SCRLC Grants

SCRLC offers a yearly round of Digitization grants. DEI Consulting Grants were offered during the 2023-2024 fiscal year. SCRLC is unable to offer this grant during the 2024-2025 fiscal year, but hopes to offer a similar grant opportunity in the future.

Digitization Grants | DEI Consulting Grants

Digitization Grants

SCRLC routinely supports creative proposals to improve regional access and resource sharing through technology. Digitization projects allow materials to be accessed regionally through New York Heritage, New York State Historic Newspapers, the Empire Archival Discovery Cooperative, and the Empire State Immersive Experiences projects.

For 2025-2026, applications are especially encouraged for:

●partnerships that increase representation of and with communities that have been historicallyand systematically oppressed;
●geographically underrepresented communities in the SCRLC region;
●innovative approaches to availing digitized collections and making them more discoverable,e.g., holding or co-organizing a Wikipedia edit-a-thon to add links to New York Heritagecollections, developing walking tours, virtual tours (e.g. participation in the 360-degree EmpireState Immersive Experience project), and HistoryForge participation.

Applications are due Friday, April 11, 2025.

The application packet for 2025-2026 can be viewed here: .DOCX or .PDF

Feel free to contact Claire Lovell with any questions.

2024 Grant Recipients

• Cayuga Onondaga BOCES SLS: $4,430 to digitize yearbooks from Auburn, from 1924 through 2004, including multiple public high schools that once existed in the community before Auburn High School opened in 1971.

• Chenango County Historical Society & Museum: $5,000 to continue digitizing the Robert Bellamy collection and the Mary Fargo collection. The Bellamy collection reflects the community of people of color around Norwich, including records of the AME Zion church. The Fargo collection is the only known set of comprehensive material associated with a female entrepreneur and business-owner in Chenango County.

• Cortland County Historical Society: $2,450 to digitize the Helen Jewett McAleer postcard collection, which features postcards from her uncle, the famous mathematician and Cortland native, David Eugene Smith.

• Elmira College: $4,200 to digitize their yearbooks, The Iris, as well as their Alumnae Bulletins and Campus Magazines.

• Fenimore Art Museum Library: $4,604 to digitize the Mohawk Courier (1838-1859) and Glimmerglass (1909-1968) for New York State Historic Newspapers.

• Finger Lakes Library System: $4,400 for the George P. and Susan Platt Cady Library in Nichols to digitize their local yearbook collection.

• International Motor Racing Research Center: $2,240 to digitize Watkins Glen Grand Prix racing photographs and 15 reels of 16mm film created by Lester “Andy” Gerard (1929-2013), documenting sports car and formula one races at Watkins Glen, N.Y., from 1955 to 1964.

• Newfield Historical Society: $2,950 to digitize their high school yearbook collection.

• Seward House Museum: $5,000 to digitize a portion of Fanny Seward’s Library, the only complete collection of books belonging to a teenage girl in the antebellum period.

• Seymour Public Library District: $2,600 to hire an intern to expand on their HistoryForge project, focusing on the Parker Street neighborhood.

• Southern Tier Library System: $5,000 to add the Andover Advertiser and the Andover News (ranging from 1869 to 1978) to New York State Historic Newspapers, to continue digitization of the Cuba Patriot, and to digitize a collection of works by the Cuba Poetry Society.

• SUNY Oneonta James M. Milne Library: $3,130 to digitize the card catalog reflecting the Cooperstown Graduate Program’s oral history collection.

• The History Center in Tompkins County: $1,020 to digitize the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra’s program collection.

• Ulysses Philomathic Library and Interlaken Library: $8,000 to digitize microfilmed reels of the Trumansburg Free Press by Advantage Archives and with additional inclusion on New York State Historic Newspapers.

• Waterloo Library & Historical Society: $4,155 to digitize their high school yearbook collection.

2023 Grant Recipients

• Broome Tioga BOCES SLS: $4,145 to digitize yearbooks from Chenango Forks CSD and add them to New York Heritage.
  See Broome Tioga BOCES SLS's final report for 2023 here.
• Cayuga Museum of History & Art: $3,055 to digitize the diaries of Helen Smith Alexander and add them to New York Heritage.
  See Cayuga Museum's final report for 2023 here.
• Cayuga Onondaga BOCES SLS: $4,925 to digitize yearbooks from the Southern Cayuga CSD and add them to New York Heritage.
  See Cayuga Onondaga BOCES SLS's final report for 2023 here.
• Chenango County Historical Society: $5,000 to digitize 700+ photographs from the Mary Fargo and Lee Brown Coye collections and add them to New York Heritage.
• Fenimore Art Museum: $5,234 to digitize public domain newspapers from the 20th Century for New York State Historic Newspapers.
  See Fenimore Art Museum's final report for 2023 here.
• Greater Oneonta Historical Society: $800 to acquire archival records of Oneonta-area veterans from World War II and them to New York Heritage and Stories Behind the Stars.
  See Greater Oneonta Historical Society's final report for 2023 here.
• Historic Ithaca & History Center in Tompkins County: $7,651 to digitize a collection 5,600+ of tax assessment photographs and add them to New York Heritage and HistoryForge.
  See Historic Ithaca and History Center in Tompkins County's final report for 2023 here.
• Seneca Falls Library: $1,457 to digitize early historical documents about the canal and add them to New York Heritage.
  See Seneca Falls Library's final report for 2023 here.
• Seymour Public Library District: $2,000 to create and digitize oral history interviews and add them to New York Heritage.
• Southern Tier Library System: $5,234 to digitize newspapers from Angelica, NY for New York State Historic Newspapers.
  See Southern Tier Library System's final report for 2023 here.
• Waterloo Library & Historical Society: $3,550 to digitize 15 microfilmed newspapers for New York State Historic Newspapers and a collection of student written magazines and add them to New York Heritage.

2022 Grant Recipients

• Cayuga Onondaga BOCES SLS: $2,856 to digitize 96 yearbooks from Weedsport Central School District and add them to New York Heritage.
  See Cayuga Onondaga BOCES SLS's final report for 2022 here.

• Chenango County Historical Society: $2,500 to continue digitizing materials from their archives for New York Heritage.

• Elmira College: $3,960 for the digitization of their Catalogues and Bulletins, 1855 - 2010, for inclusion on New York Heritage.
  See Elmira College's final report for 2022 here.

• Fenimore Art Museum: $5,557.50 to digitize 20th Century newspaper titles in the public domain and add them to New York State Historic Newspapers.
  See Fenimore Art Museum's final report for 2022 here.

• Greater Oneonta Historical Society: $2,000 for Part 2 of "Digitizing GOHS's Women's History Collections," to upload to New York Heritage.
  See Greater Oneonta Historical Society's final report for 2022 here.

• Houghton College: $3,950 to add the remaining 63 Houghton College yearbooks to their digital collections and New York Heritage.
  See Houghton University's final report for 2022 here.

• Huntington Memorial Library: $6,000 to digitize Oneonta city directories and local high school yearbooks for New York Heritage.

• Interlaken Public Library: $6,000 to digitize the Saturday Morning Review, the Farmer Review, and the Interlaken Review for New York State Historic Newspapers.

• Seymour Public Library District: $2,400 for their oral history project, the Voices of Cayuga County: Continuing the Conversation, and to add to New York Heritage.
  See Seymour Public Library District's final report for 2022 here.

• Southern Tier Library System: $4,560 to digitize newspapers from Friendship, NY, for New York State Historic Newspapers.
  See Southern Tier Library System's final report for 2022 here.

• Steele Memorial Library: $6,000 for an ST ViewScan 4 Microfilm Scanner for the library's genealogy department, which they'll use to digitize microfilmed newspapers.
  See Steele Memorial Library's final report for 2022 here.

• Waterloo Library & Historical Society: $3,705 to digitize Seneca County newspapers for New York State Historic Newspapers.

• Wells College: $5,720 for a necessary update to their scanner in order to digitize a scrapbook collection for New York Heritage. 

2021 Grant Recipients

• Waterloo Library & Historical Society (WLHS): $5,868 - The Executive Director of WLHS, Cyndi Park-Sheils and WLHS Researcher Pamela Becker have 40 microfilmed reels of newspapers from Waterloo, NY dating from 1873 to 1961 digitized and made available on NYS Historic Newspapers.
• Southern Tier Library System (STLS) and Cuba Circulating Library: $8,000 - The Director of Cuba Circulating Library, Tina Dalton and STLS's Engagement Consultant, Erika Jenns, will digitize 50 reels of microfilmed historic newspapers from Cuba in Allegany County, spanning from January 1866 to December 1986. These newspapers will be made available on NYS Historic Newspapers.
  See Southern Tier Library System's final report for 2021 here.
• Seymour Public Library District: $6,016 - The Seymour Public Library District will digitize hundreds of photographs from the Cayuga County Historian's Office and Seymour Library's local history collections. The photographs will be added to New York Heritage Digital Collections and Auburn HistoryForge.
  See Seymour Library's final report for 2021 here.
• Greater Oneonta Historical Society: $6,700 - GOHS's Executive Director, Dr. Marcela Micucci and archivist Shelley Wallace will select materials from GOHS's collections in order to document women's roles throughout Oneonta's history. The digitized materials will be added to GOHS's website, oneontahistory.org, and to New York Heritage Digital Collections.
  See Greater Oneonta Historical Society's final report for 2021 here.
• Fenimore Art Museum: $7,980 - Fenimore Art Museum's Special Collections Librarian, Joe Festa, will digitize historic newspapers from Delaware County and make them available on NYS Historic Newspapers.
  See Fenimore Art Museum's final report for 2021 here.
• SUNY Cortland: $7,565.87 - SUNY Cortland's archivist, Jeremy Pekarek, will digitize 5,000 pages of the Cortland Normal News, spanning 1879 through 1913. The college will also digitize other student newspapers, including the Co-No Press (1925-1942), and The Dragon Chronicle (2013-2017). After the Normal News project is complete SUNY Cortland newspapers will be fully searchable from 1879-2017 online on NYS Historic Newspapers. 
  See SUNY Cortland's final report for 2021 here.
• Chemung County Library District: $2,000 - Maggie Young, the Genealogy & Local History Librarian of Steele Memorial Library of CCLD will digitize their popular but rapidly deteriorating collection of Elmira city directories, which span from 1857 to 1924. Once digitized, these directories will be available on New York Heritage Digital Collections.
  See Chemung County Library District's final report for 2021 here.

2020 Grant Recipients

• Scholes Library of Alfred University
  $6,883 to digitize 114 hours of at-risk audio recordings on a variety of subjects relevant to the history of Alfred University, the College of Ceramics, and the region. Includes 20 tapes on the topic of "Voices of Native North America."
  See Schole Library's final report for 2020 here.
• Chemung County Historical Society
  $620 to digitize at risk oral histories from 1988-1990, documenting the local African-American community in Elmira.
  See Chemung County Historical Society's final report for 2020 here.
• Fenimore Art Museum Library
  $4418 to digitize Chenango County Newspapers: New Berlin Gazette, Oxford Times, Norwich Journal, and Chenango Telegraph.
  See Fenimore Art Museum Library's final report for 2020 here.
• History Center in Tompkins County
  $3,000 to digitize historical photographs, maps, and city directories from the city of Ithaca.
  See the History Center in Tompkins County's final report for 2020 here.
• Seymour Public Library District 
  $4,500 for a collaborative project with Cayuga Museum of History and Art to collect oral histories documenting historically oppressed groups in Auburn, NY, including African American, Latinx, LGBTQ+ and immigrant communities.
  See Seymour's final report for 2020 here.
• SUNY Cortland 
  $2243 for digitization of the student newspaper, Normal News , 1906-1925. Newspapers are held in print format only, brittle and at-risk.
  See SUNY Cortland Memorial Library's final report for 2020 here.
  
• Wells College
  $8,325 to digitize the collection of the Howland Stone Store Museum. This collection includes materials relating to women's rights, the Underground Railroad, and the education of formerly enslaved people post-Civil War.
  See Wells College's final report for 2020 here.
• Yates County History Center
  $4,094 to digitize historical items held in nine rural townships underrepresented in the historical record of Yates County.

DEI Consulting Grants

SCRLC made funds available to support a round of DEI grants to support two (2) to seven (7) hours of consulting time with Dr. Kawanna Bright. Members of SCRLC --governing or affiliate-- were encouraged to apply for this expert assistance to help their organization make systematic changes related to DEI. Projects were encouraged to include but were not limited to the following:

• Assessing where your organization is at with respect to DEI and the development of a plan to address DEI;
• Creating and conducting DEI assessments for your organization;
• Determining a plan to incorporate DEI following a DEI assessment.

Applications were due July 1, 2023. Consulting was completed between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024. 

For your reference, here is the DEI Consulting Grant Application.

2023 Grant Recipients

• Alfred University Libraries were awarded 7 hours of consulting time, valued at $2,450 to reflectively review their Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) work and consider next steps, i.e., what would it look like organizationally to more deeply integrate anti-racism and anti-oppression efforts as a core part of their daily library work? AUL created a Commitment to Anti-Racism & Anti-Oppression in 2020 and they have been working toward various concrete steps necessary to "walk the walk" of their commitment. Their work with Dr. Bright will help this effort to move forward.
• Ithaca College Library was awarded 7 hours of consulting time, valued at $2,450 for projects involving collections, classification, and policies in technical services. The Collections component will include increasing access to works that are authored by or focus on voices from communities that have traditionally been marginalized or excluded from academic scholarship. For Classification, they will remove LGBTQ+ materials from Library of Congress classification to mitigate harm to LGBTQ+ patrons. For Policies, they will 1) update their collection development policy to formally commit to diversifying their collections; 2) create/post a statement on potentially offensive and harmful content; and 3) review/update other existing policies as appropriate.
• Seymour Library (Auburn) was awarded 6 hours of consulting time, valued at $2,100 to 1) re-examine and potentially revising their current DEIA statement; 2) align their DEIA initiative with their new strategic plan/develop metrics to ensure forward movement with DEIA; 3) incorporate DEIA in ongoing decisions at the Board and staff level; and 4) empower staff and Board to respond to any negative comments about the Library's DEIA efforts.

The recipients shared the results of their work in a webinar on May 30, 2024. SCRLC is unable to offer this grant during the 2024-2025 fiscal year, but hopes to offer a similar grant opportunity in the future. Contact Mary-Carol Lindbloom with any questions.