The UCLA Library has announced an eight-year, $13 million grant from Arcadia, the London-based charitable fund co-founded by Lisbet Rausing and UCLA history professor Peter Baldwin.

The largest grant in the library’s 139-year history renews a five-year, $5.5 million commitment that launched UCLA Library’s Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP) in 2018. Through MEAP, the library awards subgrants in support of cultural heritage organizations and archives outside of North America and Europe working to preserve cultural heritage and the environment. To date, MEAP has committed $2.8 million in planning and project grants to 88 teams of researchers in 46 countries, supporting efforts to document and digitize collections that reflect the experiences and cultural expressions of diverse communities. All subgrants are awarded on the condition that any materials produced be made available for free online.

“Empowering project teams to set their own preservation priorities on the ground and to describe their own cultural heritage is central to the work of MEAP,” said MEAP program director Rachel Deblinger. “Providing public access to both the digitized collections and any reports or inventories of materials ensures that the cultural memory and voices of communities around the world are both safeguarded and accessible. As MEAP grows, these collections can help shift research narratives and global discourse.”

(Photo credit: Corey Seeman via flickr/Creative Commons)