For Applicants

The application period for the initial proposal phase of the 2012 cycle is now closed. Applications were due by 5:00 pm Eastern time on March 16, 2012. Applicants will be notified of their status by e-mail no later than May 25, 2012.

The final proposal phase will be invitation only. CLIR will begin accepting final proposals on May 25; the final proposal deadline will be July 31, 2012, 5:00 pm Eastern time.

Applicants may request between $75,000 - $500,000 (not including cost share); project terms cannot be shorter than 12 months or longer than 36 months. All projects must begin between January 1 and March 1, 2013, and be completed no later than February 29, 2016.

The application process has two phases. The initial proposal round is open; anyone interested in applying for a grant through this program must submit an initial proposal by March 16, 2012. The final proposal round is by invitation only. Only those applicants whose initial proposals have been approved by the Review Panel will be allowed to submit a final proposal.

Links to the application forms, outlines of initial and final proposals, and the program guidelines may be found in the "Important Documents" box on the right side of this page. For questions about the proposal process which are not answered in the guidelines or the Questions and Answers section below, please write hiddencollections@clir.org. We regret that we cannot answer questions by telephone.

CONTENTS

PROGRAM TIMELINE, 2012

Friday, January 20, 2012, 2:00 - 3:15 pm Eastern time: CLIR Program Officers Christa Williford and Amy Lucko hosted a webinar for applicants preparing initial proposals for the 2012 cycle. Webinar recording; see also Webinar Presentation (pdf)

Wednesday, February 15, 2012, 2:00 - 3:00 pm Eastern time: CLIR Program Officers Christa Williford and Amy Lucko hosted an informal Question and Answer session for applicants. Session recording.

Friday, March 16, 2012, 5:00 pm Eastern time: deadline for submission of initial proposals.

Friday, May 25, 2012: CLIR will email comments to applicants by May 25, 2012. Comments will be sent to the Principal Investigator listed in the initial proposal. At this time, the online application system will be re-opened to applicants whose initial proposals have been authorized to advance to the final round.

Tuesday, July 31, 2012, 5:00 pm Eastern time: Deadline for submission of final proposals.

December 31, 2012: Applicants will be notified of their application's final status by this date.

If you would like to receive announcements and news about this program by e-mail, please join the Hidden Collection program's distribution list.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

For questions which are not answered below or in the 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.

General 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 any kind of rare or unique materials housed in secure, monitored environments and made available to researchers. Archives are unique, often unpublished materials associated with a specific individual, topic, or organization that is of interest to researchers. By not limiting these terms to particular subjects, media or formats, CLIR hopes to encourage proposals that encompass the broadest possible range of evidence of our historical, scientific, intellectual, and cultural heritage.

What do you mean by "hidden"? [See also: What if some finding aids already exist for a collection?, below]
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 documentation that is of no value to scholars, such as an accession record, but collections for which finding aids, catalog records, inventories, or other types of descriptions suitable for use by researchers have already been prepared are not eligible. This remains the case even if such descriptions are only available to researchers on-site in analog form.

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 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? [See also: Reviewer Questions (PDF)]
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 related to 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 2012 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; payments will be made by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Decisions will be announced by December 31, 2012, and applicants may begin their projects anytime between January 1, 2013, and March 1, 2013. Projects must be completed by February 29, 2016.

Applicants should be prepared to address these questions:

• What is the importance of the collection(s) to be cataloged and/or processed to the scholarly community? Does the proposal clearly demonstrate the value the materials will hold for a broad range of scholars once they are made accessible?

• How innovative and cost-effective is the proposed approach to the cataloging process in respect to local institutional practice and to library/archival/curatorial practice in the United States? How might it serve as a model for others?

• How well are scholars and other subject experts, 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, researchers, or students who may be interested in using their materials.

• How hidden are the materials? Are similar materials available at other institutions? If so, what added value will the exposure of the proposed collections have to our country's intellectual record? (NOTE: Materials which can be found by scholars at other institutions are not generally considered by the reviewers to be "hidden", even if records do not exist for those materials at the applicant institution.) If the materials are not available elsewhere, are scholars already aware they are held at the applicant's institution? If so, have these scholars used the materials? What value will the applicants' project add for their collections' users that would justify a grant? (NOTE: Acknowledging awareness and prior use of uncataloged/unprocessed collections by scholars does not disqualify an applicant from funding.)

For further information about how reviewers evaluate Hidden Collections proposals, consult the list of Reviewer Questions [PDF].

How will this program reveal hidden collections?
All 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, the collaboratively-developed CollectionSpace, 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. Applicants should demonstrate an understanding of how their proposed approach to description fits into this national picture.

Are there models that can be adopted for use in this program?
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 on our website here or here, 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.

For examples of previous successful proposals to this program, applicants may consult the following:

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 Chicago-area hidden collections. 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.

General guidelines for the 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 2012 application cycle, projects may begin as early as January 1, 2013 or as late as March 1, 2013. All projects must be completed no later than February 28, 2016. 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 2012, applicants are required to request funds in amounts ranging from $75,000 to $500,000 (not including cost share). 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 record that is of no value to scholars (such as an accession record). If part of a proposal includes cost-effective reconstitution and enhancement of existing records into a unified, broadly accessible platform, this may be acceptable provided the enhancement is very significant and/or the reconstitution of records is a very minor part of the project. The proposal must explain clearly how the newly created descriptions make materials accessible in ways that go well beyond straightforward adaptation of pre-existing records to a digital environment. Applicants must demonstrate how their project adds to users' understanding of holdings and their relationships to other, new, finding aids and records.

Some applicants may wish to include partially processed collections in a proposal. The program's primary purpose is to fund description of important collections that had not yet been cataloged or processed, so applicants should be aware that including partially processed collections in their proposal can have a detrimental impact. CLIR generally encourages applicants to exclude such collections from a project, or fund the completion of their processing in some other way, but recognizes there may be valid reasons for including this kind of work in a proposal (e.g. the temporary availability of certain kinds of subject expertise, or the inclusion of more institutions in a consortial effort). The review panel will consider several issues when evaluating proposals that include such collections: the applicant's reasoning behind the selection of the collections, the proportion of the collections in the overall project, the amount of work remaining, and how closely the partially processed fraction of collections in a proposal adhere to the overall theme of the project. In any case, applicants should make clear that grant funds are to be used for processing currently unprocessed materials and not for revising past work on the collections.

Applicants are advised 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. The fact that existing records are not digital and/or web-accessible does not mean they are considered "hidden" by the standards of this program. For these reasons, 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 as reviewers decide how program funds may be best spent. However, 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 will advance scholarship beyond the region in which they are located.

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. (Please note that requests for funds to support existing staff members must be strongly justified - see below - and are rarely funded.)

• 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. 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 existing staff at institutions, and the review panel will consider this part of the budget carefully when analyzing proposals. Projects which request funding for current staff are almost never approved, and CLIR strongly recommends applicants include such costs instead as part of their cost share. If you do request funds for this purpose, you must explain why grant funds are needed and 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, laptops, servers, etc.

• Archival supplies for materials, such as folders or boxes.

• 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 equipment or 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, digital photography, etc. Costs of any digitization associated with a project must be covered by the applicant institution. While applicants are encouraged to include information about any plans to digitize collections in their proposals for the benefit of reviewers, they must not include digitization-related costs anywhere in the budget documents; 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 strongly encouraged, but not required. However, applicants are advised that reviewers will consider cost sharing as one indicator of institutional support when evaluating the proposal. If your institution prohibits cost share in grant proposal, you should specifically note this in your Budget Narrative.

What items may applicants include in their cost share?
All items included as cost share must be directly related to the project being proposed. 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. A principal investigator may not be listed on more than one proposal in a cycle, even as a co-P.I.

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. One applicant institution or organization must serve as the administrator. Any division of funds and responsibilities should be addressed in the project plan and other explanatory sections of the proposal. Applicants submitting a joint or consortial project must include the project plan appendix 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 initial proposals

For a step-by-step guide, please consult the application guidelines.

Why does CLIR have a two-phase proposal process?
The decision to require initial proposals prior to accepting final proposals was taken in response to feedback from both applicants and reviewers. The purpose of the initial proposal is, first, to allow applicants to receive feedback on the suitability of their proposed project for the program prior to expending the extra 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 initial proposal, will it still be possible for us to submit a final proposal by the final deadline?
No.

If our institution submits a initial 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 initial proposals which are do not adhere to the stated requirements of this program, and are accordingly deemed not eligible for review in the initial proposal round, may not advance to the final proposal round. These applicants may, however, resubmit a revised proposal in a future cycle.

Are applicants required to complete all sections of the initial proposal application?
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 applications will not be considered eligible for review and advancement.

How specific must applicants be in giving details of their proposed project's budget in the initial proposal?
Applicants should give their best possible estimate of costs. The initial budget is an important factor as the reviewers decide which applications will advance to the final proposal phase. If available, evidence supporting budget figures may be included in the budget narrative. When institutional policies or practices make it difficult for applicants to include cost share figures in a grant budget, even if they will be making a significant investment in the proposed project, this may also be explained in the budget narrative. A brief explanation of how the recipient institution will manage the grant funds must also be included in this section. [See also: What kinds of information must applicants include in the budget narrative?, under "Questions about Final Proposals", below.]

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

How will I know my initial proposal has been successfully submitted?
The application system will send an automatic e-mail message confirming that your application has been successfully submitted to the e-mail address associated with the account on file. The message is generated immediately upon submission of the application; however, because this e-mail is automatically generated, please be advised it may be quarantined by your institution's spam filter.

Applicants may also log into the application system at any time to verify their proposal's current status. When a initial proposal application has been successfully submitted, the status line will read "initial proposal Submitted." This indicates the application is ready for review.

How do the questions asked in the initial proposal compare with those in the final proposal?
Most elements of the initial proposal and the final proposal are the same. In the final proposal phase applicants will be asked to submit additional supporting information, such as a cover sheet, an expanded technical plan and several letters of support. Applicants will be able to revise information submitted in their initial proposal during the final proposal phase. Please see "Questions about final proposals" for further information.

Questions about final proposals

For a step-by-step guide, please consult the application guidelines.

How will applicants prepare final proposals?
Applicants approved to advance to the final proposal round will be notified by e-mail and will receive access to the final proposal elements of the application system by May 25, 2012.

May I receive a copy of my submitted proposal?
Applicants may log into the online application system to print out a PDF version of their application at any time prior to or following submission, and CLIR encourages applicants to print a copy of the application for their files.

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 initial proposal:

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

• 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.

• 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 generally look more favorably upon external letters as representative of the materials' value to the wider scholarly community. For the same reason, applicants are also advised to include at least one letter from a scholar outside their local region.

• 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.

May applicants revise answers submitted in the initial proposal during the final proposal phase?
The collection(s) targeted for cataloging in the initial proposal should not be revised unless the revision is in direct response to reviewer feedback. Final proposals which list collections not included in the initial 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 initial proposal information during the final selection phase, and may raise questions about details that vary significantly from initial proposal to final proposal without explicit justification.

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

What kinds of information must applicants include in the budget narrative?
The budget narrative should include a full description of the budget, explaining the need for each budget line and the method(s) used to compute the projected costs. If software or equipment is being purchased or work is being outsourced, the vendors being considered should be mentioned. Vendor contracts should be included as an appendix to the Budget Detail form.

A brief explanation of how the grantee institution will manage the grant funds must also be included in the narrative.

At the final proposal phase, applicants are strongly advised to give particular attention to the preparation of their budget narrative. For example, the budget narrative is a good place to address issues related to cost share; if an institution restricts an applicant's ability to indicate cost-sharing in the budget, the applicant should explain those restrictions.

Applicants must give explicit justification in the budget narrative for any costs falling into the "discouraged" categories listed in the guidelines [See General Guidelines, above], indicating the reasons why such costs cannot be covered in the normal operating budget of the recipient institution(s). Applicants may also use the budget narrative to give additional details about ways project expertise and outcomes will be sustained beyond the life of the grant, if it has not been possible to provide these details elsewhere in the proposal.

NOTES: There is no page limit for this document. Applicants whose organizations are private foundations must provide an additional section in the budget narrative addressing their institutional need for external funding support through this program. The rationale should identify the major funding sources of the organization and state the reasons the activities described in the proposal cannot be supported from these sources.

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.

How will I know my final proposal has been successfully submitted?
The application system will send an automatic e-mail message confirming that your application has been successfully submitted to the e-mail address associated with the account on file. The message is generated immediately upon submission of the application; however, because this e-mail is automatically generated, please be advised it may be quarantined by your institution's spam filter.

Applicants may also log into the application system to verify their proposal's current status. When a final proposal application has been successfully submitted, the status line will read "Final-Proposal Submitted." This indicates the application is ready for review.

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.