One of my favorite blog topics was in an email press release today. “WASHINGTON, D.C. (July 22, 2026) —The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) today announced $41.4 million in grants for 81 humanities projects across the country. These include an online version of Noah Webster’s 1806 and 1828 dictionaries, a new permanent exhibition at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library on Roosevelt’s global influence . . . Several grants will support scholarly, educational, and public programs designed to enhance ongoing national celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.” Another paragraph stated “National Digital Newspaper grants awarded in six states will support the ongoing digitization of newspapers published between 1690 and 1963 for inclusion in the Chronicling Americaonline database of historic American newspapers.” That’s not all that will interest my readers.
Some of the long list of projects. Other involve the Revolutionary War era, historical figures, ethnic records, writers, and basically a wide swath of history in the U.S. and beyond.
Alabama, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia: each received a grant for their digitization of 100,000 pages of historical state newspapers as part of the state’s participation in the National Digital Newspaper Program.
California, University of California Riverside: Adding approximately 20,000 records to a database documenting the residents of California from 1769 and 1850, as well as providing links to related primary source materials and expanding the functionality of the digital reference resources.
Maryland, Loyola University Maryland: Research and writing leading to a coauthored book on the autograph albums created and exchanged by Jewish girls and women during the Holocaust (1940–1945).
Massachusetts, Massachusetts Archives: Support the conservation, rehousing, and high-resolution digitization of colonial and Revolutionary War-era bound records housed in the Massachusetts Archives.
New York, Huguenot Historical Society of New Paltz New York: conservation treatment, cataloging, and digitization of approximately 1,700 documents dating from the 18th to mid-19th centuries from the archival collections of Historic Huguenot Street and the Town of New Paltz.
New York, Schenectady County Historical Society: Hiring a project archivist to re-house, digitize, and describe county records from 1765 to 1815.
South Dakota, University of South Dakota: Rehousing, arranging, and describing the Dakota Territory records housed at the State Historical Society of North Dakota, as well as digitizing and cataloging approximately 27 linear feet of gubernatorial papers and 140 legislative composites to be made available through the Digital Library of South Dakota.
Next, you really should read the full press release and then at least look at all the projects in states that interest you. Colleges, universities, archives, counties, and other institutions have received grants in this round of awards.
Press release: https://www.neh.gov/news/neh-announces-414-million-81-humanities-projects
Projects and details: https://www.neh.gov/sites/default/files/2026-07/NEH%20grant%20awards%20state%20by%20state%20July%202026.pdf
© 2026, Paula Stuart-Warren. All rights reserved.
