SAA Foundation Awards Two Strategic Growth Grants

May 18, 2017—The SAA Foundation has awarded funding for two 2017-2018 grant projects from its Strategic Growth Fund. The SAAF provides grant funding for projects that meet the mission and goals of the SAA Foundation and the strategic planning priorities of the Society of American Archivists.  The 2017-2018 grant recipients are:

• Ben Goldman of Pennsylvania State University (principal investigator) and Eira Tansey of the University of Cincinnati (grant collaborator) for “Existence and Location of Originals: Gathering and Documenting Archival Repository Location Data,” a one-year project to identify, gather, standardize, and make publicly accessible United States archival repository location data. As noted in the grant application:  “Our primary objective...will be to improve the existing dataset through online research and expand it by incorporating data from other sources. While we do not expect this effort to result in a comprehensive dataset documenting the exact geo-coordinates of all archival repositories, we do believe it will represent the largest centralized, standardized, and interoperable dataset on US archival repository locations. A secondary objective…will be development of a model to support more granular identification and documentation of repository locations. We plan to engage representatives from selected regional archival associations representing coastal archives to lay the groundwork for development of such a model, which would enable better decision making concerning archival repository locations, as well as the creation of specialized regional case studies of archival risk. Finally, we will make the dataset generated through this effort openly accessible to the Society of American Archivists, its members, or other key constituents.” (View an abstract of the authors’ 2016 Research Forum presentation on this topic.)  Award amount: $5,000.

• JoyEllen Freeman of Kennesaw State University for a one-year project entitled “Community Curation Initiative Workshop for Indigenous Community Members.” As noted in the grant application:  “I believe that the first step toward ethically documenting the history of Native Americans in northwest Georgia is to establish a strong and trustworthy relationship with the members of the indigenous community in the surrounding areas. Hence, I seek funding for a day-long summer workshop that will bring indigenous community members into the Kennesaw State University Archives and allow them to participate in a ‘community curation’ initiative in preparation for [an] exhibit this fall. During the workshop, participants will gain knowledge about the nature, value, and importance of their archives; receive hands-on experience caring for archives; discuss various perspectives and materials they would like to see represented in an indigenous exhibit; and most importantly, begin establishing a healthy and trustworthy relationship with the KSU Archives.” Award amount: $1,000.

Read about the grant application process and guidelines here.  Applications for grant funding in the next cycle are due by February 1, 2018.