Ford International Fellowship Program (IFP) Archives Project

FRED_finalWe are in the midst of work on Ford’s International Fellowship Program (IFP) Archives.  The Ford IFP offered post-graduate study to more than 4,300 people via offices in 22 countries managed by the Secretariat in New York.  The IFP Archives include paper and digital materials from those 22 offices, from the Secretariat, and from the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS).  A $1 million grant from the Ford Foundation is providing financial support for the processing of these archives and for making them accessible in several ways.  This includes 3.6 TeraBytes (TB) of electronic materials in a variety of PC and Mac formats and in many languages.  The collection includes office documents, audio and visual materials, databases, e-mail correspondence, websites, academic and personal records of the fellows, datasets, surveys, interviews, and statistical reports.  The objectives for the project include permanent preservation of the IFP paper and electronic records; providing access to IFP digital archive based on three types of user access, including public online access, viewable onsite only, and information embargoed until 2075; and to make the IFP materials discoverable via OPAC, EAD finding aid(s), and a web interface.  This public online access portion of this project will also leverage the Digital Library Collections website’s code base and will incorporate streaming audio and visual capabilities being developed for this project in the DLC that will benefit many of our other projects and collections going forward.

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