MHS News

Recent MHS Grant Announcements - July

Support received from the NEH, Packard Humanities Institute, and LSTA

Sarah Gooll Putnam diary 2, 22-23 February 1862.

Friends of the MHS noticed a flurry of press in the last week of June as local media outlets including WBZ-TV, the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Worcester Telegram, Patriot Ledger, Bay State Banner, Fenway News, and a few local blogs announced that the Adams Papers was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant to continue its work of publishing the papers of John and Abigail Adams and their extended family, in book and digital format. The NEH is providing the project with a two-year $450,000 grant ($200,000 outright, $250,000 matching). In addition, the Packard Humanities Institute has renewed its contract with the Adams Papers for the coming fiscal year for $317,800. The money from both organizations will be used to publish two books--The Papers of John Adams, vol. 15, and Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 10--as well as continue work on three other volumes and document transcription into the Early National period. It will also allow the MHS to prepare four more volumes to be added to its Founding Families Digital Edition website, which currently provides electronic access to over 30 volumes of the award-winning Adams Papers series.

In other grant news, the MHS was recently notified that it has been awarded a $16,771 Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners to microfilm the diaries of Sarah G. Putnam. Putnam, a Boston portrait artist, began her diary on Thanksgiving Day in 1860 when she was nine years old and maintained it until her death in 1912, filling 27 volumes. The diaries are richly illustrated with approximately 400 watercolor paintings and chronicle Putnam's career as an artist as well as her extensive travels throughout the United States and abroad. As part of the project, which will run from 1 October 2009 to 30 September 2010, the MHS will create digital images of Putnam's color illustrations for use by researchers.