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Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives:
Building a New Research Environment (2008)
The formal request for proposals (RFP) is now available online. The deadline to submit an application is September 2, 2008, 5:00 PM Eastern Time.
To access the online RFP, you must first register for an account. Please note that all applications must be submitted using the online form; CLIR will not accept paper submissions. Guidelines are available below to assist applicants with the registration and application process.
Registration
Application
Application Guidelines
Application Appendices and Reference Documents
Application Outline
(N.B. This document is for reference ONLY. CLIR will not accept submissions in paper form.)
For additional information, contact Amy Lucko, Program Officer, at hiddencollections@clir.org. Inquiries must be sent by e-mail only—no phone calls please.
Background and Summary
Libraries, archives, and cultural institutions hold millions of items that have never been adequately described. These items are all but unknown to, and unused by, the scholars those organizations aim to serve. According to a 1998 Association of Research Libraries' survey of 99 North American research universities' special collections, on average 15 percent of printed volumes in special collections are unprocessed or uncataloged. The figure rises to an average of 27 percent of manuscripts, and 35 percent and 37 percent of video and audio, respectively. Nationally, this represents a staggering volume of items of potentially substantive intellectual value that are unknown and inaccessible to scholars.
With generous funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Council on Library and Information Resources is creating a national program to identify and catalog hidden special collections and archives. The records and descriptions obtained through this effort will be accessible through the Internet and the Web, enabling the federation of disparate, local cataloging entries with tools to aggregate this information by topic and theme.
Institutions of higher education and cultural organizations that hold important collections that are difficult or impossible to locate through finding aids are invited to submit proposals for funding. CLIR has issued a formal request for proposals (RFP). The deadline for applications is Tuesday, September 2, 2008. All applications must be submitted online; CLIR will not accept submissions in paper form. Awards will be announced in November 2008. Grant recipients will have up to three years to complete their project.
CLIR will appoint a panel to evaluate the proposals and will call upon experts in particular fields to assist in the review process when necessary. A key selection criterion will be the fundamental importance of the hidden collections to scholarship and teaching, always with the aim of significantly improving access to these materials.
The RFP will ask the applicant to provide information on the scope and depth of the hidden collection, its disciplinary focus, its value to research, the type of media it includes, and other descriptive elements that will help the review panel assess the intellectual impact of cataloging and exposing these materials. The RFP will also require the applicant to respond to questions about long-term sustainability, additional sources of funding, and evidence of institutional support.
Another review criterion is that the methodologies adopted by the funded projects be broadly applicable and able to be built upon over time. The means of data creation must be cost-effective and efficient, and must ensure that a critical mass of trusted and authoritative information is generated quickly. The program's strategy for building a distributed organization of cataloging and collection information assumes local autonomy and responsibility but also requires centralized agreements concerning governing principles that will ensure enterprise-wide coherence. All nonconfidential information gathered and generated through this program will be available through the Web.
The program will initially produce two layers of information: (1) a basic registry of hidden collections and archives, created from information in the proposals, that can be found through a Web-based platform; and (2) a descriptive record of a subset of collections that are deemed most urgently in need of cataloging and documentation. The record will evolve as funded proposals are completed. CLIR anticipates that this project will eventually lead to the creation of a third layer of information—digital versions of the special collections and archives that have been cataloged. The digitization effort will be funded by other sources.
Questions and Answers
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.
How will this program reveal hidden collections?
The process will involve adopting a technology platform (or platforms) that will allow accurate descriptive information to be entered quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively. The results of each project will be linked to and interoperable with those of all others to form 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 base their proposals on technical solutions that already exist for swift and efficient entry of data, which can be then translated into standard records format such as EAD and MARC. Examples of such technologies include the Archon program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the Archivists' Toolkit. Institutions and consortia awarded grants will work together to find the most effective approaches that meet the overall requirements of the program.
Because tightly defined fields can impede interoperability, recent reports on hidden collections emphasize the need to make the categories and schemes of record creation and descriptions 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 entails 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?
Several aspects of ongoing projects could be adopted to save time and expense. Among them is a model of cataloging hidden collections, 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. See http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/arlbr251uncap.pdf for a concise description of this project and its goals.
Another model of a successful hidden collections project that may be suitable for adoption is under way at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. It is a smaller scale version of the University of Chicago effort and generally follows the same structure and staffing pattern. For more information, see http://www.library.uiuc.edu/export/news/archon.html and http://www.archon.org.
CLIR hopes that this program will bring to light innovative methods of cataloging, archival descriptions and dissemination. Any examples of methods mentioned by CLIR, whether here in our FAQs or other venues, are intended to be just that: examples. CLIR encourages applicants to consider a variety of methods as they develop their proposals, and to make persuasive and cogent arguments for their method of choice. CLIR neither discourages nor encourages use of the methods mentioned in its examples.
What will be the typical size of a project grant?
The sizes of the grants will vary. The total funds disbursed under the program will likewise vary from year to year, depending on the nature and composition of requests. Because the first round will entail both the inauguration of a new approach to the hidden collections problem and a test of some basic assumptions, applicants in 2008 may request funds in amounts ranging from $75,000 to $500,000.
Will applicants be allowed to include indirect costs in the budget?
No.
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. Applicants should indicate the period for which they are requesting support in two places in the application:
—In the Project Plan (see Tab 14: Project Plan)
—On the Applicant Budget Form (see Tab 21: Funding), in the section "Budget detail for the period"
Projects may begin as early as December 1, 2008 or as late as March 1, 2009. All projects must be completed no later than February 29, 2012. Each award recipient will be required to submit an annual report to the review panel.
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 defining these terms prescriptively, we hope to encourage a process that is encompassing and revelatory.
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 see what kinds of collections applicants submit 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 aggregate several candidate collections as a single project.
Grants will be allocated to 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.
What if some finding aids already exist for the collection?
The collections that will be candidates for cataloging are by definition hidden. Some may have a type of finding aid that is of no value to scholars. If there are methods to reconstitute some of the finding aids into a unified platform that is cost-effective, this should be considered in the grant proposal.
What formats will be considered?
The range of media that can be termed special collections or archives will not be restricted. Increasingly, valuable collections are composed of many formats: paper, moving images, sound recordings, postcards, photographs, and other realia. Since one goal of the program is to assess the scale and scope of hidden collections, a broad definition of what constitutes an appropriate artifact or medium will be used.
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 grants will be allocated for conservation purposes.
Will funds be allocated for retrospective conversion?
No.
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 might advance scholarship.
Will digitization activities be covered under this solicitation?
No. The Hidden Collections program supports web-accessible cataloging of collections that can demonstrate scholarly value. Digitization activities are not eligible under this program.
Can digitization be counted as a cost share?
No.
Are applicants required to show a cost share?
No.
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 institutions. The applicant institution will serve as the administrator, and the joint effort should be addressed in the project plan and other explanatory sections. Applicants submitting an application on behalf of a joint or consortia project must incorporate the project plan appendix (see "Application Appendices and Reference Documents" above) into their project plan. The submitted budget should aggregate the total funds requested, and all funds will be disbursed to the applicant institution. CLIR will not disburse funds for one award to several institutions.
May consortia or multiple partnering institutions submit more than a total of three resumes with their application?
No. Applications submitted by consortia or multiple partnering institutions are limited to three two-page resumes. Such applicants may elaborate on their management strategies and collective expertise in Tab 15: Qualifications. Applications from multiple partnering institutions and consortia should describe the value added to the submission by virtue of their partnership.
May consortia or multiple partnering institutions submit more than a total of three letters of recommendation 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.
May an institution submit more than one proposal?
Institutions may submit more than one proposal, but each proposal must have a unique point of contact. A registered account cannot be associated with more than one application.
Is the program limited to collections in the United States?
Yes. The initial focus of this program will be 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 database.
Information which will be made public is requested in the first part of the application, in the following sections:
—Tab 3: Collection Identification
—Tab 4: Description of Content
Information requested in Tabs 5-21 will be held as confidential.
What information will be needed about the collections?
Please see the Request for Proposals >>
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