Storage Furniture and Materials to Preserve Archival Collections

FAIN: PG-51773-12

Appalshop, Inc. (Whitesburg, KY 41858-0743)
Caroline Rubens (Project Director: May 2011 to November 2013)

The purchase of storage furniture and preservation supplies to rehouse the organization's institutional records documenting the art, culture, and social history of Appalachia and rural America. The archive includes meeting minutes, project files, financial records, publicity, original artwork, and emphemera produced by of one of the oldest community arts organziations in the United States.

Appalshop is seeking funds to re-house the first 10 years of its legacy paper collection. Appalshop is a 41-year old community media center located in the coalfields of southeastern Kentucky. Its creation in 1969 was a product of both a War on Poverty program to train underserved youths in media production, and of the community media movement of the late 1960’s. Appalshop’s earliest paper records demonstrate how a film production workshop for high school students grew into a self-governing media arts and education center, and also how, through its activities, the organization captured aspects of Appalachian life that were not being documented elsewhere. Many of Appalshop’s earliest documents are in their original acidic folders and boxes. There are also oversize paper items from its first decade that require a flat file cabinet for proper storage. This grant will enable the archive to migrate these important documents to greatly improved archival storage micro-environments.