News from the Archivist of the United States: NHPRC Revises its Plan

Last November, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) revised its strategic plan. Some opponents of the revision have argued that it was politically motivated. As chairperson of the Commission, I would like to invite historians to give some careful thought to that charge.

First, let me explain quickly what the Commission is, because I have been told that a lot of historians don't know, even though OAH is one of six professional associations represented in the Commission's membership

The NHPRC is a Federal program administered within the National Archives and Records Administration. In language unanimously adopted by the NHPRC, it has a "statutory mission to ensure understanding of our nation's past by promoting, nationwide, the identification, preservation, and dissemination of essential historical documentation." To do that, the Commission recommends grants that I award for preserving, processing, publishing, and otherwise providing access to historical source material. The grants go to universities, archives, libraries, historical societies, and others who can help assure that American history is accessibly documented. In short, the NHPRC works in partnership with NARA to see that you who study history have access to the sources you need, both Federal and non-Federal.

Now, before I get into the recent revision of the NHPRC plan to undertake this work, let me ask the following. The charge of political motivation is not true, but what if it were? What if the NHPRC changed its strategic plan solely to increase its appeal to the White House and the Congress? And what if the change worked? That is, what if we actually secured an increase in the NHPRC's annual grants appropriation_which is currently only $5 million dollars, unchanged from the amount NHPRC had in 1990, and only $1 million more than it had in 1979? Would it be so terrible if the NHPRC made itself politically appealing enough to reverse seventeen years of inflationary erosion of an appropriation that was inadequate from the start? The bigger question might be, why has the historical profession let that erosion happen?

Nonetheless, the answer to the first question is obviously, yes, it would be terrible if the NHPRC increased its political appeal by sacrificing its mission. So, is that what we have done? In answer, let me tell you exactly what is in the revised plan.

Our first motive in revising the strategic plan was to simplify the previous plan in order to make it easier for people interested in grants to apply. Everyone agreed on the need for that. So we consolidated the old plan's seventeen specific objectives into just four, broad categories of grant making. Let me describe the four categories:

• Grants for Improvements in Documentary Fields (tools, training, publications, and research and development) This means grants for advancing historical documentation overall by funding projects that help archivists, documentary editors, and others with documentation responsibilities do a better job. Examples include a project we currently fund at the University of South Carolina to help documentary editors learn to make their publications electronically accessible, and a project we fund at the University of Pittsburgh to help archivists learn to cope with electronic records, without which tomorrow's historians are going to find huge gaps in the record of today.
• Grants for State Collaborative Efforts to Meet Documentary Needs (plans, re-grant, and work under collaborative agreements). This means grants for helping State Historical Records Advisory Boards, whose members include professional historians and university manuscript curators, to do two things: first, to identify and prioritize statewide documentary needs, and then, to meet those needs by re-granting funds obtained from the NHPRC to institutions within the states, preferably on a matching basis. For example, the Georgia State Historical Records Advisory Board obtained a special appropriation from the state's legislature to match some NHPRC funds for regents to strengthen efforts to preserve local government records statewide; and the Florida State Historical Records Advisory Board has used regents partially matched by recipient institutions for a range of history projects. Included are grants to help the University of Miami Libraries arrange and describe a railway records collection, the Seminole Tribal Museum Authority survey historical documents on four Seminole reservations, and Florida A&M University's Black Archives Research Center catalogue a collection of historical material on African-American education statewide.
• Grants for Documentary Publication (8 founding-era editions, 32 other on-going editions, press subventions, and new projects). This means grants directly to individual projects to publish documents, including substantial editions to which the NHPRC has been contributing for some time, but also new editions (which the OAH previously urged us to put on at least an equal footing with the older projects, as we have now done). This category also includes press subventions for publication of these editions.
• Grants for Documentary Preservation, Access, and Use (archival, educational, and promotional projects). This means grants directly from NHPRC to individual projects to preserve, process, and promote the use of particular collections in archival holdings and manuscript repositories.

Now then, you have just read, in the material italicized above, all that the revised plan identifies as things for which the NHPRC will make grants. Is there anything there that compromises NHPRC's mission for political advantage? Is there anything there that historians think we shouldn't support? A "yes" answer to either question would surprise me greatly because there is nothing in the revised plan's grant categories that was not in the NHPRC's strategic plan before.

The difference, apart from the plan's consolidation of activities, is in the priorities. The revised plan gives priority for funding to the first two of the four grant categories in italics above_our research-and-development program for documentary fields as a whole, and our documentary collaborative program with the states. This is a change from the previous NHPRC plan in two principle respects. One, support for state re-grant programs, previously at second priority, is now at first, along with state planning grants. And second, support for eight "founding era" documentary publications (the Adams papers, etc.), previously at first priority, are now at second, along with new publications projects, and along with some 30 other on-going publications projects (the M.L. King Papers, etc.), which under the old plan already were at second priority.

The rationale for the revised plan is simple. We are giving priority to activities through which our scant funds can have the widest impact. Our investments in R&D will help documentary editors and archivists at all levels, nationwide, learn to deal with electronic technologies for creating, preserving, and providing access to information of historical value. Our investments in matching-grant programs for state regents will expand our ability to leverage both the amount and the reach of our own funds for documentary work. Both categories are investments in strengthening this country's documentary infrastructure. At the next level are the second two of the four categories above, which recognize the value of continuing to provide direct grants as well for individual projects to process or publish particular documentary collections.

I think the NHPRC strategic plan will make sense to many members of the Congress, and I hope it will, because if we can keep appropriations up, we can fund much useful work in all four categories. But let me be unmistakably clear_I support the revised plan regardless of politics. I support it because it is sound policy in the pursuit of our mission. If the NHPRC's current funds came from private foundations, endowment income, or earned revenue, prudent use still would require that we give priority to things through which we could achieve the widest documentary impact dollar for dollar. We have revised the NHPRC plan to do that. That is what makes sense of it to me, and I would think to historians.