The Un-Boxing Hidden HBCU Collections twenty-four month project seeks to digitize and improve discoverability and access to the cultural heritage of HBCUs, providing insight into their impacts on local communities, African-American communities and national higher education community. The HBCU collections proposed for digitization span from 1724 to 2014, document leadership, scholarship, community service and history through photos, slave ship manifests, presidential letters, speeches and papers (especially of the Civil Rights Movement and World War II era), audiovisual recordings, and research documentation regarding African-American life. The Atlanta University Center Woodruff Library, Bethune-Cookman University, Johnson C. Smith University, Lincoln University Missouri, Mississippi Valley State University, Morehouse School of Medicine, Savannah State University and Xavier University will contribute materials to this collaborative project through the HBCU Library Alliance, creating standard processes that integrate best practices among participants and using a collaborative portal for public access within the context of existing HBCU digital collections.

The Frederick W. Taylor collection documents the U.S. Progressive Era, which flourished between the 1890s and 1920s. The Progressives supported scientific methods to solve problems, and established an Efficiency Movement in every sector which could identify old ways that needed modernizing. Frederick W. Taylor accomplished many things in his short life (1884-1915), but he is best known as being the father of Scientific management, also called Taylorism. Scientific management was a theory of management that analyzed and synthesized workflows. Its main objective was improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. This collection documents the history of scientific management, technology, innovation, and engineering. Taylor's impact was felt globally, from Henry Ford's assembly line, to Lenin's Soviet Russia. His theories on management changed how workers worked, and this impact is still felt today. Digitizing this collection will allow interested researchers across the globe to make important new scholarly connections.

The center of an international oil industry, Nantucket, Massachusetts, sent ships around the globe in pursuit of whales whose oil lit houses, streets, and lighthouses of America and Europe, and lubricated the machines of the industrial revolution. The NHA will digitize original manuscript resources for the study of Nantucket Whaling, 1750-1870: logbooks recording more than 800 whaling voyages; account books of individuals and businesses associated with whaling; ships' papers; business records of oil merchants Charles and Henry Coffin; and the journals of island historian Obed Macy. Partnering with the NHA, New Bedford Whaling Museum (NBWM) and Nantucket Atheneum (NA) will digitize Nantucket-based logbooks, account books, and relevant manuscript collections in an effort to create a focused digital resource for one of the world's primary whaling centers. Digital content will be created by Internet Archive and NBWM, hosted by Internet Archive, and linked to the database records of participating institutions.

The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries proposes digitization of approximately 105,000 negatives from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection, 1934-1955. This time period includes significant historical events such as the end of the Great Depression, World War II, the birth of the Cold War, and other notable events. This collection is the only extant publicly available newspaper photo morgue in the region, and the vast majority of these images were never published. The negatives are currently accessible to patrons only through the mediation of UTA Libraries Special Collections staff, which makes it a truly hidden collection ripe for global exposure through the digitization efforts proposed in this grant. These negatives will be scanned as .TIFFs for preservation, and .JPGs will be derived for online open access. The index for the negatives will reside in a newly created database, rich with metadata and widely available via a website interface.

Richard "Scotty" MacNeish was a preeminent archaeologist known for his search for the origin of agriculture and civilization in the Americas and beyond, a prolific researcher and author, and pioneer of interdisciplinary research. MacNeish was a controversial and larger-than-life figure in the history of American archaeology, often pushing the limits regarding the first colonization of the Americas and the origins of agriculture. The Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology will engage the Northeast Document Conservation Center to digitize the image collection from the MacNeish archive estimated at 10,000 images. Images from projects in Mexico, Peru, Belize, the United States, and China will provide a comprehensive account of his work at archaeological sites. The Museum will make the images and metadata available on its PastPerfect Online website, and on Digital Commonwealth, which supports cultural heritage institutions in Massachusetts. The Digital Commonwealth is a ServiceHub for the Digital Public Library of America.

The University and Jepson Herbaria propose a 1.5-year project to make freely available online the papers of the husband and wife pioneering botanical team John Gill Lemmon and Sara Plummer Lemmon. This project will involve the digitization of two collections, the John Gill and Sara Plummer Lemmon papers, and the St. John Collection of Sara Plummer and John Gill Lemmon material. Additionally, botanical specimens collected by the Lemmons will be digitized. Digitized archives material will be linked to existing finding aids in ArchivesSpace. Where available, existing transcriptions will be added to the metadata for each digital object to improve access. Digitized specimens will be made available via our existing specimen database, CollectionSpace, and links between the specimens and pertinent archives material will be created. Providing free access to this material online will benefit scholars of botany, the history of the West, the Civil War, and women's history among others.

The Institute of Jazz Studies seeks funding to digitize and make publicly available the James P. Johnson Music and Personal Papers,a collection only available to users through on-site visits. The collection consists of music manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, business records, and ephemera documenting Johnson's career as a composer and performer in the early 20th century New York jazz scene. If completed, this project will open Johnson's personal and professional papers to a broader audience. James P. Johnson (1894-1955) occupies a unique place in American musical history whose accomplishments transcend any single genre. Known as the "Father of Stride Piano," he pioneered the development of jazz piano style, serving as a model for Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, and all who followed. Johnson wrote in a variety of idioms, from popular songs to extended works (Yamekraw, Harlem Symphony), and was one of the first African Americans to penetrate Broadway in the 1920s.

This 18 month project of the Redemptorists Denver Province entails the digitization of thousands of manuscripts and print items related to the history of their seminaries and communities. Materials consist of hand-written school and community annals and hand-made original school publications dating from the mid-19th to mid-20th century. Most 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. The digitization and metadata production of these materials will enable scholars from multiple disciplines to access this unique collection in order to research the way in which religious orders lived, worked and studied at the height of religious fervor in the United States.

The Caltech Archives acquired the personal papers of Richard Feynman in the period between 1968 and 1988. In 2015, on the 50th anniversary of Feynman's receipt of the Nobel Prize in physics and of the publication of The Feynman Lectures on Physics, the Archives proposes to digitize Feynman's papers in order to promote and preserve his legacy to the fullest extent possible using the best of current technology. This proposal would enable the "hidden" work of this eminent physicist and educator to be used by a wide range of scholars and the general public for study and research.

This 24-month project will digitize the diaries, scrapbooks, and complete file of over 21,000 letters of John Bigelow and his immediate family held in the Special Collections Department of Schaffer Library at Union College. Bigelow (1817-1911), subject of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Forgotten First Citizen by Margaret Clapp (Little Brown, 1947) was an author, abolitionist, newspaper editor, diplomat, and influential public servant throughout his long life, and this digitization project will make available to scholars the largest archive of Bigelow material in the world. The project will be accompanied by a vigorous outreach program that will encourage immediate use of the collections, contribute metadata as well digital surrogates to a variety of platforms, provide professional transcriptions of the diaries in addition to a mechanism by which the public can submit draft transcriptions of the letters, and make catalog data about Bigelow's personal library more widely available for study and enhancement.

This three-year project, a collaborative effort of Amherst and Mt. Holyoke Colleges, would support digitization, metadata creation, and unified access for interrelated collections of alumni who were missionaries in the Near East. Through this grant we will: align our digitization and metadata practices, creating new efficiencies and providing a foundation for future collaboration; digitize approximately 11,850 discrete items comprised of an estimated 46,000 digital images; create metadata for these items that enables chronological and geographic visualizations of the materials; provide public access to the collection and expose it for metadata harvesting; and engage a community of scholars and faculty to gather information about use of these materials in their research and teaching. The collections document the lives and cultures of a variety of ethnic groups in the Near East, and serve a range of scholars in politics, international relations, history, gender studies, religion, geography, and other disciplines.

Saratoga Springs was the place “to see and be seen” socially, and the popularity of stereographic images of the "scenes" was international. While many of these images exist in multiple repositories, often the descriptions are minimal and the people unidentified. The goal of this eighteen month project is to make available to researchers the stereoscopic and postcard images, with corresponding metadata and contextual descriptions that are currently hidden in the collections of Saratoga Springs Public Library and the Saratoga Springs Historical Society . The largest collection is the Robert Joki Stereoscopic Collection which is comprised of over 1400 images; many considered unique not only because of the scenes they depict but because of the reputation, style and popularity of the photographer. In addition to the Joki Collection, SSPL and the SSHS hold an additional 325 orphan images and approximately 900 postcards to also be included in the project.

Aligning with the mission of the BMRC of making primary source records accessible, this digitization project will provide access and preserve audio recordings of interviews, music, and community-based programs and make them available to researchers, scholars, and other information users in Chicago and beyond. These recordings are highly significant for research, and provide an encounter with real time and space through a unique window of 20th century vernacular information documenting subjects of important value to African American history in Chicago and the United States. In an effort to expand access and intellectual control of Chicago's African American heritage, this project focuses on entire collections or major series contained within processed collections. The materials cover a dynamic time period in Chicago's history, the 1940s-1980s - African American leadership in labor unions, White Flight, civil unrest, the growth of Black radio, and life in Chicago's public housing.

The Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS) plans to digitize and make available 5000 Audio files including: 1/4" Reel Tape; audio/mpeg; Cassette Tape; CD-ROMs from the Living Legends Collection. The interviews selected will reflect the state's political, cultural, and economic history, span Oklahoma regionally and cover the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century time period. The OHS believes that this undertaking will successfully contribute to the public's access to these regionally significant interviews.

The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum (NCWHM) proposes to digitize the 2 most utilized collection resources of the Museum and the source material for numerous books, periodicals, and research papers-- the Arthur and Shifra Silberman Native American Archival Collection and the James Earle Fraser and Laura Gardin Fraser Papers. These collections are paramount in terms of diverse resources, subject matter, and insight into a variety of social, political, economic, and cultural influences that have shaped and still shape the 20th century American art movement. Within 2 years (2016-2017), the NCWHM will digitize 180,000 image files from the Silberman Collection and Fraser Papers, as well as 590 audio files from the Silberman Collection. The digital information will be shared worldwide via an online portal, with detailed metadata easily accessible to viewers, allowing for a greater understanding of any item within the collection and the collection as a whole.

This funding request is for the creation of an online digital database catalog that will feature the OMA's 1,000 object Art of the Ancient Americas collection. The project will take place over two years from January 2016 until December 2017. The Museum's prized Ancient Americas collection represents the most comprehensive collection of Pre-Columbian artifacts in the southeastern United States. The OMA will employ personnel with significant digitization experience to manage the project. Artifacts will be digitally captured using an 80 megapixel camera and 3-D video scans. Digital images and research data will be made available via an open access catalog website using Gallery Systems' EmbARK Web Kiosk online collections management software. The OMA will utilize Anthropology and Archeology graduate students from various Florida universities to create cursory data and catalog each object according to international museum standards. The project will be publicized to interested scholars and museums throughout the world.

The McGovern Historical Center (MHC) seeks to provide access to the Medical Arts Publishing Foundation Collection through the digitization, description and online presentation of approximately 1,100 works of original art, ranging from illustrations, cover art and medical portraits produced between 1948 - 1980, the majority dating from the 50s and 60s. This project will provide access to this large important art collection through multiple online access points through the MHC website, the TMC Library Institutional Repository (Digital Commons), UNT - Portal to Texas History and the Digital Public Library of America.

History Colorado seeks to create public and scholarly access through cataloging and digitization of the Sam Howe Ledgers in our collection. In 1874, Sam Howe was appointed one of Denver's original thirteen policemen. These 71 ledgers, from 1863-1934, include indexes, scrapbooks, and murder case ledgers that document crime, criminology, and human behavior in Denver, Colorado. Howe served 47 years in law enforcement and meticulously clipped, indexed, and cross-referenced newspaper articles that reported on crime, criminals, and law enforcement in Denver. Due to their fragility, the collection has been closed to research with very few exceptions. With this one-year project starting in April 2016, we will scan, transcribe, and catalog all 71 ledgers and make them accessible online in their entirety. The ledgers provide a unique and detailed insight into the scholarship of race and ethnicity, socio-economic status, sex, age, and how they correlated with crime in Denver and the West.

New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, in partnership with the Museum of the City of New York, seeks to verify, catalog, and digitize the archaeological collection excavated in City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan. City Hall completed in 1811, stands in the midst of the City's former Commons which were an important Colonial gathering place. Over the past thirty years, eleven archaeological excavations have uncovered close to 100,000 artifacts. Unfortunately, these have remained largely inaccessible to researchers and the public. The City Hall Park Collection records will be integrated with the City's KeepThinking database and made available on a public search portal on nyc.gov. Entries will be enriched to include historical events, descriptions, and cross-referenced to other collections and over 10,000 high resolution photographs will be taken representing 10% of the collection. This innovative database, will allow the new identification of vertical and horizontal connections in this collection and others.

The Municipal Art Society of New York (MAS) requests funding to digitize a portion of its archival collections - publications, newsletters, reports, audio and audiovisual recordings - that document both MAS's activities over a 115 year period and, more generally, the transition in urban planning scholarship from city beautification to "livable city" planning. The diverse and valuable source materials under consideration record MAS's major advocacy work, including influential conversations and publications that helped initiate, promote, and develop several pivotal urban planning movements and trends during the 20th century. Digitizing these "hidden" collections would greatly expand their reach and accessibility to scholars, students, and MAS staff; advance scholarship; and reveal new knowledge on the study and history of urban planning.

George Eastman House will digitize the photography collections of Gabriel Cromer and Alden Scott Boyer. These materials comprise the foundation upon which our internationally recognized photography collection was built. Approximately 6,625 items will be made freely available to the public through online access. These collections provide a wealth of primary source materials for scholars and others interested in nineteenth-century French, British and American photography, as .well as the history of photography. Digitization and online access will increase public awareness of these collections, will facilitate free access to the materials from anywhere in the world, and will maximize staff efficiency. Funds are requested to hire four individuals whose sole responsibility will be to digitize and catalog photographic objects from these collections and to assure free access through the museum's website. Grant funds are also requested for necessary equipment rental.

This project aims to digitize a portion of the holdings of the Clatsop County Historical Society in Astoria, Oregon. Currently, the museum has these photographic collections: the Frank Woodfield collection (ca. 1902 – 1944); the Daily Astorian negatives (1973 – 1989); the Wilson Studio collection (ca. 1911 – 1939); the Ralph Horton collection (ca. 1909 – 1964); and the Reuben Jensen collection (ca. 1920 – 1940). The museum has all the rights to these collections, and while most of them are available to the general public, very little has been digitized, and thus require a researcher to view them in person. This project would make these available to anyone online.

Vision Maker Media, a non-profit documentary film company funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, will work to digitize and make available a large collection of documentary films, television productions and raw footage, created between 1976 and 2010. Over 500 individual films will be digitized, with formats ranging from 1” reels to Betacam Digital. The majority of this media is documentaries by and about American Indians and Alaska Natives and represent both historical and contemporary stories from Tribes all across the U.S. The documentaries that are represented in this collection tell Native stories from a Native viewpoint, and are representative of some of the most important works of Native American filmmakers in the late 20th century. The collection will be useful to scholars in many fields, Native American communities, and the public.

The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) proposes to fully digitize a major portion of its pristine and comprehensive set of ocean liner ephemera from the years 1909 through 1939. Considered the largest and premier collection of such materials, it covers the whole array of travel materials produced by ocean liners in the United States and abroad, and covers a geographical area that encompasses virtually every continent and island from the Caribbean to the South Seas. Currently unavailable except by personal visit, a fully digitized online version of this first part of the collection will provide valuable resources to scholars, curators and others in various fields, including art, design, architecture, social, advertising history and culinary and guest management studies. The breadth of the materials from brochures to menus, to wardrobe suggestions to deck plans and excursion trips and maps will encourage cross- and multidisciplinary exchanges of newly available insights and knowledge.

The Science of Mind is "a philosophy, a faith, a way of life" that impacts lives worldwide. The unique archival history and manuscripts of Ernest Holmes, the founder of Science of Mind, as well as other founding leaders of New Thought History are safely kept at the Science of Mind Archives and Library Foundation (SOM Archives). Since this collection is in paper, film, audio and photographic format and stored in boxes, this important scholarly work cannot be fully utilized until it is digitized and available on the internet. The SOM Archives is repository of documented history for a movement spanning over 100 years for which this Archive is the only existing source. The materials are utilized by churches, ministers and practitioners, universities, ministerial students, researchers, and spiritual seekers worldwide. Because few such resources exist, we are the hub of this information, making this project extremely viable and valuable.