Wartburg College was the only Iowa institution to be awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant in the organization’s most recent round of funding.

The nearly $6,000 Preservation Assistance grant will allow the college to purchase equipment and supplies to stabilize a portion of the Wartburg College Archives and Archives of Iowa Broadcasting collection of approximately 28,000 films, videos and audio resources that cover a range of political, economic and cultural developments in Iowa since the 1920s. The grant also will fund the purchase of better environmental monitoring equipment for the storage vault and online training to use the equipment.

“This grant will allow the Wartburg Archives and Archives of Iowa Broadcasting to address critical preservation needs, especially related to our 16mm film collection,” said Amy Moorman, the college’s archivist. “Audiovisual records are particularly fragile, and we are so grateful to the NEH for recognizing both the need to save these materials and the incredible value they represent to Iowa and American history.”

NEH Preservation Assistance grants help small and mid-sized institutions improve their ability to preserve and care for their significant humanities collections. In the last five competitions, the program received an average of 235 applicants per year and made an average of 75 awards.