The Leather Archives & Museum (LA&M), a library, museum and archives pertaining to leather, fetishism, sadomasochism, and alternative sexual practices is seeking $78,320 to fund the digitization of two collections, publication of online finding aids, and creation of associated metadata for the personal archival collections of Jim Kane and Michele Buchanan. The project is estimated to last 1 year and 7 months. The historically evolving significance and scholarship of sexuality collections has lead the LA&M to choose Buchanan and Kane's collections for this grant cycle. These collections showcase two prominent, innovative, and active members of the leather community whose contributions to articulating and enacting leather identity and practice helped shape and continues to inspire modern leather communities.

Digitization of biological specimens is gaining momentum in museums, universities, and botanical gardens worldwide. The sum of these specimen records represents a rich temporal and spatial perspective of biodiversity on our planet. It informs our understanding of past processes and provides guidance in answering current and future questions of societal importance. The Smithsonian Institution is engaged in an ongoing effort to digitize our biological holdings in a strategic manner. We intend for the product of our work to be immediately useful in addressing both the past and the future. This proposal aims to digitize our complete collection of Fabaceae, a plant family of great importance to crop production and other economic and cultural concerns. Using newly developed rapid digitization technology, we will create digital records of 245,000 plant specimens at an unprecedented rate. All digital content will be made publicly available to scholars, content aggregators, and the general public.

WIS-tv "Awareness" began in 1970, having the distinction of being the first African-American themed and produced television news program in South Carolina. Airing weekly on Saturday nights, the show featured news relevant to South Carolina's Black community. While no taped copies of the shows as broadcast over the air are known to exist from this period, the WIS-tv "Awareness" films at the University of South Carolina represent the original 16mm film elements of the studio interviews and location sequences that made up the bulk of "Awareness" programing. USC will (1) prepare these 16mm films for digitization, (2) outsource their digitization, (3) catalog the films, (4) upload the videos to its online video repository so they can be viewed for free, and then (5) store the digital preservation master files in its asset management system.

The core collection of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture Archive is a photographic archive of student work from the 1930s through the present. Largely unpublished, the collection represents a comprehensive trajectory of the pedagogy of architecture at The Cooper Union for over 75 years. The proposed project entails the digitization of photographic negatives, prints, and transparencies of 2,966 documented works spanning from the 1930s to 2006, and the development of an online research database to provide unlimited access to what is now a primarily closed collection. It is anticipated that this digitization and cataloging project will be a 22-month undertaking. The results of the effort will serve as an invaluable resource for student, faculty, and academic/historical research, providing direct access to the photographic archive of a school that has made a significant impact on the education of young architects across the globe.

This project would digitize the extensive collection of negatives created by Fred Bridenstine over a 50 year period starting in 1940 in Beaverhead County, Montana. He was a gifted amateur photographer as well as a dedicated outdoors-man with a fine collection of cameras. He was the official rodeo photographer for 30 years, retiring at age 75, saying: I had many close calls but was never hurt." He photographed all of the local athletic teamsthe major buildings in the community both old and newthe mines in the county, many of the ranches and nearly every lake and stream that could be reached by foot or horseback.

The Newport Historical Society (NHS) seeks to create access to approximately 13,000 glass plate negatives and lantern slides through a comprehensive digitization initiative. This project will entail not only the digitization of these physically fragile materials, but metadata cataloging and inclusion in the NHS's online platforms for public access. The collections span circa 1910-1940 and represent an underemphasized period in scholarship about Newport's significant history. Of these, 7,405 comprise the Newport Daily News Glass Plate Negative Collection, significant for its documentation of current events from this time period. Over the course of 18 months, the Newport Historical Society will have the collection photographed off-site. A Project Cataloger will work with our librarian and historian to create descriptive metadata and catalog each digital image in an open source collections management system. Upon completing digitization and creating online access, scholarship and programming related to the collections will be provided to the public.

This 2-year project will digitize the papers and particular publications of the American Seamen's Friend Society, a seamen's benevolent association. Included are letters from shipmasters, reports on sailors' homes in ports worldwide, bethel ship reports, shipboard library reports and testimonials, meeting minutes, periodicals and brochures of the A.S.F.S. from the founding of the Society in 1828 until the time it closed its doors in 1975.Of special interest are such papers as the "Colored Sailors Home Reports,(New York), 1855-1866," detailing the plight of black sailors and including descriptions of the N.Y. Civil War Riots of 1863. The papers and publications will greatly enhance the collection of the A.S.F.S. publication, The Sailor's Magazine, already digitized by Harvard and Princeton. Valuable as a source for religious, social and labor studies, the collection will be accessible through the Library's website, the National Maritime Digital Library (www.nmdl.org) and the Internet Archive.

The proposed project, "Academy Sights and Sounds," will create and make available online hundreds of digital copies of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences' audiovisual materials, which offer recordings of significant lectures, Stated Meetings, Friday Forums, conferences, various concerts, and other events related to the work of the Academy. Under the "Academy Sights and Sounds" project, audio recordings and select video recordings of significant historical value will be digitized and posted on the Academy website (www.amacad.org). These materials will form subject groups that highlight the breadth of expertise demonstrated by the Academy and its membership throughout the decades. For example, a grouping of recordings based on literature would include a 1966 reading of the poetry of Edmund Wilson, John Updike's 1983 presentation on "Rereading Emerson," and Robert Frost's lecture upon receiving the Emerson-Thoreau Award, among other items.

The digitization of the Cranbrook Academy of Art master's thesis collection from 1942 to 2015 will give scholars access to this rich source of information on Cranbrook's important contributions to 20th and 21st century art, design, and architecture. Cranbrook will contract with ProQuest to produce searchable PDFs of the theses which will be loaded on the Academy's web server. ProQuest will also provide MARC records for the library's online catalog to link to these PDFs. In addition, access to the PDFs will be provided through Cranbrook's CONTENTdm system. The project will also fund additional staff to help with securing permissions from alumni, loading MARC records into the library's SirsiDynix Horizon system, checking authority records, and linking to the PDFs. It is anticipated that the project will take 24 months to complete.

Philadelphia is the iconic city of the American Revolution, home to the Continental Congress, Independence Hall, and the Liberty Bell. Most Americans associate it with the Declaration of Independence, the founding of a new nation, and the story of how a united citizenry declared themselves free, overthrowing a monarchy to create a democracy. The project will tell this story through collections housed in four of Philadelphia's great repositories: the American Philosophical Society, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and the University of Pennsylvania. These institutions hold the papers of some of the best-known Philadelphia revolutionaries, such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine. However, the project will do more than tell their well-established story. Its primary goal is to comprehensively digitize the vast array of small, often-overlooked, collections in these institutions that tell the compelling personal story of how the Revolution affected the city and its residents.

Carnegie Museum of Art (CMOA) proposes to digitize archival materials related to the Carnegie International, the longest running contemporary art survey in North America and the second oldest globally. From 2016-2018, CMOA will digitize correspondence, photographs, catalogues, and ephemera, central to the Carnegie International collection; publish digital surrogates according to applicable law; and disseminate catalogue records and metadata through cmoa.org and other accessible avenues. Using a unique metadata strategy developed by museum staff that treats archival records as vitally important elements in a holistic collections management system, CMOA will open this hidden collection to the digital world and provide unprecedented historical context to artworks displayed in the International across the globe. The primary focus includes digitization of its contents from exhibition years spanning 1941-1991, with additional items from 1896-1940. The Smithsonian Archives of American Art have digitized the bulk of the International materials from 1896-1940.

The AMRC is a repository of historic and precious musical materials. The GMA, part of the AMRC, is housed and curated in the University Libraries on the Boulder campus. The GMA is a national treasure preserving thousands of rare and unique audio recordings, documents, photographs and memorabilia from the Big Band Era. The legacies of many prominent artists and private collectors are entrusted to the GMA. The objective of the GMA is to preserve, enhance and share this musical tradition. Among the 56 Collections preserved by the GMA are the Edward Burke, Richard March and Walter C. Scott Collections. The analog recordings in these key collections are among most important private compendia of circa 1930-1960 broadcasts and recordings in existence. The goal of this project is to digitize recordings, photographs, documents and periodicals to make these significant collections available for scholars, students and the public.

Binghamton University is requesting funds for the digitization of materials in the Vera Beaudin Saeedpour Kurdish Library & Museum Collection. The Saeedpour Collection is a significant assemblage of materials documenting Kurdish culture and is reported to be the largest of its kind in North America. Given the size and complexity of this collection, we anticipate the project to take two years to complete. Bound journals and newspapers will be outsourced for digitization and unbound journals, newspapers, correspondence, and photographs will be digitized in-house. Clothing, artifacts, and jewelry will be photographed by a professional photographer. Funding will be requested for employee assistants to digitize and document the collection and assist with the creation of metadata for online access. These assistants will include an archivist/Middle Eastern historian, project assistant, Kurdish translator, and student assistants. Digitizing these materials will provide researchers and scholars global access to the collection.

This one-year project will result in approximately 9,000 scans of leaves of correspondence and journal pages, contained within 13 boxes (310 folders) of the Wyck Papers. The primary focus will be on material dating from the late 18th century through the 1840s, a period when Wyck's residents played significant roles in the development of such Philadelphia institutions as the Franklin Institute and the Academy of Natural Sciences. This group of papers represents approximately 10% of the total collection and has been targeted because of its importance for humanities scholarship. Correspondence within the collection from influential Americans such as Charles Willson Peale, Bronson Alcott, John James Audubon, Thomas Say, William Bartram, and Thomas Nuttall remains largely unexplored by scholars. The collections of Hannah Marshall Haines (1765-1828), Reuben Haines III (1786-1831), and Jane Bowne Haines (1790-1843) will be digitized and rehoused. The digital database will be accessible to researchers online.

SFAI's collections trace a cultural history that encompasses the San Francisco Bay Area and at the same time has significant international scope and impact. The collections amassed during SFAI's nearly 150-year history include audiotapes of public and classroom lectures, and catalogs, images, press, ephemera, and other documentation from decades of seminal exhibitions"”all of which shed light on a broad swath of social and cultural history in the San Francisco Bay Area, and, by extension, the world. The collections that reflect this illustrious history comprise a rich resource for scholars in a range of disciplines, from art and art history to politics, literature, architecture, history, physics, geography, and many others. Locally, nationally and internationally, the researchers who consult the archives are students, academic scholars, curators, filmmakers, journalists, writers, and others. What they glean from their research becomes known to the world through lectures and college courses, books, films, exhibitions, and articles.

Virginia Tech maintains the largest and longest continually operating archives in the world for women in architecture. This two-year project will digitize, describe, and provide virtual access to approximately 1,200 cubic feet of materials documenting the contributions of women to architecture and design in the 20th century. These digitized collections, freely accessible to and discoverable by scholars around the world, will promote a more complete understanding of women's contributions to modern architectural history and the progression of global architectural theory and practice. Representing the work of 50 individual women from the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America, the selected collections comprise architectural drawings and design sketches, personal and professional correspondence, project files, and photographs. Digitization will support international scholarship in several fields, including architecture and design, higher education, gender studies, urban studies, history, and sociology.

This two-year pilot project is a natural outgrowth of SAH's three innovative online educational resources and the realization of a project to preserve and share endangered, original 35 mm slide collections created by 20th century scholars, preservationists, design practitioners and photographers of the built environment. SAH recognizes the importance of this unique 75-year period of intellectual history that documents the built environment and aims to facilitate its preservation, digitization, and access by partnering with libraries and other institutions including Harvard Graduate School of Design Information Resources and University of California Santa Barbara Image Resource Center that have the technical and physical capacity to process and house them. The body of work in these collections, which includes lost and radically changed buildings and landscapes, will enhance both scholarly and public knowledge through images that were taken by a critical eye and present an informed perspective on our architectural and cultural heritage.

The Center for Book Arts is seeking funds to catalog and digitize two distinct parts of our permanent collections: Institutional Archives and Prints Collection in our Fine Arts Collection, with the intention of opening them to researchers, scholars, artists, and students. The Center is dedicated to advancing contemporary and traditional book arts practices. We seek to facilitate communication between the book arts community and the larger spheres of contemporary visual and literary arts. The Center's Archive contains the record of its forty-year history of exhibitions, publications, courses, and ephemera. While being a discrete component within the Fine Arts Collection, the Prints collection includes relief prints such as woodcuts, letterpress broadsides, etchings, and other oversize flat paper items, most of which were produced at the Center. Together, the Center's Archive and this Prints Collection, chronicle an under-studied part of New York's artistic and literary scene from the 1970s to the present.

The Middle East Institute (MEI) proposes to digitize three collections of images currently held in the MEI Library. The MEI Library Visual Archives Project, a two-year endeavor, will be completed in cooperation with vendors M2Schema, Immerge Technologies, and consultants. The final product will include 25,138 digitized visual images housed in a fully searchable online catalog. These images include depictions of 85 years of Middle Eastern history (1920-2005) in 16 countries. The collections offer a unique, nuanced look at the geography, architecture, historic events, political figures, and day-to-day life in locations throughout the region, as provided by the sources' travel experiences and regional expertise. Whether looking at the changing nature of landscapes and urban areas, or culture, art and architecture, the scholarly impact of the digitization of these previously hidden resources is highly significant.

Over a three year period Stanford Libraries and the San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation (SFTJF) will arrange, describe, digitize and make accessible archival materials covering the history of West Coast traditional jazz, a topic on which little research has been done. These materials of significant research value will be digitized and presented as a curated collection, and the digital files will be added to the Stanford Digital Repository. In 1939 the Yerba Buena Jazz Band was formed to play New Orleans style jazz in San Francisco followed by the Turk Murphy Jazz Band from 1949-1984. The Murphy Band and the other bands it spawned were among the principal influences behind the international traditional jazz revival for forty years. There are 200 linear feet of archives containing a wide variety of archival materials (print, photographs, audio, and video) documenting the traditional jazz revival on the West Coast.

Over a 3-year period, the Claremont Colleges Library, A.K. Smiley Public Library, California State University Northridge Oviatt Library, California State University San Bernardino Water Resources Institute, National Archives and Records Administration at Riverside, Ontario City Library, and Upland Public Library will digitize materials that originated from a variety of sources such as federal, state and local governments, water companies, local agencies, engineers and other individuals involved in water development in the region from the 19th through the 20th centuries. This project targets more than 60 archival collections to be digitized, uploaded to an online digital asset management system, and cataloged with descriptive metadata. The digitized collections will be accessible to all with internet access, provide a foundation for a Southern California "distributed" digital water resource archive, and promote water resource research via digital exhibits.

The proposed two-year project, Digitizing Hidden California Light and Sound will continue to build a unique reference and research resource called the California Light and Sound (CLS) collection, a collection of over 3,500 endangered, historically significant, audiovisual recordings of Californiana. To grow, enrich and complete a comprehensive collection in the making, the CAVPP proposes to digitize, preserve, and make available online 4,316 hidden audio, film and video recordings representing 21 collections from 16 partner archives, libraries and museums. Digitization of analog, obsolete, media is critical to enable access and save the content from oblivion, and will support research, teaching, and learning across a broad array of disciplines, including science, social science, political science, women's studies, Native American studies, African-American studies, Asian-American studies, urban studies, environmental studies, cultural studies, sociocultural anthropology, ethnomusicology, technology, religion, the visual arts, and media studies.

The Scopes Trial Online Archives is a three-year, collaborative project to create a database of materials related to the historical and cultural context of the trial. This collaboration involves four local archives in Dayton, Tennessee, where the trial took place. Bryan College will contribute the Robinson Photography Collection, the college history collection, and trial materials (21.5 linear feet). The Clyde W. Roddy Public Library will contribute the Dayton Coal and Iron Collection (three linear feet) and a book of records from the founding of Rhea county. The Rhea County Historical Society will contribute trial records and the John R. Neal, Jr. Collection (ten linear feet). Core Academy of Science will contribute 118 Scopes-era books and pamphlets on the evolution controversies. Digitized materials will be deposited into an EPrints database containing a digital copy of the trial transcript. The database will be useful for research into religion, science, economics, and history.

The Virginia Military Institute (VMI) proposes to catalogue, digitize, and release the Col. David M. Glantz '63 Collection on Soviet Military History. Col. Glantz is the premier historian of the Soviet military and the former head of the U.S. Army's Soviet Studies Office. This collection is the culmination of over 50 years of his extensive research and scholarship. It includes unique government documents, Soviet staff studies, and maps. This is a two-year project led by the Adams Center for Military History and Strategic Analysis at VMI in partnership with the George C. Marshall Foundation, the Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, and Washington and Lee University. Soviet armed forces played a critical role in global affairs from 1939-1991; this project will transform our collective understanding of 20th century international security affairs by giving scholars access to previously unavailable sources on Soviet military history.

The Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center (SLHC) has designed a two-year project to digitize and create detailed metadata of the Schwenkfelder Legacy Collection. Once digitized, these hidden collections will be made available on POWER Library PA and WorldCat. This project will offer scholars and educators the opportunity to study and interpret foundational documents of a significant immigrant group. The Schwenkfelders were among the first wave of German immigrant groups who settled Pennsylvania. The SLHC holds thousands of manuscripts dating mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries relating to the spiritual and temporal life of the Schwenkfelders. Included in the collection are diaries, journals, correspondence, church records, rare German hymnals, medical records, and annotated books that bring early American history to life within the context of this one group.