The New York Philharmonic has announced a $2.4 million grant from the Leon Levy Foundation to complete the digitization of its archives.

Launched in 2011, the New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital Archives will comprise nearly three million documents when completed, including correspondence, marked-up scores, contracts, and board minutes from 1842 through 1970, as well as all marketing materials since 1970.

The grant also will pay for technology enhancements to the archives, including the development of a mobile-friendly platform; transcriptions of handwritten materials from the nineteenth-century presented side-by-side with the originals; full-text search within individual documents and saved-search capabilities; and a document viewer that can accommodate large-format press-clipping scrapbooks. Open access to the metadata via an API also will enable developers to create apps for smartphones and tablets, enabling researchers to use and mine the philharmonic's data for their own projects.

In conjunction with the grant announcement, the orchestra is making the complete collection of materials from its inaugural season, 1842–43, available to the public. The Levy Foundation has awarded a total of $5 million since 2007 for the digitization of the philharmonic's archives.

"These archives are part not only of the history of the philharmonic, but also of the culture of New York City," said Shelby White, founding trustee of the Leon Levy Foundation and a Giving Pledge signatory. "The response of the public since 2011 has confirmed the importance of the project, and providing access to the philharmonic’s entire history will make it immeasurably more valuable for research. The Leon Levy Foundation is proud to support it."