As you may have recently heard, the National Historical Publications and
Records Commission (NHPRC) has been "zeroed out" in the President's
budget.  This program has provided to New York State historical records
repositories over $15,000,000 in federal grant funds since 1976.  

This action means that there will be no money at all for grants, no
money for the administration of NHPRC.  The Society of American
Archivists (SAA), National Association of Government Archivists and
Records Administrators (NAGARA) and Council of State Historical Records
Coordinators (COSHRC) have formed a Joint Task Force on Advocacy to take
action collaboratively on this issues.  This effort also is being
coordinated with the Association for Documentary Editors and the
National Coalition for History.  

This group is developing an action plan which will be shared in more
detail, but for now there is an immediate need to take the first
step--Letters to the Senate and House Appropriations Committee urging
them to restore funding for NHPRC.  The committees begin meeting March
1, so letters need to go out in the coming week to 10 days.   Letters
need to come from people who have received NHPRC grants in your region
or from people who have benefited from the projects--genealogists, local
government officials, historians, teachers, etc.  In particular, please
look for people who may have connections to the member of Congress, or
try to get letters from the head of a library, historical society, or
government that got an NHPRC grant.  
 
Letters FAXED this week would be perfectly timed to get their
attention.  Email is not given much credence at this point because of
the amount that comes in, and land mail is irradiated, adding literally
weeks of time to receipt. So the mid-level Fax technology works best for
this.

More information about this effort, including guidelines for preparing
a letter and a list of the Senate and House Appropriations Committee
members  may be found at the SAA website: 
http://www.archivists.org/news/nhprc-FY2006.asp 

In New York State, the New York Representatives on the Appropriations
committee are Nita Lowey (18th), Jose Serrano (16th), John Sweeney
(20th), Maurice Hinchey (22nd) and James Walsh (25th).  

Thanks for your help on this.



Ray LaFever
Coordinator, Archival Advisory Services
New York State Archives
9C33, CEC
Albany, NY  12230
(518) 473-8165
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