News

CHENEY, Wash. - Eastern Washington University Libraries is one of six institutions to participate in a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant to expand access to archival digital collections.

The Orbis Cascade Alliance's Northwest Digital Archives (NWDA) program has received the $137,756 grant to reformat finding aids for archival collections using Encoded Archival Description and to add them to NWDA's database at http://nwda.orbiscascade.org/index.shtml. NWDA offers enhanced access to archival collections in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska and Montana.

Participating institutions were selected, in part, based on the historic significance of their archival collections. Finding aids for 16 archival collections at EWU Libraries, including collections related to the World Expo ‘74, construction of the Grand Coulee Dam and women's history in the Inland Northwest, will be included in the grant project.

The end results will be expanded access to each participant's collection, skill building and revisions to descriptive practices and processing workflows that will continue this level of access to their collections in the future. The project will begin in July 2011, and conclude in June 2012.

In addition to Eastern, participating institutions are Montana State University, Western Oregon University, The Evergreen State College, Oregon Institute of Technology and Boise State University.

For more information, contact Jodi Allison-Bunnell, NWDA Program Manager, Orbis Cascade Alliance, jodiab@uoregon.edu or Julie Miller, PhD, associate dean of the EWU Libraries, at jmiller7@ewu.edu.