WGBH Awarded $1 Million Grant by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to Support American Archive of Public Broadcasting

Grant will bolster capacity and usability of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting

BOSTON (June 22, 2017) – WGBH Educational Foundation is pleased to announce that the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded WGBH a $1 million grant to support the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB). The AAPB, a collaboration between Boston public media station WGBH and the Library of Congress, has been working to digitize and preserve nearly 50,000 hours of broadcasts and previously inaccessible programs from public radio and public television’s more than 60-year legacy.

WGBH will use the grant funds to build technical capacity for the intake of new content, develop collaborative initiatives, build training and support services for AAPB contributors and foster scholarly use and enhance public access for the collection. These efforts will include the creation of advisory committees for scholars, stations and educators.

“The work of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting is crucial for preserving our public media history and making this rich vault of content available to all,” said WGBH President and CEO Jon Abbott. “I am grateful that the Mellon Foundation has recognized the invaluable efforts of our archivists to save these historic programs for the future. WGBH is honored to accept this generous grant.”

WGBH also will hire a full-time Engagement and Use Manager to lead outreach and engagement activities for the AAPB. Candidates can find the job posting on WGBH’s employment website: http://www.wgbh.org/about/employmentopportunities.cfm.

The AAPB is a national effort to preserve at-risk public media and provide a central web portal for access to the programming that public stations and producers have created over the past 60 years. In its initial phase, the AAPB digitized approximately 40,000 hours of radio and television programming and related materials selected by more than 100 public media stations and organizations across the country. The entire collection is available for research on location at WGBH and the Library, and currently more than 20,000 programs are available in the AAPB’s Online Reading Room at americanarchive.org to anyone in the United States.

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About WGBH

WGBH Boston is America’s preeminent public broadcaster and the largest producer of PBS content for TV and the Web, including Masterpiece, Antiques Roadshow, Frontline, Nova, American Experience, Arthur, Curious George, and more than a dozen other prime-time, lifestyle, and children’s series. WGBH also is a leader in educational multimedia, including PBS LearningMedia, and a pioneer in technologies and services that make media accessible to the 36 million Americans who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, or visually impaired. WGBH has been recognized with hundreds of honors: Emmys, Peabodys, duPont-Columbia Awards…even two Oscars. Find more information at www.wgbh.org.

About the Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States – and extensive materials from around the world – both on site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office.  Explore collections, reference services and other programs and plan a visit at loc.gov, access the official site for U.S. federal legislative information at congress.gov and register creative works of authorship at copyright.gov.

About the American Archive of Public Broadcasting

The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) is a collaboration between the Library of Congress and the WGBH Educational Foundation to coordinate a national effort to preserve at-risk public media before its content is lost to posterity and provide a central web portal for access to the unique programming that public stations have aired over the past 60 years. To date, over 40,000 hours of television and radio programming contributed by more than 100 public media organizations and archives across the United States have been digitized for long-term preservation and access. The entire collection is available on location at WGBH and the Library of Congress, and more than 20,000 programs are available online at americanarchive.org.

About the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Founded in 1969, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation endeavors to strengthen, promote, and, where necessary, defend the contributions of the humanities and the arts to human flourishing and to the well-being of diverse and democratic societies by supporting exemplary institutions of higher education and culture as they renew and provide access to an invaluable heritage of ambitious, path-breaking work. Additional information is available at mellon.org.