Harry Ransom Center (U. of Texas at Austin) Receives NEH Grant to Preserve, Provide Access to 2,862 At-Risk Sound Recordings
From the Harry Ransom Center, U. of Texas at Austin:
Cultural figures such as Julia Alvarez, Truman Capote, William Faulkner, Norman Bel Geddes, Norman Mailer, Anne Sexton, and Gloria Swanson will be publicly available for research.
We’re thrilled to announce that the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded the Ransom Center $195,141 to preserve, through digitization, 2,862 at-risk sound recordings. This large-scale, two-year project begins September 2018.
Our curators, preservation specialists, archivists, and librarians identified these recordings, from 48 collections, as priorities for preservation and access based on their significance, rareness, and physical condition.
All of them complement physical papers, manuscripts, documents, works of art, published works, artifacts, and other items in the archives of their creators. While those materials have been available to researchers for years, the sound recordings—the majority of which have not been transferred to a digital format—have been unavailable for research, leaving a critical body of unique information hidden.
Learn More About the Sound Recordings
See Also: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Announces $18.6 Million in Funding for 199 Humanities Projects Nationwide
Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Digital Preservation, Funding, Journal Articles, News, Preservation
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.