Of the People: Widening the Path: Community Collections Grant

The Library of Congress is announcing a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) to award grants in support of contemporary ethnographic field research focusing on the cultures and traditions of diverse communities across the United States.

Background

The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts in its collections. The Library has dedicated significant resources to collecting born-digital materials and digitizing its tangible collections. The Library’s Digital Strategy (www.loc.gov/digital-strategy) outlines the ways that technology and digital approaches can enable the Library to meet its goal of ensuring that “All Americans are connected to the Library of Congress.” The Library’s mission is to engage, inspire, and inform Congress and the American people with a universal and enduring source of knowledge and creativity.

Purpose

Through a gift from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Library will support a multiyear initiative that entails public participation in the creation of archival collections. Specifically, the Library of Congress seeks to award grants to support contemporary cultural documentation focusing on the culture and traditions of diverse, often underrepresented communities in the United States today. These projects will result in archival collections preserved at the American Folklife Center and made accessible through the Library of Congress’ web site. The major goals of this grant program are to enable communities to document their cultural traditions, practices, and experiences from their own perspectives, while enhancing the Library’s holdings with materials featuring creativity and knowledge found at the local level. As such, successful proposals will come from applicants within or closely affiliated with the community they propose to document.