[Discussion] ENDANGERED ARCHIVES PROGRAMME

[sule tarakcioglu]

*ENDANGERED ARCHIVES PROGRAMME*
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<http://www.h-net.org/announce/geography.cgi?geography=3DUnited%20Kingdom=
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ENDANGERED ARCHIVES PROGRAMME

Coming in October 2004

In pursuit of their general aim to support fundamental research into
important issues in the humanities and social sciences, the Trustees of
the Lisbet Rausing Charitable Fund have decided to sponsor a Programme
focusing on the preservation and copying of important but vulnerable
archives throughout the world.

The Programme is administered by the British Library and applications
will be considered by an International Panel of historians and archivists=
.

The Programme will achieve its objectives principally by making a number
of grants to individual researchers to locate relevant collections,
wherever possible to arrange their transfer to a suitable local archival
home, and to deliver copies into the international research domain via
the British Library. Pilot projects may also be funded. Grants will be
made each year and will vary in amount, but a guideline maximum of
=A350,000 for a full project, and =A310,000 for a pilot project, is envis=
aged.

It will also make available - to overseas archivists and librarians only
- bursaries for professional attachments at the British Library to
foster better archival standards in cataloguing, preservation, etc., and
thereby to assist the process of safeguarding other such collections
locally in the future.

The aim is to safeguard archival material relating to societies usually
at an early stage of development i.e. its normal focus will be on the
period of a society's history before 'modernisation' or
'industrialisation' had generated institutional and record-keeping
structures for the systematic preservation of historical records, very
broadly defined. The relevant time period will therefore mostly vary
according to the society with which we deal. The Programme will be
completely open as to theme and regional interest, although it will
normally, but not invariably, be concerned with non-western societies.

For the purposes of the Programme, archives will be interpreted widely
to embrace not only rare printed sources (books, serials, newspapers,
ephemera, etc.) and manuscripts in any language, but also visual
materials (drawings, paintings, prints, posters, photographs, etc.),
audio or video recordings, digital data, and even other objects and
artefacts - but normally only where they are found in association with a
documentary archive. In all cases, the validity of archival materials
for inclusion in the Programme will be assessed by their relevance as
source materials for the pre-industrial stage of a society's history.

The Fund does not offer grants to support the 'normal' activities of an
archive, although the Programme may offer support for such items as
costs directly related to the acceptance of relocated material.

Further information about the timetable, criteria, eligibility and
procedures will be announced on the Programme's website (address given
below) in October.

Preliminary enquiries or expressions of interest may be addressed now to:

	Email: eap@bl.uk <mailto:eap@bl.uk>
Visit the website at http://www.bl.uk/endangeredarchives