UK Libraries Special Collections Research Center Awarded NEH Grant for 'P.S. Write Again Soon'

A project from the University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections Research Center was one of 41 selected to receive a 2018 Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The NEH Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Grants allow institutions to preserve and provide access to collections essential to scholarship, education and public programming in the humanities.

UK’s two-year project, “P.S. Write Again Soon: Revealing 200 Years of the American Mosaic through the Wade Hall Collection of American Letters,” was awarded a grant worth $199,148 to process 355 cubic feet of letters, diaries and personal papers from the Wade Hall Collection of American Letters. Additionally, 50 cubic feet of material will be digitized.

The grant will fund a two-year project archivist position and will result in over 2,000 finding aids and 80,000 digitized documents.

Wade Hall, a Kentucky scholar of history and literature, collected materials written by men and women of different ages, races, education, and socioeconomic status from across the U.S. between the 1750s and the 1960s.

The “P.S. Write Again Soon” project is expected to start in June.

The Special Collections Research Center at UK Libraries sustains the Commonwealth’s memory and serves as the essential bridge between past, present and future. By preserving materials documenting the social, cultural, economic and political history of Kentucky, the center provides rich opportunities for students to expand their worldview and enhance their critical thinking skills. Special Collections Research Center materials are used by scholars worldwide to advance original research and pioneer creative approaches to scholarship. UK Libraries Special Collections Research Center is the Archives, the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, the King Library Press, the Wendell H. Ford Public Policy Research Center, the Bert T. Combs Appalachian Collection, the John G. Heyburn Initiative and ExploreUK. 

Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the NEH supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at: www.neh.gov.