ALBANY -- Commissioner of Education Richard P. Mills has announced that the New York State Archives has awarded approximately $9.65 million in grants as provided in Governor Pataki’s 2006-2007 budget to hundreds of local governments and community organizations across the state. These awards are intended to help those governments and organizations care for the records in their custody.
The State Archives, part of the State Education Department, administers two types of grant programs -- Local Government Records and Documentary Heritage Program -- to fund a variety of projects related to public and community records.
These records vary tremendously. They range from judicial transcripts from the mid 1600s when New York State was a Dutch colony to sophisticated geographic information systems that maintain detailed records in electronic form on land use. Local governments use these grants to improve records management systems to better serve the public. Community organizations (historical societies, libraries, museums, etc.) use the grants to ensure that the rich and diverse history of New York State is preserved, while still others provide a hands-on history experience for school children.
Award amounts for both the Local Government Record and the Documentary Heritage Program grant recipients were determined through an intense, competitive process using records management and archives experts from throughout the state to review applications. A county-by-county listing of all the grants is available at the Archives' website at www.archives.nysed.gov.
“The high degree of interest in these grants demonstrates a statewide appreciation for the importance of records, whether it is managing today’s records for the smooth operation of municipal government or preserving older records to save local history,” said State Archivist Christine W. Ward. “Local governments and community organizations know that these programs provide both expert advice on how to manage records and the funding needed to implement that advice.”
Local Government Records grants averaged $23,767 and ranged from a $915 award to the Town of Lisbon to almost the $125,000 maximum allowed for cooperative and complex grants awarded to five local governments: Bronx, Dutchess, Warren, and Westchester counties, and the Digital Towpath Cooperative. The Town of Lisbon grant will enable the town to improve access to town birth and marriage vital statistics by repairing, restoring, and rebinding dismantled volumes of birth and marriage records, while the larger grants will be used for e-government, geographic information systems, imaging, and storage and retrieval.
Documentary Heritage Program grants averaged $12,806 and ranged from a $7,350 award to the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute to a $19,379 grant to Cornell. The Dominican Studies Institute will use the grant funds to implement the third phase of its project to document the Dominican community in New York. Cornell's project will continue its work to identify and survey records documenting the grape growing and winemaking industries in New York. DHP grants also will fund projects that document the Latino communities in the South Bronx and Rochester, make records of the High Rock Knitting Company of Philmont, New York accessible, and document the impact that the World Trade Center attacks had on Staten Island.
Both the Documentary Heritage Program and the Local Government
Records grants are funded from the Local Government Records Management
Improvement Fund (LGRMIF) which was enacted into law by the New York State Senate
and Assembly in 1989. The LGRMIF derives its revenues from a small percentage
of the fees paid when people file or record documents with county clerks and
the Register of the City of New York.