Case Studies

At a time when cultural heritage materials are targeted and destroyed around the world, the Modern Endangered Archive Program (MEAP) works to preserve global knowledge. Through MEAP, the UCLA Library supports the work of archivists, librarians, scholars, cultural heritage professionals and community leaders to create digital collections of endangered cultural heritage materials. These collections often speak to the experiences of individuals around the world who have been largely left out of historical and national narratives.

MEAP preserves this kind of heritage by awarding grants to projects that document and digitize at-risk archival collections from the 20th and 21st Centuries. In its first four years, MEAP has funded 88 projects in 46 countries, preserving all forms of media materials, including audio recordings, political ephemera, studio and vernacular photography, film and video, financial ledgers, newspapers and cultural productions.

MEAP also hosts a public-access repository, ensuring that collections are preserved and looked after in their home countries and are made freely available online. All digital objects created through MEAP projects are published at meap.library.ucla.edu, inviting use by researchers, teachers, and communities from anywhere in the world. Nearly 18,000 individual objects from 12 collections in 11 countries are currently available online. The UCLA Library also provides digital preservation services for all funded projects so that the digital copies remain even if physical collections are lost due to war, political volatility, climate change, community displacement or material degradation.