VOL. 23, NO. 23	MAY 20, 1998

he National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded Columbia University Libraries an $870,200 grant for the preservation of documents on economic and social history. The grant brings the total of federal funds allocated to the preservation project at Columbia to almost $4 million.

  “We’re thrilled to receive the award, especially in the face of tougher competition for the reduced funding the NEH has had in recent years,” said Carol Mandel, deputy University librarian. “We see it as recognition of the value of the University’s collections and of the excellent preservation work Columbia did in the first two phases—work that developed model procedures and exceeded project goals.”

  The funds will support the third and final phase of the Libraries’ Modern Social and Economic History Preservation Microfilming Project (MSH), an effort to microfilm and catalogue deteriorating monographs, serials, dissertations and pamphlets important to the study of the world’s economy and its impact on political and social institutions during the past two centuries. The catalogue records of the microfilms will be added to national databases for use by scholars everywhere. Phase III preservation work begins in June.

  Columbia has earmarked 7,370 monographs and bound dissertations for Phase III. The documents, written before 1950, are either so brittle or so damaged that they are unusable. Only those that have not been filmed by other libraries or publishers will be preserved, however.

  MSH began in October 1993 and will run through April 2000. Phase I, from ‘93–’96, preserved and catalogued nearly 20,000 volumes of economic and business history in the Watson Library of Business and Economics in Uris Hall. Ending May 31, Phase II will have microfilmed and catalogued almost 10,000 of Butler Library’s pamphlets and ephemera on such diverse subjects as the gold standard, labor unions, socialist clubs and Rooseveltian economic changes.