Program Areas
Archives Program
The Archives Program guides the Rockefeller Archive Center’s ethical, standards-based, and culturally competent stewardship of the archival collections in our custody. We do this work through three interconnected teams that reflect the lifecycle of the records: Collections Management (appraisal, accessioning, and preservation), Processing (arrangement and description), and Access (connecting users to the collections in our physical and online spaces). Additionally, the Digital Strategies team provides expertise to the entire RAC organization in the application and use of technology in all aspects of our work with an emphasis on accessibility, user-centered design, and capacity-building.
Research & Engagement Program
The Research and Engagement Program (R+E) at the RAC brings together historians, educators, and archivists to explore issues in the history of philanthropy for public, scholarly, and professional audiences and to cultivate new audiences for archival research. The team’s activities include digital publishing, conferences and workshops, al outreach, practitioner engagement, and a competitive research stipend program. R+E helps further the RAC mission of access by providing a narrative entry into RAC archival collections and fostering broad engagement with the history of philanthropy.
The division’s flagship website, RE:source, examines the role philanthropy has played in the world we live in today. From the civil rights movement to the development of business schools, from dance and theater to overseas agricultural development, private money has affected myriad aspects of social, political, economic, and cultural life both in the U.S. and globally. The aim of RE:source is to bring stories from the history of philanthropy to the general public as well as a foundation practitioner audience.
Through other activities, R+E works regularly with foundation staff and leadership, providing historical perspectives on philanthropic practice and program evolution. The team often serves as a bridge between practice and scholarship by contributing new research to scholarly communities at professional conferences and by organizing workshops and convenings on emerging issues in the fields of history, archives, and philanthropy. Each year, the R+E Program administers a competitive stipend program, which provides travel reimbursement funds to researchers from around the world. These awards enable some fifty researchers annually to travel to Sleepy Hollow to work in the RAC collections.
Through R+E’s Archival Program, the team develops archive projects with local schools that serve as laboratories for curriculum development. We work with students ranging in level from middle and high school to undergraduate. The open al resources developed in these classrooms are hosted on OER Commons, and include documents, photographs, posters, advertisements, and film clips drawn from RAC holdings. The materials cover a range of topics such as voter , wartime scholar rescue efforts, immigration, and scientific innovation. In addition to topical interest, these curricula support the development of interdisciplinary research as well as digital and information literacy skills.