UCLA Library funds 34 international cultural preservation projects

The UCLA Library Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP), which funds projects to document and digitize at-risk archival collections from around the world, has awarded 34 grants to its seventh annual cohort - its largest yet. MEAP received a record 206 applications, as archives and communities around the world work to safeguard collections from climate-induced disasters and political threats.

"This expanded cohort demonstrates consistent growth over the past seven years, reflecting the global urgency for cultural heritage preservation," said Rachel Deblinger, director of MEAP.

"This can be seen not only in terms of increased applications, but in the connections across the MEAP network."

The program was launched in 2018 with support from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. To date, MEAP has awarded 171 projects in 64 countries.

The $1.5 million in grants provided this year will support archival work in 26 countries, expanding MEAP's reach into Angola, Ethiopia, Malawi, Bulgaria and more. Projects will collect, organize and digitize a broad range of archival materials, including: photographs from the Angolan War of Independence; documents from the peace process in Guatemala; Buddhist manuscripts in Myanmar and Thailand; and art and museum practices in wartime Bosnia-Herzegovina.

More than a third of the 34 new projects stemmed from previous MEAP grants or local training sessions:

A project team in Angola will begin digitizing photographs from African photographers who caught an intimate visual representation of life during the anti-colonial war and fight for independence. The team will receive training and support from South Africa's Photography Legacy Project, which, as one of MEAP's first grantees, led the effort to digitize the Ramakatane Photography Archive in Lesotho.

Six collections of Buddhist manuscripts have been prioritized for digitization in Myanmar and Thailand after a planning grant that assessed manuscripts from 74 temples.

In Argentina, the audiovisual archive of photographer Bautista Amé will be digitized following an inventory process that revealed the integration of the Amé photography studio into the small town of Ingeniero Luiggi.

These and the other collections that will be preserved through MEAP grants offer insight into communities, lived experiences, landscapes and traditions that allow researchers, students and others to better understand the complex but interconnected world we live in.

This year's cohort includes one regional grant that provides opportunities for previous MEAP grantees to activate networks they have built through years of archival work, training and community building. The project, "Social Movements and Democratic Resistance in Baixada Fluminense," will digitize five institutional archives documenting the struggles for better living conditions in that region of 20th-century Brazil.

MEAP collections are published and accessible on the UCLA Library Digital Collections platform, where collections funded by MEAP now account for over 100,000 unique digital objects, including photographs, newspapers, audio recordings, newsreels, manuscripts and personal correspondence.

See all projects for cohort seven.

For those seeking funding to work with endangered collections, the Modern Endangered Archives Program will offer another round with preliminary applications due Nov. 17. The 2025-26 call for applications is now available. For its eighth round of funding, MEAP invites projects focused on preserving endangered collections from the 20th and 21st centuries that reflect community voices, cultural expression and historical experiences that have been left out of national narratives and archives.