Funds Will Allow Purchase of Environmental Monitoring Equipment, Shelving
The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded the Peace Resource Center at Wilmington College nearly $10,000 to be used for preserving its unique collection of 40,000 materials relating to the atomic bombings during World War II.
The $9,980 Preservation Assistance Grant for Smaller Institutions will allow the College to purchase environmental monitoring equipment to be placed throughout the Peace Resource Center to record such factors as humidity, temperature and ultraviolet light that might present a detrimental impact on the historical books, photographs, documents and other media featured in the collection.
Also, powder-coated steel shelving will replace much of the wooden shelves in the PRC. Wooden enclosures are regarded as potentially damaging over time to books and other paper resources.
“This is extremely prestigious for a small archives like ours to be recognized by the National Endowment for the Humanities,” said Dr. Tanya Maus, director of the Peace Resource and Quaker Heritage centers at WC.
She noted that, as an additional benefit, the “learning curve” she successfully navigated in applying for an NEH grant would likely have a positive affect on future grant applications for the center.
“This is one important step into the grant process, a stepping stone to (ideally) future grants leading to the complete digitization of the Peace Resource Center’s collection,” she added.
Wilmington College was one of only two NEH grants awarded to entities in Ohio. Last year, the Peace Resource Center earned national certification for archives management from the American Association of State and Local History.
The Peace Resource Center at Wilmington College works for peace by bearing witness to the historical experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombing survivors and the legacies of nonviolent activists touched by the horrors of nuclear war. The four core commitments that inform the work of the Center are: commitments to nonviolence, disarmament, peace inquiry and consciousness, and just peace.
PICTURED: Dr. Tanya Maus, director of the Peace Resource Center and Quaker Heritage Center, displays one of the PRC's resources that will be protected from deterioration with the new equipment. It's a book about a Japanese doctor who conducted relief work in the wake of the atomic bombings.