Welcome to the Endangered Archives Programme
Unless action is taken now, much of mankind’s documentary heritage may vanish - discarded as no longer of relevance or left to deteriorate beyond recovery. This website explains what the Endangered Archives Programme is, and how it can help.
Learn about the threat to archives.
Find out more about the scope of the Programme.
Search the Endangered Archives Programme's Projects.
Browse the Programme's digital collections.
Grants may be awarded to individual researchers to identify collections that can be preserved for fruitful use. The original archives will be transferred to a safe archival home in their country of origin, while copies will be deposited at the British Library for use by scholars worldwide.
The Endangered Archives Programme is generously sponsored by Arcadia.
If you know of any collections or cultures that are worthy of investigation, please contact us.
What's New
- Read about the latest projects to be funded, including early missionary records from Mizoram, India; Jewish archives in Hungary scattered after World War II; digitisation of the national sound archives of Comoros; preservation of manuscripts in Djenne, Mali; and notarial records from the peninsula of La Guajira, Colombia.
- Read about the award of Guinea's highest civilian honour to Dr Graeme Counsel, in recognition of his EAP project to preserve the Guinean Syliphone recordings.
- Listen to a report on Dr Tuchscherer's Bamum project in Cameroon, broadcast on the BBC World Service radio programme 'The Strand'.
- Watch a video from the Buddhist archive of photography in Luang Prabang, Laos.
- Read about EAP in the news:
The New York Times
Simon Fraser University - Follow the Endangered Archives blog.
- Show your support for Endangered Archives by joining the EAP Facebook Group. Post your photos, discuss with others or read about the latest news in archival preservation, such as this article by the Wall Street Journal
Browse the EAP digital collections
EAP005 Tuvalu National Archives preservation pilot project;
EAP012 Salvage and preservation of dongjing archives in Yunnan, China: transcript, score, ritual and performance;
EAP025 Transfer of Mosseri Genizah Archive from Paris to Cambridge University Library and its digitisation (with metadata), storage and accessibility:Stage 1;
EAP057 Endangered photo documents of Georgia's central state audio-visual archive;
EAP060 Pilot project to identify endangered African diaspora collections at the major archives of the province of Matanzas, Cuba;
EAP071 Archiving texts in the Sylhet Nagri script;
EAP078 Ritual narration of Bagr secret society: audio, video and digital preservation of ancient myths from the Dagara of northern Ghana;
EAP081 Preservation and digitisation of Yi archives in public and private collections in Yunnan, China;
EAP205 Endangered manuscripts of Western Sumatra. Collections of Sufi brotherhoods;
EAP209 Survey on surviving dongjing archives in Jianshui, Tonghai and Mengzi;
EAP229 Acehnese manuscripts in danger of extinction: identifying and preserving the private collections located in Pidie and Aceh Besar regencies.