The Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP) is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in support of its Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories (HCI-PSAR).  HCI-PSAR is a three-phase project to make better known and more accessible the largely hidden collections of the numerous small, primarily volunteer-run archival and manuscript repositories throughout Pennsylvania, including small historical societies, museums, historic sites, and other institutions.  The Mellon Foundation grant will fund the initial fourteen-month pilot phase of the project, which will focus on Philadelphia and one suburban county and will develop and refine methodologies for later phases of the project.  During the pilot phase, project staff will create a directory of all the small archival and manuscript repositories in the two-county pilot area and will survey the collections of twenty-five repositories as a representative sample.  Both the directory and survey information will be made available to the public on HSP’s website.

Project director for HCI-PSAR will be Jack McCarthy, a certified archivist and archival/historical consultant who has many years of experience working with small archival repositories.  HSP Director of Archives and Collections Management Matthew Lyons will serve as project supervisor. Additional staff to be hired include two project surveyors and a part-time project coordinator.

The funding for this project will help bring to light the rich and important archival and manuscript collections held by Pennsylvania’s many small historical organizations.