

Date: January 6, 2010
To: RCPL Board of Trustees
From: Sandra McNeely, Policy Committee Chair
Re: Deadwood Historic Preservation Grant
Recommendation: Approve submittal of a grant
proposal in the amount of $12,852 for the
virtual Community Archives Project. The
proposal was prepared by Eric Abrahamson on the library’s behalf, and submitted
to the Deadwood Historic Preservation Grant/Loan Fund.
The
proposal would have no financial impact to the library; matching funds would
come through requested federal funding through
a National Historic Prevation Records Center proposal and cost sharing
by the partners, of which RCPL’s portion is in-kind.
Background: The proposal
seeks support for the identification, description, digitization and publication
of records pertaining to the history and development of Deadwood that are held
by various Rapid City institutions and organizations. Work under this project
will be administered by the Rapid City Public Library (RCPL) acting as the lead
agency in a collaboration known as the Community Archive Consortium (CAC).
The CAC is a joint venture of the Rapid
City Public Library, the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, the
Journey Museum/Minnilusa Pioneer Museum, the Dahl Fine Arts Center and the
Rapid City Historical Commission in association with the Homestake Adams
Research Center (HARC) in Deadwood. The consortium was formed in 2009 to
establish a virtual and physical archive of community records and historical
materials documenting the history of Rapid City and the community’s
relationship to the surrounding Black Hills region.
This
project will support the goals of the Deadwood Historic Preservation program by
providing access to historical resources that are currently unavailable to the
building owners, interpreters and interested researchers served by the Deadwood
Historic Preservation program. It will expand the distribution of traditional
historical documents by digitizing and publishing materials online in a
searchable catalogue. It will promote regional collaboration to preserve local
historical materials and make them available. It will also provide critical
archival training to interested repositories and institutions throughout the
Black Hills.