Worcester City Clerk’s Office - NEH Preservation Grant

FAIN: PG-258369-18

City of Worcester, Massachusetts (Worcester, MA 01608-1891)
Stephen A.J. Pottle (Project Director: May 2017 to March 2021)

A preservation assessment and the purchase of environmental monitoring equipment for a collection of 30,000 historical records in New England’s second largest city.  Materials include vital records certificates filed since the 1720s, hundreds of audio and video recordings of and documents presented to city council meetings, city ordinances, and voter and business registrations.  Notable items include a photogravure of Worcester City Hall; a 1774 Worcester Town Record account of Tory protests in a town meeting; and a 1969 map and list of “Locations of Graves on Worcester Common.”  The collection is used by researchers, members of the public, and students.

The City of Worcester's City Clerk's Office is seeking a Preservation grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Preservation and Access to support an in-depth preservation assessment of our collection of historic materials and artifacts. Through the hiring of a consultant, the project will result in a written report to establish a long-range plan for the care and sustainability of our collection of vital statistics and City Council records. As the second largest city in New England, Worcester, MA, has an expansive collection of materials and this project will highlight the twenty-first century methods for the conservation and preservation of our records.