The Governor's Academy Archives Wins a Wilson Foundation Grant

The Governor's Academy (TGA) has been awarded a $1,000 Wilson Foundation Grant through the New England Library Information Network (NELINET, now part of LYRASIS) and the Digital Commonwealth of Massachusetts (DCM). The award is a matched-funds grant that will enable the school’s Archives Department to expand access to some of its items of historical significance, such as the will of Lieutenant Governor William Dummer and the Academy’s Incorporation Charter, signed by both John Hancock and Samuel Adams (see below).

The Wilson Foundation Grant provides funds for incorporating some of TGA's digitized items in a web-searchable repository, now located at www.digitalcommonwealth.org. Inclusion of TGA materials in this repository will allow researchers beyond the school community to access its historical documents, and it will increase awareness of the school as it approaches its 250^th anniversary in 2013.

The DCM provides a portal to cultural heritage information held in museums, historical societies, colleges, libraries, and other cultural repositories in Massachusetts. From the DCM site, viewers can search or browse the digital collections of member institutions. In conjunction with LYRASIS, DCM offers its web-searchable repository that hosts DCM members’ digital content. NELINET, a not-for-profit cooperative of academic, public, school, and special libraries and other information/cultural organizations in New England, was formed as a program of the New England Board of Higher Education in 1966 but joined with similar organizations in 2009 to form LYRASIS, the nation’s largest regional membership organization serving libraries and information professionals.