The National Endowment for the Humanities recently listed Jewish Educational Media among the prestigious American institutions to receive assistance grants for the year 2008. According to the announcement, the NEH grant helps "institutions such as libraries, museums, historical societies…improve their ability to preserve and care for their humanities collections." The grant underscores the national significance of the JEM collection, which documents Jewish life in America with an emphasis on the Lubavitch Chassidic movement.

The grant summary explained the assistance as an "Outright $5,000" towards hiring an "audiovisual preservation specialist to conduct a comprehensive assessment of 1,600 sound and image recordings in the media archives that date from 1920 to the present." The consultant's report will include recommendations for preservation, collection management, archival storage equipment and related supplies and a plan to address Jewish Educational Media's current and future needs.

For the complete grant announcement visit: http://neh.gov/news/awards/PreservationNov2007.html