Kentucky Digitization Grant
Applications Due November 1, 2022
The Kentucky Genealogical Society is pleased to be able to award money grants to repositories or other holders of genealogically significant Kentucky records for digitization. Applications for the 2023 Grant Cycle are due on November 1, 2022. The next cycle starts July 2023. Digitized records will then be made available online free of charge.
The Society launched this digitization grant program in 2019 to encourage the digitization of records that are at risk from being lost forever or are otherwise valuable to Kentucky genealogical researchers. As events in 2022 demonstrate, some Kentucky records are one fire, flood, or tornado from being lost forever. These natural disasters can strike at any time.
The Digitization Grant Program furthers one of the Society’s primary missions to encourage the preservation and availability of Kentucky records that are essential to genealogical and historical research.
Eligible records cover a wide variety of topics such as newspapers, directories, school or organization yearbooks, church records, trade or vocational records, funeral home records, and pension records. This list, however, only scratches the surface on the records in need of digitization.
To date, the Society has awarded grants to several genealogical or historical societies and public libraries: (1) the Filson Historical Society to digitize Baptist orphan records and (2) the Bullitt Family Papers, (3) the Ballard-Carlisle Historical and Genealogy Society to digitize personal narratives, photos, maps and correspondence from the area, (4) the Cynthiana-Harrison County Public Library to digitize the Log Cabin Newspaper collection, (5) the Todd County Public Library to digitize the handwritten and typed documents from the collection of late local historian Frances Fox, (6) the Carroll County Public Library to digitize historical county records, and (7) the Green County Public Library to digitize printed record transcriptions, historic photographs and oral histories. These grants are described in greater detail here.
Anyone with questions may contact Grant Committee Chair (Susan Court).
The Digitization Grant Program is funded by the generosity of members and the general public. Anyone wanting to contribute may do so here.
