Columbia University Libraries Receives First Installment of $1 Million Grant to Preserve Global Archives of the Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program

From CUL:

Columbia University Libraries has received the first of a series of grants from the International Fellowships Fund (IFF) – totaling $1 million over seven years – to serve as the permanent home for the archives of the Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program (IFP).  The collection includes both paper and digital archives and will be available to researchers worldwide.
For a decade, IFP offered fellowships for post-graduate study to emerging leaders from underserved communities in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Russia. Their work will be completed in 2013 and includes written and audio/visual documentation from 22 partner organizations, records of more than 4,300 IFP fellows who passed through the program, as well as comprehensive planning and administrative files demonstrating the IFP educational model.
The IFP archive at Columbia, to be completed in 2018, will be of invaluable use for researchers and practitioners interested in the progress of social justice, community development, and access to higher education. Access to the paper and electronic archives will be integrated via an online platform, offering researchers a fast and comprehensive way to study the content. This extensive archive will also complement a 10 year, longitudinal IFP tracking study to be conducted by the Institute of International Education (IIE) beginning in July 2013. The study aims to examine the impact of IFP on the lives and career trajectories of its grantees.
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With the funds, Columbia University Libraries will develop a full set of repository-based systems and services that will enable the libraries to more easily acquire, ingest, process, preserve and make accessible both paper and born-digital organizational records. The technological infrastructure built for this project will ultimately allow Columbia to act as the central repository for the electronic records of other institutions whose archives are deposited at Columbia.
“Columbia’s longstanding academic and collection strengths in public policy and international relations together with its reputation as a leader in the development and implementation of technologies in support of research and learning makes the award and the projects it supports a perfect match,” said Michael Ryan, Director of Columbia’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

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