Increasing Access to Diverse Public Library Local History Collections

FAIN: PW-296772-24

Internet Archive (San Francisco, CA 94129-1711)
Thomas Padilla (Project Director: July 2023 to September 2024)
Anna Trammell (Project Director: September 2024 to present)

The digitization of nine local history collections dating from 1839-2011 from seven historical organizations across the country, focusing on communities that are underrepresented in the historical record, resulting in 411,000 digital files. 

The Internet Archive seeks support for Access to Diverse Public Library Local History Collections, a two-year, Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Implementation grant. This grant will fund the digitization of and permanent online access to nine collections from seven public libraries across the United States that will provide researchers with critical resources documenting the political, economic, and social factors that impact local communities and have shaped the lives of their diverse inhabitants over the last 200 years. These collections will be brought together in an aggregated online access portal of digital collections focused on local history and underrepresented communities, made freely accessible online to any user with search and discovery, and promoted to researchers, historians, genealogists, local communities, and the general public for use in education, research, and scholarship.