Preservation and Access Research and Development grants support projects that address major challenges in preserving or providing access to humanities collections and resources.

These challenges include the need to find better ways to preserve materials of critical importance to the nation’s

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cultural heritage—from fragile artifacts and manuscripts to analog recordings and digital assets subject to technological obsolescence—and to develop advanced modes of searching, discovering, and using such materials.

Applicants should define a specific problem, devise procedures and potential solutions, and explain how they would evaluate their projects and disseminate their findings.

Project results must serve the needs of a significant segment of humanists.

Eligible projects include the development of technical standards, best practices, and tools for preserving and creating access to humanities collections; the exploration of more effective scientific and technical methods of preserving humanities collections; the investigation and testing of new ways of providing digital access to humanities materials that are not easily digitized using current methods.

NEH especially encourages applications that address the following topics:
Digital Preservation:
how to preserve digital humanities materials, including born-digital materials, for which there is no analog counterpart; Recorded Sound and Moving Image Collections:
how to preserve and increase access to the record of the twentieth century contained in these formats; and Preventive Conservation:
how to protect and slow the deterioration of humanities collections through the use of sustainable preservation strategies.