2025-26 Call for Applications
The UCLA Library Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP) offers grants to support the
documentation and digitization of at-risk global cultural heritage collections. Funded by
Arcadia, MEAP has been awarding grants since 2019 to preserve and create access to
endangered archival materials from the 20th and 21st Centuries, including print, photographic,
film, video, audio, ephemeral, and born-digital objects.
MEAP invites applications for its eighth cohort of projects to document, digitize, and make
accessible collections at risk from environmental conditions, political uncertainty, inherently
unsustainable media, inappropriate storage, or communal and social change. All materials
created with MEAP funding will be published on the open access UCLA Digital Library.
Three Awards Available
PLANNING GRANTS offer up to $20,000 for up to one year of work to evaluate and prepare
materials for digitization. Projects should focus on organizing and documenting existing archival
materials through assessment, cataloging, survey, or inventory creation. Projects should also
investigate and secure rights for future digitization.
PROJECT GRANTS offer up to $70,000 for up to two years of work to digitize and create robust,
object-level metadata for cultural heritage materials. Projects should focus on digitization and
metadata creation for an existing archival or born-digital collection.
REGIONAL GRANTS offer up to $100,000 for up to two years of work to create digital collections
that include cultural heritage materials from three or more institutions, families, or archival
repositories but relate to one theme, community, or historical event. Projects should focus on
digitization and metadata creation that enables findability for materials that are not physically
held in one location. (*Only past MEAP grantees are eligible to apply.)
Grant funds can be used for staff salaries, equipment, training, travel, and community engagement to
support the documentation and digitization of endangered collections. Funds cannot be used for the
creation of new materials, including oral histories or other recordings.
Application Cycle 2025 -26
MEAP has a two-round application process. All applicants must submit a Preliminary Application through
our online application system available at meap.smapply.io. Eligible applicants will be invited to submit a
Detailed Application. All applications must be submitted in English.
● Applications open September 16, 2025
● Preliminary Applications due November 17, 2025
● Preliminary Application decisions communicated December 2025
● Detailed Applications (for invited applicants) due February 20, 2026
● Awards announced Summer 2026
A Global Program for Modern Cultural Heritage Preservation
The UCLA Library Modern Endangered Archives Program supports the preservation and discovery of atrisk archival collections that invite a more expansive understanding of the world we live in.
MEAP grants fund projects that document, digitize and make accessible cultural heritage materials from
the 20th and 21st Centuries. We are committed to supporting projects that reflect community voices,
cultural expression, and historical experiences that have been left out of national narratives and
archives.
OPEN ACCESS REQUIREMENT
MEAP is an Open Access program. All content created through grant funding must be shared openly
online at meap.library.ucla.edu. This includes surveys or inventories for Planning Grants and digital
images, audio, film, or video files for Project and Regional Grants.
Project teams are responsible for securing necessary permissions for Open Access publication.
● Project and Regional Grant applicants must provide evidence of permission for publication at
the Detailed Application phase.
● Planning Grant projects may build in time to explore rights-related questions.
ELIGIBILITY
MEAP supports projects to organize, collect, convert, and describe archival materials, existing digital
assets, or born-digital materials. Materials must fit within the following scope. MEAP aims to fund
projects focused on preserving existing archives – most often documentary heritage or audio visual
recordings. The creation of new materials, recordings, or archives is outside the scope of MEAP funding.
ENDANGERMENT: Archival content must be imminently at-risk due to environmental
conditions, political uncertainty, inherently unsustainable media, inappropriate storage, and/or
communal or social change.
AGE OF MATERIAL: From the early 20th century to the present, preferably with a majority of the
material dating from the 1940s or later.
CONTENT: Materials should document aspects of history, society, culture, and politics,
preferably with an emphasis on social justice, human rights, and under-documented
communities.
GEOGRAPHIC FOCUS: Collections must be held outside North America, the UK, and European
Union countries. We encourage applications from Africa, the Caribbean, Central America, Latin
America, the Middle East, Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and Oceania.
FORMAT: We welcome materials in a variety of formats, including print, audio, video, film,
photographs, ephemera, and born-digital files (including but not limited to blogs, cell phone
videos, website pages, 3D images, magnetic tape, and social media content).
More Information
The 2025-26 Call for Applications is also available in Arabic, French, Indonesian, Portuguese, Spanish,
and Swahili.
Additional details and resources for applicants are available on the How to Apply page at
meap.library.ucla.edu. Questions? Ask us at meap@library.ucla.edu.
