UC Santa Cruz has received a major grant to help digitize the Grateful Dead Archive at the university library.

The university was awarded a National Leadership Grant of $615,175 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

The grant will allow the UCSC Library to digitize materials from its Grateful Dead Archive spanning from 1965 to 1995. The project will include a new website titled, "The Virtual Terrapin Station."

"We are honored to be among a select group of libraries and museums chosen as recipients of National Leadership Grants," said UCSC Librarian Virginia Steel.

"This is a first for the UCSC Library, and the grant gives us the opportunity to create a new model for web-based archives that will include traditional materials from our Grateful Dead Archive–along with materials contributed by scholars and Deadheads around the world."

The website will offer access to the Grateful Dead Archive materials, including original documents, clippings, media, articles along with three decades of the bands recordings and its performance of thousands of concerts.

The website will also allow fans to contribute to the archive. The library plans to develop a click-through permissions form for content contributors to help extend the reach of the archive to the academic community.

The Grateful Dead donated their large band archive to UC Santa Cruz in 2009. The processing of the archive is expected to be completed in 2012 with parts of the collection being made available as the work progresses.