You are here

Requirements for Project Categories

Disaster Management

  • For inventory and survey activities
    • All records inventory and survey projects must involve the development of a records management needs assessment and program plan that addresses short- and long-term goals. Describe the process you will use to develop the needs assessment and records management plan.
    • Indicate, in cubic feet or bytes, the approximate quantity of records you intend to inventory, survey, or organize. Use the “Table of Cubic-Foot Equivalents” in the appendices of the current Guidelines to estimate cubic footage. Estimate inventory rates for electronic records by conducting a test inventory of a single electronic recordkeeping system.
    • If applicable, explain how you will use the data from any survey or inventory project to develop office retention schedules.
    • If planning a partial inventory or survey, specify which offices, government functions, or records formats (paper or electronic) the grant project will cover and why.
    • Indicate an inventory, survey, or purging rate and how you arrived at that rate. The standard rate is one to two cubic feet per hour for paper records. This rate may be slower for projects involving a small volume of records and will be faster for a records survey.
  • For inactive records activities
    • Explain why you selected a particular site for records storage and describe the suitability of that site based on location, size, security, and environmental conditions or based on the improvements that will occur because of the proposed grants project. Identify the departments that will use the storage area and the controls you will employ to ensure the security of the records.
    • Include to-scale floor plans of proposed storage areas that indicate all dimensions (length, width, and height) and include the proposed layout of shelving. Indicate the number of cubic-foot boxes that will fit on each unit of shelving.
    • Indicate that the floor load capacity of the chosen site can support the weight of the stored records unless the storage area proposed is on a slab.
    • Plan for at least 30% more space based on the volume of records. For example, if you have 100 cubic feet of records to store, include space to store 130 cubic feet of records.

Historical Records

  • For all activities
    • Provide a detailed list of each records series involved in the project, including records series title, inclusive dates, quantity, and condition of records.
    • If you intend to use records of local governments other than your own, provide a list of the governments and demonstrate that you involved these governments while preparing the grant application.
    • Indicate that you will submit copies of any products, including brochures, collection guides, and procedures manuals, to the State Archives.
  • For activities focused on managing historical records
    • Indicate the volume (in cubic feet) and condition of records you intend to use.
    • Demonstrate that your government has clear custody of the records involved.
    • If arrangement and description are involved, follow the standards described in the State Archives’ manual, Guidelines for Arrangement and Description of Archives and Manuscripts. To determine the time needed to complete the project, use the following as a guideline:
      • Completely unorganized series: 16 hours per cubic foot
      • Complicated series, such as correspondence or subject files: 8 hours per cubic foot
      • Fairly simple and organized series that may need some work, such as case files or business records: 4 hours per cubic foot
      • Well organized series consisting primarily of bound volumes or voluminous series with uniform or repetitive information: 2.5 hours per cubic foot.
    • Demonstrate that by the end of the project you will house the historical records in a safe, secure environment with appropriate temperature and humidity controls.
    • Explain your policies and procedures relating to access, storage, and security of the historical records, unless these will be developed during the project.
  • For conservation activities
    • Justify the intrinsic value of any records that must be preserved in their original form through conservation treatment rather than reformatted. Also, submit a copy of vendor treatment proposals and estimated price quotes for each item to be conserved. Treatment proposals must describe specific tasks, proposed materials and techniques, estimated number of hours needed, and itemized costs.
  • For educational activities
    • Demonstrate your grant project’s substantive use of local government records. You may use non-government records such as business, organization, and church records, as well as historical records from a local historical society and library, where such use supplements and provides essential support to the use of local government records.
    • Address how the proposed project will support both your overall records management objectives and the State Education Department’s learning and Common Core standards.
    • Include the following project participants for teacher training projects:
      • Trainers with the necessary experience in using local government records in the classroom, who will instruct other teachers, and who will provide guidance during site visits. Trainers may have acquired this experience by conducting research at a local government and developing educational materials based on that research; participating in a workshop, such as “Primarily Teaching,” offered by the National Archives and Records Administration; or participating in a training workshop on how to use local government records in the classroom.
      • Local government officials, who will identify and provide access to relevant records.
      • Participating teachers, generally eight to twenty teachers per one-week training session.
    • Strong preference will be given to projects that offer teachers professional development credit from individual school districts, or graduate credit from colleges and universities, rather than stipends for attending training workshops. If you are requesting stipends, you must justify the amount according to relevant union contracts.
    • Develop a plan to share the grant’s final products to local governments whose records were used or who contributed to the project; to participating teachers; to the school district libraries of participating teachers; and to appropriate community, educational, and research institutions.

Files Management

  • Describe the problems with the current filing system and the proposed changes to it, including anticipated improvements in the speed and accuracy of retrieval.
  • Explain why you chose one files management solution over other possibilities.

Document Conversion and Access

  • For imaging, microfilming, and document management activities
    • Describe how you will manage all of the phases of a conversion project, including document preparation, document conversion (through microfilming, imaging, or both), image verification and quality control, and providing access to the images.
      • Describe the individual tasks required for preparation (unfolding paper, removing staples, purging obsolete records and duplicates), indicate the staff time you will need to accomplish these tasks, and indicate how you arrived at these rates. The baseline rate for preparing records is 1,000 sheets per hour, but more time may be required for older, worn records with many staples and clips. Applicants may consider preparing a small portion of the records before applying in order to calculate the most accurate rate.
      • If scanning or microfilming paper documents, indicate whether, after the completion of the project, the paper will be retained by the applicant or destroyed.
      • If destroying the original records, indicate how you will verify that all the digitized or micrographic images are legible and that the images of the entirety of all records have been captured. One hundred percent of the images must be verified before destroying the original records. The base rate for verification is 300 images per hour. If maintaining the original records as a backup, explain what sampling method, as defined in New York State Archives' Advisory 19.01, Quality Control and Content Verification of Digital Images, you will use to gauge the quality of the images.
      • Describe the chosen method for improving access: manual indexing, full-text searching, or a combination of solutions. If using off-the-shelf software, indicate the name and version.
      • If microfilming, request $30 per roll for third-party testing of every fourth roll of original microfilm. This testing must verify adherence to State Archives’ guidelines for density, resolution, targeting, and general quality. Testing is conducted by Precision Micro Products, 1 Comac Loop, Unit 13, Ronkonkoma, NY 11779; phone: 631-580-3456, Sales: 800-932-9215. Applicants can use other third-party vendors for microfilm testing only if they have received permission from the State Archives to do so.
    • If your government has received a previous grant focused on microfilming or imaging records, provide a list of those records filmed or scanned during those projects in order to prove that those records have not been filmed or scanned before and to show that you are not proposing a project to address a backlog that has developed after a previous microfilming or imaging project paid for with LGRMIF funds.
    • Pursuant to Article XI, Section 162 of State Finance Law, NYS Industries for the Disabled Inc. (NYSID) has been designated a “Preferred Source” for the provision of document imaging services. Under this law procurement of imaging services, when available in the “form, function and utility” required by applicants, are required to be made from preferred sources and are not subject to competitive procurement requirements.
      • You should submit a quote from NYSID for document imaging services, unless you can demonstrate that the services are not available from NYSID in the form, function and utility that you require to successfully complete your proposed project, or you can demonstrate other legal or procedural reasons that preclude you from providing a quote from NYSID. In such instances you must explain how NYSID is not able to meet your required form, function, and utility, or cite the legal and/or procedural reason that you have not provided a quote from NYSID.
    • Note: The New York State Education Law (Article 40, Section 1950) authorizes school districts to contract with a BOCES for services that have been approved by the Commission of Education. One of the available services is non-print duplication, which may include scanning or document conversion. The law authorizes school districts to contract with a BOCES through a cooperative service agreement (CoSer) rather than through a competitive procurement or via a Preferred Source. For additional information and clarification please contact NYSED’s Office of Educational Management Services at (518)474-6541 or emscmgts@nysed.gov.
    • If you are developing a database index, indicate the number of hours you estimate the indexing will take, including the number of hours you will need to prepare for the project and develop a policies and procedures manual. Indicate you arrived at any indexing rate you chose. The usual estimate for indexing minutes is seven pages per hour. The usual estimate for indexing birth, death, and marriage records (and for similar types of objective indexing) is 4,000 keystrokes per hour.
    • Provide detailed quotes for imaging and microfilming that include per-image costs for conversion.
    • Indicate how you will follow standards outlined in the State Archives’ standards and guidelines:Note: Be sure to include specific citations from the appropriate publication.
    • Applicants proposing to microfilm or scan court records must also indicate how they will adhere to all Unified Court System guidelines.
    • Provide, in section 1b of the project narrative, the number of images calculated for each records series you plan to digitize or microfilm.
    • Identify how you will maintain the master image copy. For example, explain how camera-negative microfilm will be stored off site under environmentally controlled conditions and how you will ensure that the master digital copy will be preserved and maintained for the full retention period of the record.
    • Describe how you will continue document conversion of records series initiated with grant funding and/or expand conversion to other records series.
    • If proposing to establish an in-house imaging operation, demonstrate how doing so will be more economical and efficient than outsourcing.
    • If implementing a document management system, demonstrate your ability to implement and maintain the system long term. For example, discuss your ability to budget for systems maintenance, store image files, protect file integrity, and migrate images to the newer platforms and file formats when needed.
    • Where appropriate, reference the guides and videos available as part of the Electronic Records Management System (ERMS) Toolkit produced by the Digital Towpath as part of its LGRMIF demonstration grant.
  • For record system implementation activities
    • Indicate in the grant application, when applicable, that source code for customized software developed with LGRMIF funds becomes the property of the local government by including a clause to that effect in any contract with a software designer.
    • Agree to make any customized software code developed with LGRMIF funds available on request to other New York local governments for the cost of the storage media.
    • Ensure that electronic records are maintained in open, non-proprietary formats except in rare cases when such formats do not exist.