NEH: Preservation and Access Research and Development

The National Endowment for the Humanities' Preservation and Access Research and Development grants support projects that address major challenges in preserving or providing access to humanities collections and resources. These challenges include the need to find better ways to preserve materials of critical importance to the nation’s cultural heritage—from fragile artifacts and manuscripts to analog recordings and digital assets subject to technological obsolescence—and to develop advanced modes of searching, discovering, and using such materials.

Applicants should define a specific problem, devise procedures and potential solutions, and explain how they would evaluate their projects and disseminate their findings. Project results must serve the needs of a significant number of humanists.

In the last four competitions the Preservation and Access Research and Development program received an average of 21 applications per year. The program made an average of three awards per year, for a funding ratio of 14 percent.