The Humanities Collections and Reference Resources program supports projects that provide an essential underpinning for scholarship, education, and public programming in the humanities. This program strengthens efforts to extend the life of such materials and make their intellectual content widely accessible, often through the use of digital technology.
The Public Humanities Projects program supports projects that bring the ideas of the humanities to life for general audiences through public programming. Projects must engage humanities scholarship to analyze significant themes in disciplines such as history, literature, ethics, and art history.
Preservation Assistance Grants help small and mid-sized institutions—such as libraries, museums, historical societies, archival repositories, cultural organizations, town and county records offices, and colleges and universities—improve their ability to preserve and care for their significant humanities collections.
The purpose of the Challenge Grants program is to strengthen the institutional base of the humanities by enabling infrastructure development and capacity building. The program funds two distinct types of projects, each with its own notice of funding opportunity: Capital Projects, and Digital Infrastructure.
The Digital Projects for the Public program supports projects that interpret and analyze humanities content in primarily digital platforms and formats, such as websites, mobile applications and tours, interactive touch screens and kiosks, games, and virtual environments.
Digital Humanities Advancement Grants (DHAG) support innovative, experimental, and/or computationally challenging projects at different stages throughout their lifecycles, from early start-up phases through implementation and sustainability. This program is offered twice per year.
The Collaborative Research program aims to advance humanistic knowledge through sustained collaboration between two or more scholars. The program encourages projects that propose diverse approaches to topics, incorporate multiple points of view, and explore new avenues of inquiry in the humanities for scholars and general audiences.
The History of Art program supports scholarly projects that will enhance the appreciation and understanding of European art and architecture. Grants are awarded to projects that create and disseminate specialized knowledge, including archival projects, development and dissemination of scholarly databases, documentation projects, museum exhibitions and publications, photographic campaigns, scholarly catalogues and publications, and technical and scientific studies.
The Digital Art History Grants program is intended to foster new forms of research and collaboration as well as new approaches to teaching and learning. Support may also be offered for the digitization of important visual resources in the area of pre-modern European art history; of primary textual sources; for promising initiatives in online publishing; and for innovative experiments in the field of digital art history.
The Conservation program supports the professional practice of art conservation, especially as it relates to European art of the pre-modern era. Grants are awarded to projects that create and disseminate specialized knowledge, including archival projects, development and dissemination of scholarly databases, documentation projects, exhibitions and publications focusing on art conservation, scholarly publications, and technical and scientific studies.
The Collections Assessment for Preservation (CAP) program provides small and mid-sized museums with partial funding toward a general conservation assessment. The assessment is a study of all of the institution’s collections, buildings, and building systems, as well as its policies and procedures relating to collections care.
This program is designed to assist Native Hawaiian libraries in improving core library services for their communities. Reflecting IMLS’s agency-level goals of championing lifelong learning, strengthening community engagement, and advancing collections stewardship and access, the goals for this program are
National Leadership Grants for Libraries (NLG-L) support projects that enhance the quality of library and archive services nationwide by advancing theory and practice. Successful proposals will generate results such as new tools, research findings, models, services, practices, or alliances that will be widely used, adapted, scaled, or replicated to extend the benefits of federal investment.
Museums Empowered: Professional Development Opportunities for Museum Staff, a special initiative of the Museums for America grant program, supports staff capacity building projects that use professional development to generate systemic change within a museum.
Museum Grants for African American History and Culture support activities that build the capacity of African American museums and support the growth and development of museum professionals at African American museums.
The Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program (LB21) supports developing a diverse workforce of librarians to better meet the changing learning and information needs of the American public. All applications must designate one of the following project categories: Lifelong Learning, Community Catalysts, and National Digital Infrastructures and Initiatives.
Inspire! Grants for Small Museums is a special initiative of the Museums for America program. It is designed to help small museums implement projects that address priorities identified in their strategic plans. Inspire! has three project categories: Lifelong Learning, Community Anchors and Catalysts, and Collections Stewardship and Public Access.
Recordings at Risk is a national regranting program administered by CLIR to support the preservation of rare and unique audio, audiovisual, and other time-based media of high scholarly value through digital reformatting.
The Museums Assistance Program (MAP) – Exhibition Circulation Fund component assists museums with the costs related to the hosting of traveling exhibitions originating from another museum or from a federal heritage institution and the borrowing of artefacts from any of the National museums of Canada
The Museums Assistance Program (MAP) – Canada-France Agreement component provides funding for joint missions between French and Canadian heritage organizations, to create ties and enhance competencies of museum professionals.
Library and Archives Canada (LAC) provides $1.5 million each year to documentary heritage organizations across the country. This funding helps to ensure that Canada’s continuing memory is documented, preserved and accessible.
The Strategic Initiatives component of the Canada Cultural Investment Fund provides financial assistance for projects involving multiple partners that help arts and heritage organizations improve their business practices and diversify their revenues.
Canada Cultural Investment Fund – Endowment Incentives component encourages private donors to contribute to endowment funds for not-for-profit professional arts organizations, so they can access new sources of funding in the future. Raising capital and creating endowments gives these organizations greater capacity for realizing artistic expression by supporting their long-term stability.
The Canada History Fund encourages Canadians to improve their knowledge about Canada’s history, civics and public policy. The Fund supports the production of learning materials, the organization of learning activities and the creation or maintenance of networks.