss, requiring professional attention. This project will treat and transfer up to 90 tapes; release descriptive metadata online; and publicize the importance of preservation and the availability of the material and its value to musicologists, performers of Irish and folk music, and scholars of Irish-American history and culture.

The collection includes 200 hours of original, unique, aging, increasingly at-risk analog recordings of Art Sato’s interviews with innovative practitioners of jazz and Latin music conducted over 30 years for his weekly radio series “In Your Ear,” broadcast on KPFA-FM in Berkeley, CA. (1981–present). These extended, in-depth interviews document jazz and Latin music directions in the second half of the 20th century, with insights and analyses not found in other references. There are over 80 in-depth interviews done from 1981 to the present, including recordings with more than 20 musicians who are no longer alive, making this rare collection even more significant and valuable. They trace artist development, probing into influences, inspirations, challenges, and the historical, social, and political climate that shaped many as conscious agents of cultural and social change. These insightful, highly knowledgeable interviews of great artists demonstrate profound and rare trust bestowed upon Art Sato.

George Eastman Museum, in collaboration with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ Margaret Herrick Library and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, will expand its Technicolor Online Research Archive (TORA), begun in 2015 with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) through which 40,000 objects have already been digitized. This project supports digitization and online access of an additional 260,379 Technicolor documents from the collections of the three institutions, dating from 1913 to 2000. This free, web-based resource will be available to researchers, academics, and historians to study, understand, and appreciate the tremendous influence that Technicolor had on filmmaking and popular culture during the 20th century. Project activities will commence in January 2018 and will be completed by December 2020.

PAFA will provide the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) analog audio media to be professionally preserved and digitized. NEDCC will utilize their new audio preservation service that employs a “high-touch, high quality workflow”. The pilot program leverages NEDCC’s expertise so the digitization of PAFA’s Visiting Artist and Museum Symposium audio collections adhere to national standards and guidelines. Once the collections are digitized and digital assets returned, PAFA will take the necessary steps to continue the preservation of and access to the newly digitized collections. PAFA will place preservation files on secure servers, catalog and create appropriate metadata for each audio recording, and finally, upload audio access files online where patrons have free access. The two audio collections offer students, scholars, and the general public access to a hidden collection of primary sources to learn about the perspectives of individuals who might not otherwise appear in the (written) historical record.

This project will preserve and provide scholarly and public access to over 120 hours of recordings of in-depth interviews with Chicago blues musicians, producers, and presenters, including informal live performances, conducted by DePaul University sociologist and cultural anthropologist, Dr. Caleb Dube. These interviews give unique insight into the work life of practitioners of this foundational African-American art form, one with both a strong local profile and global reach. The project will: 1.digitize 88 audiocassette recordings for long term preservation; 2.create and disseminate collection metadata via publicly accessible online resources, including consortial library and cultural content platforms; 3.provide public onsite access to the digital content; 4.obtain permissions for online digital content access; 5.reach out to faculty, researchers, students, musicians, arts and community groups, and the general public to promote use of these resources in academic and personal research, course development, class projects, and creative work.

The material proposed for this project is made up of 119 compact cassette tapes from the Tommi Avicolli Mecca collection, 1967-1992, Ms. Coll. 25, dated 1967 to 1988. This project will contribute to teaching, scholarship, and public discussion about national, regional, and local LGBT history, politics, and culture from the 1950s to the 1980s. The tapes, which are imperilled because of their age, format, and historic storage environment, will be transferred to digital files by the Northeast Document Conservation Center, cataloged in house at the John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives at the William Way LGBT Community Center, and made public through Collective Access, our Digital Asset Management System.

This 18 month project of the Redemptorists Denver Province entails the digitization of manuscripts, printed items and photographs related to the history of their educational institutions, parishes and communities. Materials consist of hand-written community and student annals and original school publications,dating from the mid-19th to mid-20th century. Many of the items are bound and many are fragile, requiring a minimum amount of handling, so they will be scanned using a book scanner with book cradle. Metadata will be created simultaneously and entered in to the collection management program. This collection of materials represents how intertwined religion was with everyday life in America during this time. The digitization and metadata production of these materials will allow scholars from multiple disciplines to access this unique collection enabling them to research the way in which religious orders lived, worked, studied and ministered at the height of religious fervor in the United States.

The Whaling Museum seeks support for a two-year project to digitize, catalog, and make widely accessible and easily discoverable its permanent archival collection which represents one of America's most historically significant industries. These archives, which offer a rich and varied resource of perspectives and insights not represented in other museum’s collections, have not been digitally documented, and remain largely unknown. In a strategic partnership with other New York historic collections, this project would promote new kinds of scholarship in the digital research environment by making unique and rare content publicly available online, and providing high-quality digital content for the creation of a wide variety of learning experiences. The digital accessibility will profoundly allow our organization to serve the public by opening up its content in the cultural, educational, artistic, and scholarly realms, serving a much wider audience and deepening the public’s understanding of our maritime heritage.

We seek support to digitize and make accessible approximately 1000 original herpetological drawings associated with the work of Dr. Herndon Dowling. Dowling was a snake systematist with major interests in snake morphology and its influence upon snake evolution. He spent 70 years in the field, in major museums, and in herpetological collections observing, recording, and analyzing specimens. Though many of his research specimens are part of the collections at the American Museum of Natural History, the original drawings of these specimens and observational data reside in this Collection. The digitized drawings will provide a vital primary source asset for students of vertebrate zoology, specifically herpetology, morphology, and ecology. Graduate students who will be part of the Connecticut State Universities and Colleges new program in Integrated Biodiversity will focus heavily on snake conservation and will utilize this unique Collection. Digitization will also preserve this material and open it to the world.

Baylor University proposes a two-year project to digitally preserve and provide open access to more than 300 original manuscripts written by Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 – 1861), commonly known as EBB. The proposed digital collection will provide unprecedented access to documents previously available to scholars only on an in-person basis at the Armstrong Browning Library (ABL), a special collection on the campus of Baylor University. Included in the manuscripts are early drafts and fair copies of EBB’s poetical works, verse and prose notebooks, verse and prose translations of classical authors, memoranda, marginalia, and proofs of her works that often incorporate handwritten notes, evidence of her input into the editing process. The resulting digital collection will feature high-resolution images, full-text searchable transcriptions, complete metadata, and worldwide access via the Baylor University Libraries Digital Collections website (http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu).

UCSC seeks to digitize 69 open-reel audiotapes of live music performances from the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. These recordings were originally made by KPFA, a Berkeley, California community radio station, and were subsequently transferred to the Bay Area music non-profit organization, Other Minds. UCSC is now the repository for the Other Minds records and KPFA music archive, which includes over 4,000 recordings on a variety of media. The completion of this grant will support us in planning for the digitization of the remaining recordings. The recordings will be cataloged in the Library catalog and made available on demand to patrons both on-site and via remote access. These recordings provide insights into the early creative processes of composers and artists who are recognized influencers of American new music. We anticipate that this material will be used by musicologists, historians, composers, programmers, students, and others interested in experimental and avant-garde music.

The Dean B. Ellis Library at Arkansas State University proposes to digitize the collection of KAIT TV 8 16mm color newsfilm with sound. This two-year project will digitize 176 reels to create high-quality digital surrogates of this analog newsfilm collection which was made by KAIT between 1973 and 1980. The project will result in item level metadata, finding aids, and digital access copies of these records which will be posted on our publicly accessible and searchable portal hosted by Preservica. This moving image collection is the only one of its kind for Northeast Arkansas and Southeast Missouri. Although the content of these reels seems to focus on localism, it will substantially enrich the scholarly narratives of the end of small agriculture, the Civil Rights movement, the worldwide energy crisis, the marginalization of rural America, and the activity of local politicians' involvement in national politics on behalf of fellow Arkansans.

WHYY seeks support to digitize 80 of the most at-risk reel to reel tapes of the award-winning public radio program Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane. Produced and owned totally by WHYY, this engaging and thought-provoking daily interview program examines regional, national, and international news, explores new ideas and trends, and introduces listeners to fascinating people including Pulitzer Prize-winning authors, playwrights, and poets; city, state and national legislators; government officials; actors; musicians; scientists; historians; and corporate leaders. Audio recordings from the program spanning 1988 to 2012 need to be digitized. This grant will support the digitization of the most at-risk audio recordings of the collection- 80 recorded hours on reels. The grant will also support basic metadata creation for these files so that they may be imported into the Archive and Retrieval System WHYY developed for the Fresh Air Archive.

This project focuses on the preservation of 118 analog reel to reel tapes from the Robert Garfias KRAB Radio Show collection and on improved access to the collection. These programs, produced by ethnomusicologist Robert Garfias from 1962-1981, are based largely on his fieldwork in countries including Burma, Japan, and the Philippines. As founder of the University of Washington Ethnomusicology Program, Dr. Garfias was primarily an educator, and his show featured in-depth commentary as well as music, providing a wealth of information of interest to national and international scholars, students, and the public. We will conduct outreach to scholarly organizations such as the Society for Ethnomusicology, American Folklore Society, International Council for Traditional Music, American Anthropological Association, and Local Learning: The National Network for Folk Arts in Education to make scholars and educators aware of the programs. We will reach a broader audience through podcasts and the on-line KRAB radio website.

Optometry Cares – The AOA Foundation (Foundation) respectfully requests $19,925 to support a project of the Archives and Museum of Optometry (AMO). The AMO proposes a 12-month project to digitally preserve and provide online access to 60 hours of rare interviews recorded between 1965 and 1979. Narrators featured in the recordings are significant for their contributions to the organization of the American Optometric Association (AOA) and to the evolution of the profession of optometry in the early twentieth century. This project will enlist the Northeast Document Conservation Center to reformat 48 rare, at-risk, and poorly documented magnetic audiotapes. AMO staff will ensure the long-term preservation of the original carriers, digital masters, and access files and publish and promote these resources, descriptive metadata, transcripts, and finding aids online.

TAMIS seeks to digitize and provide access to thirty ¼-inch reel-to-reel audio tapes recorded in East Tennessee in the 1950s, representing an array of musical styles produced in the region. Captured on the tapes comprising the Jack Comer, Valley Records and Mark Pritcher collections are field recordings of African American and White Protestant church revivals, shape note singing, old time music concerts, a reunion concert by Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey and studio recordings made by regional country and pop musicians. The recordings will be converted to digital files, cataloged and made accessible to scholars, researchers and the general public. The accessibility of these tapes will offer audio documents presenting the diversity of music created and heard in East Tennessee in the 1950s.