The Funding & Preservation
Funding
From th start of the project with Crackel in 1994, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) has proved funding for the Papers of the War Department. When Crackel left ESU and relinquished leadership of PWD, after a decade of funding, NHPRC reached out to universities and groups to apply for funding to adopt and complete the project. NHPRC awarded RRCHNM with the project and three years of funding in Fall 2005. NHPRC continued to grant funding for the completion of PWD until Spring 2013.
Additional funding came from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for the creation of Scripto, the open source transcription software which allowed PWD to add a crowdsourcing transcription aspect to site March 2011.
Preservation
Papers of the War Department continues to be maintained at the Center with long-term preservation as the goal. Megan Brett, staff member at the Center working in the Public Projects division, works as transcription editor, ensuring the accuracy of completed transcriptions. Alyssa Toby Fahringer, graduate research assistant in Public Projects, also works as a transcription editor on the project with other responsibilities including weekly blog posts and tweets.