The Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library at Mississippi State University received a grant of $43,490 from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) for the 2014-15 fiscal year. 
John F. Marszalek, executive director and managing editor of Ulysses S Grant Association and Grant Presidential Library, said the award is very competitive since universities nation wide apply for the grant, and the success of the Grant presidential library brings prestige and status to the university. 
“We are showing that Mississippi State is a research university not just for sciences but also for humanities as well. This shows that Mississippi State is a comprehensive university,” Marszalek said. 
Marszalek said the Ulysses S. Grant association started in 1962 to collect Grant’s papers and to publish them in books. The presidential library came to MSU in 2008. The three major sources that fund the associates are Mississippi State University, National Endowment for Humanities and National Historical Publications and Records Commission. 
“The application for the funding is evaluated first, an advisory board of national archives gives recommendation on who should get it and then finally the archivist of the United States decides who gets it,” Marszalek said. 
Meg Henderson, assistant to the executive director, said the Grant Association has been working on the Grant publication since 2008. 
“The past year we started working on the Grant memoir, and a major project like this is going to help the university’s reputation,” Henderson said. 
Recalling his experiences, Henderson said the memoirs are beneficial to readers because they are commentaries on Grant’s life. The memoirs also include Grant’s remarks and experiences from the Civil War. 
“We are a research library, and we welcome everyone to do research here,” Henderson said. “Everyone can come here, and we are a resource full of primary source documents.” 
David Nolan, Editor and Reference Librarian for the Grant Association and Congressional Political Research Center, said the funding from NHPRC is targeted toward working on the scholarly edition of the memoir. 
“Our ambition is, when we are doing the digital edition of the memoirs, we will still have the transcription and also the original images of the manuscript. So people will be able to look at them side by side,” Nolan said. 
According to Nolan, the two-volume memoirs were  best-sellers at the time of publication. Nolan also said  they represent a classic of American non-fiction, and many presidents have looked at the memoirs as an example of how to write  their own memoirs. 
“The tone is very engaging,” Nolan said. “The reader gets the feeling that you are sitting across the table from Grant.”
Marszalek said the association also employs undergraduate and graduate students who help with research and organizing materials.
“I would argue without the students, not just working but really getting involved in doing things well, we couldn’t have made the progress we have,” Marszalek said.
Nolan said first phase of the work deals with completing a clean text version and adding annotations to explain the context. The next big phase will go back to the original handwritten document and transcribe it.
“This part will give the reader a feel for how the memoir started, how it was revised, and how it got published,” Nolan said.