Some New Roles, Directions for NHPRC

Adrienne Thomas, Acting Archivist of the United States

Since 1964, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) has made grants to preserve and publish nonfederal records in institutions across America. These modest grants can have far-reaching impacts. For example, NHPRC grants have helped to publish the Adams Family Papers, which historian David McCullough drew on for his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, John Adams, which was the basis of the acclaimed HBO miniseries of the same name.

The commission made its first grants in 1964. Since then, it has awarded $175 million to 4,500 projects involving records held by various institutions across the country, including state and local governments, colleges and universities, and nonprofit groups. The grants often act as catalysts, providing seed money for projects that increase the number and availability of sources of American history. Funds are used for various purposes—preserving historical records, producing oral histories, digitizing collections, publishing documentary editions, establishing new archives programs, and otherwise making the nation’s documentary heritage accessible to the public.

Over the years, NHPRC grants have supported 300 publishing projects involving more than 900 individual volumes of original documents and 9,100 reels of microfilm. NHPRC-funded archival projects are of great assistance to those who use historical documents—scholars, family and local historians, journalists and authors, documentary filmmakers, lawyers, and many others. Now, the NHPRC, which like the National Archives is celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary this year, has an opportunity to expand its grants programs even further.

The Presidential Historical Records Act of 2008 authorizes a grants program for Presidential Centers of Historical Excellence, provides for online access to the papers of the Founding Fathers, and authorizes a national database and grants program for records of servitude, emancipation, and post-Civil War reconstruction.

Under this legislation, the NHPRC will be able to extend NARA’s reach to the records of presidents who do not now have federally operated presidential libraries. Although these records have always been eligible to compete for an NHPRC grant, the new legislation anticipates that a separate grant fund will eventually be available to support those repositories with these presidential materials. The act, however, has not yet been funded by Congress, but important changes may be in store for the NHPRC and the National Archives if funds are appropriated for these projects.

The Presidential Centers of Historical Excellence program would apply to any former president who does not have a library within the NARA system of presidential libraries—all presidents before Herbert Hoover, who took office in 1929. This program would provide competitive grants to eligible organizations to promote the preservation of, and public access to, historical records relating to any of these former chief executives.

The second new program, stemming from the Commission’s Founding Fathers Online report issued to Congress this past spring, would allow the archivist to enter into a cooperative agreement to provide Internet access to the papers of the Founding Fathers. This would involve the documentary editions of the papers of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, James Madison and other figures prominent in the nation’s history.

The third new grants program involves the records of servitude, emancipation, post-Civil War reconstruction and other records to assist African Americans and others in conducting genealogical and historical research. These would include the Bureau of Refugees, Freedman, and Abandoned Lands records, Southern Claims Commission records, records of the Freedman’s Bank, slave impressments records, slave payroll records, slave manifests, and others. The bill requires the National Archives to set up a national database of information about these records. It also authorizes the NHPRC to make grants to states, colleges and universities, and other nonprofit organizations to preserve such records and establish similar online databases.

The legislation also requires the archivist to provide a capital improvement plan for NARA’s presidential libraries as part of the fiscal year 2010 budget. The archivist is also directed to submit to Congress a report on alternative models for presidential archival depositories that cost the government less, improve the preservation of records, and make the records more readily accessible to the public.

Some of the reforms included in the new legislation, particularly the new grant programs, will require additional appropriations. Providing alternative operating models for presidential libraries at less cost will present significant challenges for NARA and for those who fund presidential libraries; for, in addition, the legislation contained a significant cost-cutting measure that increased the required endowment for future operation and maintenance of the library to sixty percent of the cost of the library. This new legislation was sponsored by Senator Jim Webb and former Senator John Warner of Virginia.

As always, the NHPRC remains a vital part of our efforts to preserve and make accessible the records of the American experience, and we look forward to implementing these new grant programs on behalf of those efforts.