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Endangered Archives Programme (EAP)

To establish a grants programme that funds projects to digitise neglected, vulnerable or inaccessible archives from across the world. The digitised materials are available for free online.

The Endangered Archives Programme (EAP) facilitates the digitisation of archives around the world that are in danger of destruction, neglect or physical deterioration. Thanks to generous funding from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, we have provided grants to more than 400 projects in 90 countries worldwide, in over 100 languages and scripts.

Archive types digitised so far include rare printed sources, manuscripts, visual materials, audio recordings. This continually expanding online collection is available freely through the British Library website and local archival partners, for research, inspiration and enjoyment.

Summaries of individual projects funded by EAP can also be found on the Culture in Crisis portal. These summaries were created from EAP project proposals and final reports. They have been edited for consistency but retain the original language of the applicants and project leads.

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Endangered Archives Programme (EAP) Projects

Eap 1086

Preserving and Digitising the Historic Newspaper, The Barbados Mercury Gazette

The Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette - a newspaper printed bi-weekly in Barbados, West Indies, from 1783 to 1839 - is a resource in the recovery of the identities of en…

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EAP Placeholder

Recovering the rich local history of Kita (Mali) through the salvaging of its archival heritage

The Kita district was the oldest colonial district in Mali. Located at the crossroads of several trade routes, the cosmopolitan region was a refugee zone that welcomed populat…

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Eap 1077

Preservation of Tibetan Bonpo Manuscripts in Amdo (Qinghai and Gansu Provinces, PRC)

Compared to Tibetan Buddhism, Bon is still a niche topic of study that is emerging to the attention of an increasing number of scholars. Ngakpa (ritual experts) normally live …

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Eap 1065

Public High Schools Archives of Chile, Digitisation for their rescue, preservation and dissemination

Public secondary education in Chile was founded in 1813. The schools helped to educate the political elites of the Republic of Chile and constitute the Republic’s early educat…

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Eap 1063

Vernacular Mathematics in Pre-Modern India

While Sanskrit sources in Indian mathematics are widely studied, this is not the case with vernacular sources. The study of the latter will shed light on the pre-modern econom…

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Eap 1 56

Survey and digitisation of individual manuscript collections in Northern Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka’s traditional knowledge has been historically recorded on palm-leaf manuscripts. These manuscripts are now primarily held by individuals, traditional medical and rel…

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Eap 1055

Slow Death for Slavery in the National Archives of Benin

The Beninese colonial court records around the abolition of slavery have been part of the UNESCO Memory of the World Register since 1997. The consequences of transatlantic sla…

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EAP1054 0

Survey of endangered audio material still available with private collectors in India

Audio recordings and replays detailing folk, classical and popular music and recordings of speeches are becoming impossible to access as the replaying equipment is increasingl…

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EAP1047

Preserving Early Ecclesiastical Sources from the State of Rio de Janeiro

Ecclesiastical documents are among the earliest records available for the history of African, indigenous, and European populations in Brazil, the largest slave society in the …

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