The National Historical Publications and Records Commission seeks proposals to publish online editions of historical records. All types of historical records are eligible, including documents, photographs, born-digital records, and analog audio. Projects may focus on broad historical movements in U.S. history, including any aspect of African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and Native American history, such as law (including the social and cultural history of the law), politics, social reform, business, military, the arts, and other aspects of the national experience.
The goal of this program is to provide access to, and editorial context for, the historical documents and records that tell the American story. Applicants should demonstrate familiarity with the best practices recommended by the Association for Documentary Editing (ADE) or the Modern Language Association (MLA) Committee on Scholarly Editions . Because of the focus on historical documentary sources, grants do not support preparation of critical editions of published works unless such works are just a small portion of the larger project.
New Projects:
All new projects (those which have never received NHPRC funding) must have definitive plans for publishing and preserving a digital edition which provides online access to a searchable, fully-transcribed and annotated collection of documents. New projects may also prepare print editions as part of their overall publishing plan, but the contents of those volumes must be published in a fully-searchable digital edition within a reasonable period of time following print publication. The NHPRC encourages projects to provide free public access to online editions. Projects that do not have suitable plans for digital dissemination and preservation in place at the time of application will not be considered.
Collaboration:
Grants are awarded to collaborative teams (including at least two scholar-editors, in addition to one or more archivists, digital scholars, data curators, and/or other support and technical staff, as necessary) for collecting, describing, preserving, compiling, transcribing, annotating, editing, encoding, and publishing documentary source materials online. We strongly encourage applications from collaborative teams that include BIPOC faculty and staff in key positions, and that include editorial, archival, and technical staff at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Tribal Colleges, and/or other Indigenous and Native American tribal scholars and community members, and members of the Asian American community. We also encourage projects to seek out community members as well as undergraduate and graduate students to contribute to (and benefit from) participation in all phases of the project.
With the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaching, the Commission also invites projects that promote discovery and access to collections that explore the ideals behind our nation's founding and the continuous debate over those ideals to the present day.
This grant program does not support the production of film or video documentaries. For a comprehensive list of the Commission's limitations on funding, please see https://www.archives.gov/nhprc/apply/eligibility.html.