In FY 2007, the Endowment made an award of $410,000 outright and $100,000 in federal matching funds to the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) in Philadelphia, Pa., to support a regional preservation field service program that provides preservation surveys, workshops, technical consultations, and educational materials to libraries, archives, museums, and historical organizations in the Mid-Atlantic states. The Center will assist the staffs of cultural institutions in the Mid-Atlantic region in planning for the long-term preservation of collections, will improve the preservation skills of those responsible for the care of humanities collections, and will provide current information about preservation technologies and practices.

George Washington University in Washington, D.C., received a grant of $429,863 in FY 2005 to develop a distance learning curriculum in collections care and management. The curriculum would be tested by offering it to 30 participants from cultural repositories across the country.

The Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation, the membership organization supporting conservation professionals, was awarded a grant of $200,000 in FY 2008 to support a professional development program for conservators. Workshops on a variety of conservation topics will be offered around the country for conservators responsible for the care of humanities collections.

In FY 2008, the Southeastern Library Network (SOLINET) in Atlanta, Ga., received an award of $500,000 outright and $12,000 in federal matching funds in support of a regional preservation field service program that provides preservation surveys, workshops, distance education, technical consultations, educational materials, and disaster preparedness and response assistance to libraries and archives in ten Southeastern states and Puerto Rico.

Spelman College in Atlanta, Ga., received a grant of $240,829 in FY 2002 to support a training program in basic archival practices and policies for staff at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The program consisted of three week-long training sessions. Between sessions, participants worked on assignments at their home institutions with the help of the instructors and a mentor from a larger archival repository in the participant's city or region.

The University of Delaware in Newark was awarded a grant of $256,680 in FY 2008 to support graduate education in the conservation of humanities collections. The University of Delaware and the Winterthur Museum jointly sponsor the art conservation training program, which is designed to prepare students to meet the comprehensive preservation needs of works of art on paper, paintings, textiles, ethnographic, archaeological and decorative objects, furniture, photographs, library and archival records, and outdoor sculpture.

The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, received a grant of $300,000 in FY 2008 to offer four week-long workshops for advanced training in the preservation of digital materials in cultural institutions and six shorter topical workshops, addressing selected issues in depth. A total of 192 members of the managerial and technical staffs of collecting institutions would participate. In addition, an online introductory tutorial on the basics of digital preservation would be freely available.