Pennsylvania State Archives Dec 15, 2025
The Historical & Archival Records Care grant program was established by the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission (PHMC) and the State Historical Records Advisory Board (SHRAB) to assist non-profits and local governments with the preservation of historically valuable original documents. The grants are administered on a competitive basis. Funding for the awards is for two years. Grants are awarded based on review of the application by a sub-committee of SHRAB members. Works-of-art, textiles, artifacts and museum objects are not eligible.
To receive a HARC Award, an organization must be engaged in the preservation of original historical records for public access. All projects must relate directly to some aspect of Pennsylvania history. Proposals must adhere to professional archival standards for the care, preparation and storage of materials. Funding may be requested for surveying, inventorying, preserving, arranging, and describing historical records relevant to Pennsylvania. Funding may also be requested for reformatting or the purchase of supplies and equipment.
JCHC’s proposed project is digitizing our Audio-Visual collection, numbering 416 items, ranging from Open Reel Tapes, 8mm and Super 8 movie reels, Reel-to-Reel voice recordings, VHS and Audio Cassettes, Floppy Discs. CDs, DVs and DVDs.
The collection includes topics such as…stories and histories of county villages, oral family histories, WWII veteran interviews, events like Victorian Christmas, past Laurel Festival parades and Jefferson County Fair.
The AV Collections is part of Jefferson County history that we are obliged to preserve and make available to the public. Currently, we have little equipment capable of playing most of this collection. Digitizing this diverse media collection will keep more recent Jefferson County History of the 20th and 21st centuries alive with sound and images that complement undigitized photos and documents from the same time period, from the 1970s to ~2016.