January 12, 2006

Press Contact: Ellen Cunningham-Kruppa, Director, Kilgarlin Center for Preservation of the Cultural Record, UT Austin School of Information 512-471-8287

School of Information receives a $483,000 outright grant and $80,000 in federal match to support the Kilgarlin Center for Preservation of the Cultural Record.

AUSTIN, Texas — A generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities will provide significant support to the UT Austin School of Information's Kilgarlin Center for Preservation of the Cultural Record. Funding from NEH will be directed primarily to support teaching and substantially enhances the Center's mission to focus national attention on preservation by educating students, conducting research, sponsoring symposia, and convening expert thinking on broad, timely, interrelated topics that address the management of cultural heritage in the nation's humanities institutions.

Dean Andrew Dillon notes: "the preservation and conservation of our cultural heritage requires expertise and skills that are in tremendously short supply. It is part of our mission to tackle this shortage and the latest NEH award is evidence of the quality of preservation and conservation education provided at The University of Texas."

Home to the nation's #1 ranked program in Archives and Preservation, the School of Information offers the nation's most comprehensive master's-level Certificates of Advanced Study in preservation administration and conservation. Since 1992, this specialized program has produced more than 75 master's graduates in the administration of preservation programs and in the conservation treatment of paper-based records. These professionals represent advanced knowledge and practice in preservation and occupy leading positions in cultural institutions around the world such as Harvard, Columbia, Yale, the University of California at Berkeley, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, the Smithsonian Institution, the Huntington Library, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum, and the Vatican. The $80,000 federal match award challenges the Kilgarlin Center to raise $80,000, which NEH will match 1:1 for a total of $160,000, all of which will be used to support students during their studies.