Washington, DC, December 17, 2015-The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded CLIR $4.34 million to support a second year of the Digitizing Hidden Special Collections grant program in 2016.

Launched earlier this year, the nationally competitive program awards funds to cultural memory institutions to digitize their collections of rare and unique content. CLIR expects to announce recipients of the 2015 competition by the end of the month.

CLIR will issue a request for 2016 proposals in mid-January. The first informational webinar for prospective applicants will be held Tuesday, February 2, at 2 pm ET; webinar details will be posted in January at https://www.clir.org/hiddencollections/applicant-resources/. To stay abreast of program developments, sign up for an electronic bulletin, and follow @CLIRHC on Twitter.

“The support from the Mellon Foundation is deeply appreciated: it allows CLIR to expand the digitization of rare and special resources of greatest value to scholarship and teaching, and help inculcate best practices for making these collections accessible and reusable over time,” said CLIR President Charles Henry. “A salient result of this effort will be a genuine enhancement to the public good-making available an otherwise hidden trove of our cultural heritage.”

The Digitizing Hidden Collections program is built on the model of CLIR’s Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives program, which awarded its final round of grants in 2014.

The Council on Library and Information Resources is an independent, nonprofit organization that forges strategies to enhance research, teaching, and learning environments in collaboration with libraries, cultural institutions, and communities of higher learning.