For Applicants

All applicants are required to submit a pre-proposal. Only those applicants whose pre-proposals are approved by the review panel will be eligible to submit final proposals. Pre-proposals serve a dual purpose. First, their submission allows applicants to receive feedback on the suitability of their proposed project for the Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives program prior to expending the effort required to prepare a final proposal. Second, the comments that applicants receive from reviewers will assist them in improving the quality of their final proposals should they receive authorization to advance to the final round.

CONTENTS

PROGRAM TIMELINE

March 15, 2010: Pre-proposal application form available for review by applicants.

April 1, 2010: CLIR begins accepting pre-proposal applications*.

April 23, 2010, 11:59 pm EDT: deadline for submission of pre-proposals.

• Pre-proposals must be submitted by e-mail to hiddencollectionssubmission@clir.org.

• The subject line of the e-mail should read "Hidden Collections Pre-Proposal: [Name of submitting institution]."

• Applicants will receive notification by e-mail indicating that their pre-proposals have been received. Please keep this notification for your records. If you do not receive a notification within one business day of submission, please contact CLIR at hiddencollections@clir.org.

June 30, 2010: Pre-proposal comments will be issued to applicants. Comments will be sent by e-mail to the Principal Investigator listed in the pre-proposal form.

July 1, 2010: Applicants who receive authorization to submit a final proposal will be sent log-in information allowing them to access the program's online application system.

July 30, 2010, 11:59 pm EDT: Deadline for submission of final proposals.

December 31, 2010: All applicants will be notified of their application's final status.

*The 2010 cycle is contingent upon the receipt of continued funding for the program as of April 1, 2010.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

For questions which are not answered below or in the Pre-proposal Application Guidelines, contact Amy Lucko, Program Officer, at hiddencollections@clir.org. During the application period, CLIR accepts inquiries by e-mail only —no phone calls, please.

Questions about the program

What is the rationale for this grant program?
The program is designed to overcome the pervasive lack of knowledge about special collections and archives held by libraries, archives, and cultural institutions and to make information about these materials accessible to teachers and scholars. Applicants are welcome to view the original grant proposal from CLIR to The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

How do you define "special collections" and "archives"?
For the purposes of this project, special collections are rare, often unique materials generally housed in secure, monitored environments. Archives are unique collections associated with a specific individual or organization. By not limiting these terms to particular topics, sizes, media or formats, CLIR hopes to encourage proposals that encompass the broadest possible range of evidence of our historical, scientific, intellectual, and cultural heritage.

Who is eligible to apply for funding under this program?
CLIR welcomes applications from any American library, museum, archive or other cultural heritage institution that holds hidden collections of broad scholarly import and meets the program's general eligibility requirements:

• The applicant must be a not-for-profit organization as defined by the U.S. Internal Revenue Codes Section 501(c)(3), Section 115, Section 170(c)(1), or a similar designation. Federally operated and for-profit institutions are not eligible for this program. If you have questions about your institution's status as an eligible non-profit, please contact CLIR at hiddencollections@clir.org.

• The collection must be owned and held in the United States or in an associated entity, e.g. the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico or American Samoa (for a full list of eligible areas please consult the Pre-proposal Application Guidelines). We regret that applications for collections owned by non-U.S. organizations, or collections physically located outside the U.S., may not be submitted for consideration at this time.

Eligible institutions may include, but are not limited to:

• Associations or societies, including local historical societies and cultural associations.

• Libraries and archives, including public libraries, college and university libraries, research libraries and archives that are not an integral part of an institution of higher education and that make publicly available library services and materials that are suitable for scholarly research, and library consortia or parent organizations such as academic institutions that are responsible for the administration of the library.

• Museums, including aquariums, arboretums and botanical gardens, art museums, youth museums, general museums, historic houses and sites, history museums, nature centers, natural history and anthropology museums, planetariums, science and technology centers, specialized museums, and zoological parks.

What are the criteria for awards?
The main criterion for determining the priority of the collections to be cataloged is the value of the materials for scholars and students. Rather than solicit for collections by a specific topic, the review panel will consider all nominated collections and then set priorities on the basis of that pool. Scholars increasingly work in a digital environment and are interested in finding related collections across many institutions. Consequently, collaborative proposals that aggregate disparately located but similarly themed collections may be more favorably weighed than those that do not feature such collaboration. Alternately, the review panel might suggest the aggregation of several candidate collections as a single project. In general, the panel grants preference to applications from institutions or consortia that agree to employ graduate students, paraprofessionals, and other staff that will contribute to a cost-effective and swift generation of records.

In 2010 the program expects to award about $4 million in grants that range from $75,000 to $500,000. A review panel will evaluate proposals and select the award recipients; and payments will be made by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Decisions will be announced by December 31, 2010, and applicants may begin their projects anytime between January 1, 2011, and March 1, 2011.

Applicants should be prepared to address the following considerations in their proposals:

• What is the importance of the collection(s) to be cataloged to the scholarly community? Does the proposal clearly demonstrate the value the materials, if cataloged as proposed, will hold for a broad range of scholars?

• How innovative and cost-effective is the proposed approach to the cataloging process? How might it serve as a model for others?

• How well are scholars, including students (graduate or undergraduate), represented in the proposed project? CLIR encourages even those applicants not directly affiliated with an educational institution to consider ways in which they might effectively incorporate into their projects outside scholars or students who may be interested in using their materials.

How will this program reveal hidden collections?
All program applicants are required to submit descriptions of their hidden collections to the program's online registry. Current and future applicants should use this registry to locate institutions with unprocessed collections related to their holdings. Award-winning projects will use appropriate technology and standards for recording accurate descriptive information about collections quickly and cost-effectively. The resulting records and finding aids should be compatible with existing online records for related materials where possible, resulting in a federated environment that can be built upon over time. Institutions must acknowledge local ownership of the data generated through the program and agree to its persistence.

Will a single technological platform be used?
No. Applicants will be expected to employ software platforms that already exist for swift and efficient entry of data, which can then be translated into standard records formats such as EAD and MARC. Examples of such technologies include the Archon program produced by the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the Archivists' Toolkit. Further information about current cataloging platforms in use in special collections and archives is available in Archival Management Software: A Report for the Council on Library and Information Resources (Lisa Spiro, 2009).

Because tightly defined fields can impede interoperability, recent reports on hidden collections emphasize the need to make descriptive categories and schemata less rigid than those of the past. Cataloging special collections and archival materials has routinely been defined as a local practice. The shift to understanding hidden collections as a national problem requires an acknowledgment that in the 21st century, collaboration, coordination, and coherence of response to users is fundamental and takes precedence over local practice.

Are there models that can be adopted for use in this program?
Although CLIR does not provide copies of previous successful applications, applicants may wish to review the descriptions of projects which were funded in the 2008 and 2009 cycles.

Several aspects of other ongoing projects could be adopted to save time and expense. Among them is the Uncovering New Chicago Archives Project developed by Jacqueline Goldsby and Jacqueline Stewart at the University of Chicago, in which graduate students catalog hidden collections discovered through a process of national solicitation. Because the students work with a template of well-defined descriptive data fields, a high level of cataloging expertise is not necessary. The students are salaried employees of their respective institutions, and all work is done in rigorous consultation with faculty and librarians. The graduate students bring a disciplinary expertise to the projects and learn firsthand the challenges of organizing information, creating digital records, and other fundamental issues of librarianship. Because the students are often working with collections in their areas of study, they are engaged with source materials that may enhance their mastery of scholarship. Alice Schreyer's short article, "University of Chicago Explores Library-Faculty Partnerships in Uncovering Hidden Collections" (in PDF), provides a description of this project and its goals.

CLIR hopes that its Hidden Collections initiative will bring to light innovative methods of cataloging, description and dissemination. Any examples of methods or technologies mentioned by CLIR, whether here on our website or in other venues, are intended to be just that: examples. CLIR encourages applicants to consider a variety of possible approaches as they develop their proposals, and to make persuasive and cogent arguments for their method of choice.

General guidelines for the 2010 application

What will be the term of a project grant?
Applicants may request terms as short as 12 months or as long as 36 months, or any period in between. For the 2010 application cycle, projects may begin as early as January 1, 2011 or as late as March 1, 2011. All projects must be completed no later than February 28, 2014. Each principal investigator receiving a grant will be required to submit annual narrative and financial reports.

What will be the typical size of a project grant?
The sizes of the grants will vary. In 2010, applicants are required to request funds in amounts ranging from $75,000 to $500,000. Requests which fall outside this range will not be considered.

What if some finding aids already exist for the collection?
The collections that will be candidates for cataloging should be truly hidden to scholars; in other words, scholars and graduate students who have a good command of their fields of study would not reasonably be expected to find basic information about the collections using good, thorough research techniques. Some nominated collections may have a type of finding aid that is of no value to scholars. If part of a proposal includes cost-effective reconstitution and enhancement of existing finding aids into a unified, broadly accessible platform, this may be acceptable provided the proposal explains clearly how the new format significantly adds to users' understanding of holdings and their relationships to other, new, finding aids and records.

Applicants are advised, however, that the simple conversion of existing analog records or finding aids into their equivalent digital form does not fall within the scope of this program. Applications requesting support for straightforward retrospective conversion activities will not be considered eligible for review.

What formats will be considered?
The range of media that can be termed special collections or archives is not restricted. Increasingly, valuable collections are composed of many formats, from paper, moving images on film or video, all types of sound recordings, ephemera, specimens, electronic files or data sets, works of art, to myriad types of artifacts. Since one goal of the program is to assess the scale and scope of hidden collections, a broad range of materials of high scholarly interest will be considered.

Will conservation be an element of grant consideration?
The physical condition of the materials will be considered, but it will not be a determining factor in an award decision. The focus of this program is not conservation, and no funds will be allocated for conservation purposes.

Are collections of genealogical materials eligible?
Collections that are primarily genealogical in nature are not eligible for funding through this program. However, CLIR does recognize the importance of collections that are local or regional in nature but may be reflective of larger historical and cultural issues. Applicants may seek funding for such collections, but must show how use of the collections could advance scholarship.

What costs may be requested in the budget?

Applicants may request funds for:

• Salaries/wages and applicable fringe benefits for new staff members who will be specifically dedicated to the project.

• Consultant and/or training fees related to the project.

• Consumable supplies and materials for the project, including expendible equipment and dedicated software.

• Other services (e.g. equipment rental, server time, backup charges) related to project objectives.

Requests for the following are discouraged. If requested, they must be specifically and strongly justified in the proposal:

• Salaries/wages and applicable fringe benefits for current full-time staff who will work on the project. This program is not intended to provide salary relief for current employees. Applicants must explain in the narrative how the staff member's normal duties will be covered during the time for which grant funds are requested.

• Tuition remission for student employees.

• Hardware and peripheral costs such as computers, cameras, scanners, servers, etc.

• Travel funds (travel for which support is requested must be justified as necessary to carry out the proposed project).

• Conference registration and related travel. Applicants should explain how attendance at a given conference is related to scholarly outreach and should be planning to attend as presenters rather than attendees. In no instance should a proposal request funding for conference attendance that exceeds $5,000.

• Translation or format migration services. This is specifically a cataloging grant, and in general the panel considers these services to fall outside the scope of the program. Requests to fund digitization of materials are not allowable in any circumstance and proposals which request support for such activities may be considered ineligible for review.

Requests for the following are not allowed. Proposals which include a request for funds for these items may be rejected as ineligible for review:

• Indirect costs.

• Indirect costs listed as direct costs. This includes items such as network charges, telephone, photocopying, etc.

• Retrospective conversion. The simple transformation of existing analog records or finding aids into their equivalent digital form is beyond the scope of the program.

• Any activities related to the digitization of materials. This includes digitization activities that may be generally thought of as necessary to the cataloging process, e.g. conversion of audio files from tape to digital format during the cataloging process. Any digitization must be covered by the applicant institution; funds will not be granted for this purpose in any circumstance nor may they be included in the applicant's cost share.

• Membership fees (consortial, professional organizations, etc.).

• General-purpose items which may reasonably be expected to have a useful life after the project, such as office furniture, shelving, or archival cabinets.

Are applicants required to show a cost share?
Cost-sharing is encouraged, but not required. However, applicants are advised that reviewers will consider cost-sharing as one indicator of institutional support when evaluating the proposal.

What items may applicants include in their cost share?
CLIR encourages applicants to think broadly about what activities or items they might include in their cost share. In some cases items for which CLIR will not grant funding may be included as part of the applicant's cost share. Cost share items may include indirect costs, or salaries of full-time staff who will contribute significantly to the project. Please note, however, that activities related to digitization may not be included as part of the applicant's cost share.

May an institution submit more than one proposal?
Institutions may submit more than one proposal, but each proposal must have a unique principal investigator.

May consortia or multiple partnering institutions, as well as single institutions, apply for a grant?
Yes. CLIR will accept applications from a consortium, or a proposal from two or more collaborating institutions. The applicant institution will serve as the administrator, and any division of funds and responsibilities should be addressed in the project plan and other explanatory sections of the final proposal. Applicants submitting a joint or consortial project must include the project plan appendix (available in the "Important Documents" section, above, during the final proposal phase) with their final proposals. The submitted budget should aggregate the total funds requested; all funds will be disbursed to the applicant institution. CLIR will not disburse funds for one award to several institutions.

CLIR also encourages applicants to consider working together on a less formal basis. Applicants may note that they will be collaborating with other institutions who hold similar collections, or are engaged in similar activities, without necessarily submitting a joint proposal.

Is the program limited to collections in the United States?
Yes. The current focus of this program is on collections owned and held in U.S. institutions.

Will all information contained in the proposals remain confidential?
One section of the application will ask for information that will become public, as part of the registry. A second section will request information that will remain confidential to the review panel. The public information can in this way be more easily extracted from the form and ingested into the registry. Information to be made public is requested in the first part of the application, as noted on the application form.

Questions about pre-proposals

For a step-by-step guide to the pre-proposal form, please consult the Pre-proposal Application Guidelines.

Why is CLIR requiring the submission of pre-proposals for the 2010 cycle?
The decision to require pre-proposals was taken in response to feedback from both applicants and reviewers who participated in the inaugural cycle of the program. Their purpose is, first, to allow applicants to receive feedback on the suitability of their proposed project for the program prior to expending the effort required to prepare a final proposal; and second, to give reviewers a way to assist applicants in improving the quality of their final proposals.

If our institution does not submit a pre-proposal, will it still be possible for us to submit a final proposal by the final deadline?
No.

If our institution submits a pre-proposal which is deemed ineligible for review by the panel, will it still be possible for us to submit a final proposal by the final deadline?
No. Applicants submitting pre-proposals which are do not adhere to the stated requirements of this program, and are accordingly deemed not eligible for review in the pre-proposal round, may not advance to the final proposal round.

Are applicants required to complete all sections of the pre-proposal form?
Yes, all sections are required. Because of the great variety of collections and institutions who participate in the Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives program, certain questions will be more relevant to some applicants than they are to others. If a question does not pertain to the proposed project, a response of "N/A" is sufficient. Incomplete forms will render an application ineligible.

While the pre-proposal guidelines indicate that "required fields are outlined in red," I am unable to see red outlines around any fields in the pre-proposal form. How can I tell what fields are required?
The pre-proposal form has been optimized for the latest version of the Adobe Reader, which is 9.3. In order to be sure you have access to all features of the form, please download the latest version of this free software application from Adobe's website.

How specific must applicants be in giving details of their proposed project's budget in the pre-proposal?
Applicants should give their best possible estimate of costs. The budget will be an important factor as the reviewers consider which applications may advance to the final proposal phase.

Costs presented in final proposals should be reasonably close to those indicated in the pre-proposals, although reviewers recognize that there may be some variation as applicants continue to refine their projects and seek to respond to feedback.

May an applicant submit an appendix to the pre-proposal in order to expand upon or clarify the information in the PDF form?
No. The character limits in the pre-proposal form have been set in order to insure the timely review and return of comments to applicants. Questions should be answered as fully as possible within these limits. The final proposal requires several appendices within which applicants can present their projects in greater detail. The following section includes information about these appendices.

How do the questions asked in the pre-proposal compare with those in online application system to be used for the final proposal?
Many questions in the PDF pre-proposal and in the online application system are the same. In the final proposal phase certain sections will provide space for more detailed explanations. Applicants will also be asked to submit additional supporting information, such as a cover sheet and letters of support. Please see "Questions about final proposals" for further information.

Questions about final proposals

How will applicants prepare final proposals?
Applicants who are approved to advance to the final proposal round will receive an application ID number from CLIR by e-mail no later than July 1, 2010. The online application system for submitting final proposals will open on that date; applicants may then access the system using their application ID number.

What additional materials will be requested in the final proposal round?
Applicants are advised that for the final proposal, they will be asked to provide the following in addition to the information requested in the pre-proposal:

• Cover sheet: Applicants will be asked to complete and include a cover sheet with their final proposal.

• Documentation of non-profit status: Applicants must provide documentation of their institution's eligible non-profit status, as indicated in the Eligiblity Requirements section of the Pre-proposal Application Guidelines.

• List of board or trustee members: Those institutions which are not colleges or universities will be asked to provide a list of board or trustee members.

• Technical Approach Summary: A document that details the relevant technologies, standards, and working practices that will be employed to realize the project's goals. The approach must be web accessible, interoperable with other systems, and sustainable beyond the life of the project. Applicants should explain how the proposed methods and tools relate to current local practice and emphasize any innovative features of the approach (for example, ways that it expedites cataloging or allows for extensibility in future activities). Document guidelines for the technical plan: maximum 3 pages; text must be in Times New Roman font, 12pt size, single-spaced and aligned left, minimum margins 1 inch. Applicants may include tables, images, etc. at their discretion, but may not exceed the 3 page limit.

• Project plan: A document that details the project plan, including staffing, milestones, and deliverables. The project plan should also address plans to insure the long-term sustainability of the project at the institution(s), and any plans to promote the use of the targeted collections. Applicants will be allowed to include an additional appendix, using a form provided by CLIR, to the plan outlining participating institutions, collections to be cataloged, number of items and format. Document guidelines for the project plan: maximum 2 pages; text must be in Times New Roman font, 12pt size, single-spaced and aligned left, minimum margins 1 inch. Applicants may include tables, images, etc. at their discretion, but may not exceed the 2 page limit.

• Résumés: Applicants will be allowed to upload up to three résumés for key personnel on this project. Maximum 2 pages per résumé.

• Scholarly letters of support: Applicants will be asked to upload three letters of support for their projects. These letters must come from individuals knowledgeable about the collections or some other aspect of the project, but may not come from those who are directly affiliated with the project. It is strongly recommended that applicants obtain these letters of support from scholars outside their home institution. Reviewers may look more favorably upon external letters as representative of the materials' value to the wider scholarly community.

• Institutional letter of support: Applicants will be asked to upload one institutional letter of support from the head administrator of the applicant institution, acknowledging that grant funds are not to be used for infrastructure or overhead costs.

• Budget: Applicants will be asked to provide a budget narrative and a detailed budget broken out by year, using the budget form posted on this website during the final proposal application period.

May applicants revise answers submitted in the pre-proposal during the final proposal phase?
The collection(s) targeted for cataloging in the pre-proposal may not be revised unless the revision is in direct response to reviewer feedback. Final proposals which list collections not included in the pre-proposal phase may be considered ineligible for review. All other answers may be revised in the final proposal. Applicants should bear in mind that reviewers will have access to pre-proposal information during the final selection phase, and may raise questions about details that vary significantly from pre-proposal to final proposal without explicit justification.

May consortia or multiple partnering institutions submit more than a total of three résumés with their application?
No. Applications submitted by consortia or multiple partnering institutions are limited to three two-page résumés. Applicants may describe the qualifications and expertise of other relevant staff in other sections of the application, and, in the case of consortia or partnerships should describe the specific benefits of the collaboration to all project stakeholders.

May consortia or multiple partnering institutions submit more than a total of three letters of recommendation with their application?
No. Applications submitted by consortia or multiple partnering institutions are limited to three letters of recommendation that speak to the scholarly value of the collective submission as well as the importance of individual collections that make up elements of the submission.

For additional information, contact Amy Lucko, Program Officer, at hiddencollections@clir.org. During the application period, CLIR accepts inquiries by e-mail only —no phone calls, please.