- Posted in All University
- Category: Campus News
LINCOLN UNIVERSITY – Lincoln University’s Langston Hughes Memorial Library was awarded a $6,000 Preservation Assistance grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) – its second grant award in two years.
The grant, which will be available from Jan. 1, 2015 through June 30, 2016, will be used to fund environmental supplies to address preservation concerns for the university’s Special Collections and Archives, which holds several significant collections pertaining to understanding African American history and culture as well as the relationship between Lincoln, the nation and the African continent.
“This generous NEH Preservation grant will enable the staff of the Langston Hughes Memorial Library to address several environmental and storage issues currently confronting our University Archives collection,” said Neal Carlson, interim-director for the library. “The preservation of existing collections and the inclusion and long term care of anticipated future gift collections enable us to chronicle the evolving story of this institution, this region and the world that our graduates created over the past 160 years.”
Sophia Sotilleo, an Assistant Professor and Access Services Librarian, who applied for the grant and serves as its project director, has more than six years of academic and library experience, specializing in instruction, project management and electronic resources.
“In a year when competition for the Preservation Assistance grants was extremely high, it is impressive that The Lincoln University received their second of these grants,” said Tom Clareson, senior consultant for Digital & Preservation Services at LYRASIS, the nation’s largest library and cultural heritage support network. “The work that Prof. Sotilleo has done to follow up on its 2014 Preservation Needs Assessment has led to this second grant to improve the housing and storage of the Library’s collection and provide a workshop on preservation best practices.”
Over the last five grant competitions, the Preservation Assistance Grant program has averaged 313 applications and 106 awards each year.
Founded in 1854, The Lincoln University (PA) is the FIRST of four Lincoln Universities in the world and is the nation’s FIRST degree-granting Historically Black College and University (HBCU). The University combines the elements of a liberal arts and science-based undergraduate curriculum along with select graduate programs to meet the needs of those living in a highly technological and global society. Today, Lincoln, which enrolls a diverse student body of approximately 2,000 men and women, possesses an international reputation for preparing and producing world-class leaders such as Thurgood Marshall, the FIRST African American U.S. Supreme Court Justice; Lillian Fishburne, the FIRST African American woman promoted to Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy; Langston Hughes, the noted poet; Kwame Nkrumah, the FIRST president of Ghana; Nnamdi Azikiwe, the FIRST president of Nigeria and a myriad of others.