It was wonderful for me to have the chance to attend the Society of Archivists’ conference. Many of the papers addressed the future of electronic records, something very important to the EAP. Included in the programme was a talk by Will Prentice on internships for Archivists offered by The British Library’s sound archives team. The conference also gave me the chance to discuss cataloguing, copyright, metadata and other issues with colleagues. And, because I arrived a few days early, I also had a chance to see Bristol, a lovely city.

Back at the Library, I spent most of last week answering emails and checking new accessions. But it was a busy week for two other reasons. Firstly, we put out an advertisement for a new temporary cataloguer. Details of the post are on the Library's main careers site. Secondly, the EAP sent out a call for the next round of applicaitons. Details of how to apply are on the web pages.

This looks like a good place to give some information on how the Programme works. After the call for submissions goes out, interested applicants fill out a Preliminary Application form. These are assessed and the applicants may then be invited to submit a Detailed Application. The detailed application form allows the intended projects to be explained in full: in terms of what the project hopes to achieve and how the work will be organised. When these are received, they are discussed and evaluated by our international advisory panel who meet in April each year. Successful applicants are informed shortly afterwards.

The amount of funding varies, as do the timescales, from project to project. A recent tally revealed that the EAP has funded 118 projects so far. Of these, 50 have been completed.