200 Libraries Nationwide Awarded Grants for Civil War Sesquicentennial Public Programming

NEW YORK, NY (August 31, 2012)—The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, in partnership with The Library of America, has announced the fifty libraries selected to host the Civil War 150 traveling exhibition.  Each of the fifty sites will also be awarded a $1000 grant to plan public programming around the exhibition. An additional 150 libraries have been selected to receive a $500 grant for the development of public programming around the Civil War 150 project. All sites will receive supporting interpretive and contextual materials, including Civil War 150 readers (discussion guides) and access to a multimedia website with robust digital resources.

The following fifty sites were selected by competitive application to host the Civil War 150 exhibition and to receive a grant of $1000 to plan accompanying public programming.

A list of the 150 libraries awarded programming grants in the amount of $500 is forthcoming.

The exhibition is part of Civil War 150: Exploring the War and Its Meaning through the Words of Those Who Lived It, a major three-year project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The project is centered on the four-volume Library of America series The Civil War Told by Those Who Lived It and includes a collection of readers (discussion guides) drawn from the series. Each reader presents a theme with selections drawn from The Civil War volumes, such as “Expectation of War,” “The War at Home,” “From Slavery to Freedom,” and “Civil War Writing as Literature.”

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About The Library of America

The Library of America is an award-winning nonprofit publisher dedicated to preserving America’s best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes, featuring authoritative texts. www.loa.org

About the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

Founded in 1994 by Richard Gilder and Lewis E. Lehrman, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History is a nonprofit organization devoted to the improvement of history education, www.gilderlehrman.org. The Institute has developed an array of programs for schools, teachers, and students that now operate in all fifty states, including a website that features the more than 60,000 unique historical documents in the Gilder Lehrman Collection. Each year the Institute offers support and resources to tens of thousands of teachers, and through them enhances the education of more than a million students. The Institute’s programs have been recognized by awards from the White House, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Organization of American Historians.