The Division of Preservation and Access of the National Endowment for the Humanities is accepting applications for grants in its Research and Development program.

The grants support projects that address major challenges in preserving or providing access to humanities collections and resources – finding better ways to preserve materials of critical importance to the nation’s cultural heritage, and developing advanced modes of searching, discovering, and using such materials, including materials generated by such recent technologies as born-digital.

Other emphasized areas include recorded sound and moving-image collections and preventive conservation: how to protect and slow the deterioration of humanities collections.

Maximum awards are $350,000 for up to three years. The application deadline is May 19, 2011 for projects beginning January 2012. All applications to NEH must be submitted electronically through Grants.gov; for details, see the newly revised 2011 guidelines, which include descriptions of the many eligible activities, as well as sample proposal narratives.

Among other NEH grants that may be of interest to moving-image archivists are Preservation Assistance Grants for Smaller Institutions (May 3 2011 deadline) and Humanities Collections and Reference Resources grants (July 20 2011 deadline). Details on these and other funding opportunities in Preservation and Access are online.