Hagley Museum and Library announced today that it has received a $500,000 grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts. The grant funding will support the library’s new Hagley Heritage Curators (HHC) program aimed at advancing scholarship and public knowledge of American enterprise and innovation.
HHC attracts and maintains historical materials from businesses and trade associations at Hagley through a membership program that offers curatorial, reference, and conservation services to members. Similar to the library’s other collections, the materials maintained by HHC will be available to historical researchers.
“We’ve attracted important collections from active companies and trade organizations throughout our own history,” said Hagley’s Director of Library Services, Erik Rau. “HHC provides us with tools to be more vigorous in acquiring more of those collections, building on relationships we’ve been developing for more than half a century, and also expanding into emerging industries with a national focus. This generous grant from Pew will ensure the success of HHC in attracting members to the program.”
The library at Hagley maintains the most significant collection of historical research materials describing the American experience with business, technology, and industrial design. Spread over three years, the Pew grant funding will allow HHC to build on the library’s collections, leveraging its long experience with deposits, which have been placed at Hagley under extended loan agreements by their institutional owners.
HHC has built a suite of membership services around these collections that allows trade associations and businesses to make strategic use of their heritage. These services range from traditional reference service to conservation and digitization of images and audiovisual material. Recently the library has added the development of oral history projects to its portfolio.
For more information contact Jessica Eisenbrey, Marketing Manager, at (302) 658-2400, ext. 238 or jeisenbrey@hagley.org.