College & Research Libraries News vol. 86, no. 2 (February 2024)


C&RL News March 2024 83

David Free G r a n t s  a n d  A c q u i s i t i o n s

Grants
The Library of Congress (LoC) recently announced that six awards totaling nearly $400,000 
have been awarded from the Connecting Communities Digital Initiative through a pro-
gram available to higher education institutions and libraries, archives, and museums. The 
program is part of the Of the People: Widening the Path initiative. The 2024 awardees will 
use these funds to create projects that offer creative approaches to the library’s digital collec-
tions and center on Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic or Latino studies.

Recipients include Angelo State University ($69,999.06) for the project “All History 
Is Local: Celebrating the People of West Texas,” the University of Houston-Downtown 
($69,084.67) for “Discovering Afro-Latino Heritage: A Reflective Story Map Project to 
Enhance Student Belongingness and Learning,” Trustees of Indiana University ($68,154.48) 
to fund “Connecting Collections: Indigenous Identities in Edward Curtis and Joseph Dixon 
Materials,” and more. 

Launched in January 2021, Of the People: Widening the Path is a multiyear initiative to 
connect LoC more deeply with Black, Indigenous, Hispanic or Latino, Asian American and 
Pacific Islander, and other communities of color. Supported through a gift from the Mellon 
Foundation, it provides new opportunities for more Americans to engage with the library 
and add their perspectives to the library’s collections. Learn more at https://www.loc.gov 
/programs/of-the-people/.

Acquisitions
The Beauford Delaney Papers, acquired by the University of Tennessee Libraries in 2022, 
are now available to researchers. The collection consists of family, personal, and professional 
correspondence; photographs; sketchbooks and notebooks; artwork; exhibition material; 
biographical records; and printed material created or collected by the Knoxville-born, Af-
rican American artist Beauford Delaney (1901–1979). He is widely regarded as one of the 
major modernist painters of his time. His brother is Joseph Delaney, another well-known 
modernist painter.

In addition to material related to the production of Delaney’s artwork, the collection in-
cludes correspondence with influential artists and gallerists such as Palmer Hayden, Lawrence 
Calcagno, James LeGros, Dorothy Block, Darthea Speyer, and Joseph Delaney; the writers 
James Baldwin, Henry Miller, and James Jones; and other cultural figures. Researchers can 
learn more about the collection and use a finding aid at https://scout.lib.utk.edu/reposito 
ries/2/resources/5353. 

https://www.loc.gov/programs/of-the-people/
https://www.loc.gov/programs/of-the-people/
https://scout.lib.utk.edu/repositories/2/resources/5353
https://scout.lib.utk.edu/repositories/2/resources/5353