Retention of thirteen staff members and two consultants to create two online exhibits and digitize additional archival materials.

This Country Music Collections and Interpretation Remote Access Project will, for the first time, allow the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum to curate and present, at no cost to the public, two major multimedia exhibits on the Museum's website, and to add more than 300 seminal collection objects to its Digital Archive, while ensuring retention for staff assigned to the project.

The purchase of archival quality rehousing supplies for the 6,190 large-format still image portraits retained in the Fabry collection that document approximately 600 country music artists and changes in their instruments and costumes from the 1940s to 1960s. The Fabry photographs capture the development of artists over time, revealing and documenting cultural changes in make-up, hairstyles, and positioning indicative of the powerful marketing and promotional tools typical of the entertainment industry. The images provide a glimpse into major celebrities such as Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, and Roy Orbison, as well as lesser-known artists. The corpus is used in research, education, publications, and documentaries.

The Country Music Foundation, Inc. requests a Preservation Assistance Grant to fund the purchase of preservation supplies needed to rehouse a collection of large format negatives in the photo collection. The Fabry Collection is a collection of images taken by photographer Walden S. Fabry, who ran a photo studio in Nashville that catered to country music artists during the late 1940s through the early 1960s.

The preservation and provision of intellectual access to three collections documenting the history of country music in America: 1) Bob Pinson Recorded Sound Collection, 2) Moving Image Collection: Bobby Bare and Friends, and 3) Photo Collection: Fabry Still Image Collection.

The Country Music Foundation (CMF) requests a grant of $347,132 over a two-year period. The purpose of the project is to preserve and increase access to three rare and endangered collections integral to the history of country music in America. This project is a critical step in a major digitization initiative to preserve museum collections and access them through a digital asset management system. Once transferred, the original source materials from this project will be stored according to best practices for conservation in climate-controlled vaults currently under construction. Three collections have been selected by as the first and most urgent collections for digitization based on their rarity, fragility, number of access requests, and historical importance: Bob Pinson Recorded Sound Collection--Rare and unique acetate and vinyl transcriptions discs; Moving Image Collection--Bobby Bare and Friends; and Photo Collection--Fabry Image Collection.