TownsWeb Archiving is offering a limited number of grants for UK-based cultural heritage organisations to support the digitisation of rare and valuable heritage materials and collections. 4 grants of £3,000 are available together with up to £1,000 of matched funding for accepted applicants to put towards their next digitisation project. A proportion of each grant may also be used for the transcription of metadata and Optical Character recognition (OCR) data capture.

The Digitisation Grant Fund can provide funding for a range of UK organisations (see list above) to digitise rare and valuable collections in order to protect them from damage while improving access to the collections. Grants can be used for the digitisations of:

1. Archive collections, including:
o Index cards.
o Reports and letters (loose items), and
o Rolls and parchment. 

2. Bound volume collections, including:
o Diaries and minute books.
o Journals and magazines.
o Manuscripts.
o Newspapers.
o Photograph albums and scrapbooks.
o Published books and theses, and
o Registers and personal records.

3. Photograph collections, including:
o 35mm slides and film strip.
o Glass plates and lantern slides.
o Negatives and transparencies, and
o Photographs. 

Applications will be assessed against the following 4 priorities:

1. Heritage need.
2. Improved accessibility. 
3. Research value, and
4. Social/Community impact.

Examples of previous grant recipients are available on the TownsWeb website.

Further information, guidance, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and an online application form is available on the TownsWeb website.

The deadline for applications is Friday 29th July 2022, with successful applicants expected to be announced in early September 2022 at the Archives and Records Association (ARA) Annual Awards.