Alexandria, VA, October 28, 2025 – The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) is pleased to announce $3.9 million in funding for sixteen digitization projects through the Digitizing Hidden Collections: Amplifying Unheard Voices program. Forty organizations across fifteen US states and two Canadian provinces will contribute to these projects. In keeping with the program’s focus, the selected collections highlight Indigenous, Alaskan Native, and First Nation peoples; LGBTQIA+ communities; African-American heritage in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee; Deaf culture; disability justice; and other historically underdocumented histories, including the lives of enslaved people in the American South.
Digitizing Hidden Collections: Amplifying Unheard Voices is a grant competition for the digitization of rare and unique materials stewarded by collecting organizations in the US and Canada. Launched in 2021, the program is designed to deepen public understanding of the histories of communities whose work, experiences, and perspectives have been insufficiently recognized or attended. Since its launch, the program has awarded nearly $12 million for 49 projects.
“Digitization is an act of creative rediscovery,” said CLIR president Charles Henry. “Through these projects, communities are reclaiming and reinterpreting materials that speak to their histories and identities, enriching the cultural landscape for researchers and the public alike. The Mellon Foundation’s continued support makes this work possible, empowering organizations to connect past and present in ways that strengthen our shared understanding.”
Projects were selected by an independent review panel, which considered the program’s core values of public knowledge, broad representation, authentic partnerships, sustainable infrastructures, and community-centered access when making awards. The list of funded projects is available here.
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About CLIR
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.
About the Mellon Foundation
The Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.