New Ideas for a Two Century Place: Jefferson County Public Library History Collection Preservation Assessment
FAIN: PG-271645-20
Jefferson County Public Library (Madison, IN 47250-3717)
Camille B. Fife (Project Director: January 2020 to October 2022)
A preservation assessment and purchase of preservation supplies for monographs, microfilm, maps, and archival collections. The microfilm contains long runs of local newspapers, including the Madison Courier, which is not available elsewhere in Indiana. The archives include a collection of 10,000 photographs that document people, schools, homes, businesses, landmark sites, and Ohio River steamboats from the first decades of the twentieth century. A number of scholars have consulted these collections for research on the anti-slavery movement in the nineteenth-century. The collections are also widely used by genealogists and local historians.
A preservation assessment of the library's history collection, including 10,000 photographic images, nearly 7,000 books, 3,500 microfilms and many other documents will help the library create a long-term preservation program. In addition, the grant request includes funds for archival materials needed on a short-term basis to assure preservation of existing documents. The Jefferson County Public Library is located in Madison, Indiana, a small rural town with a long and distinguished history. The library celebrated its 200th year in 2018. Madison has been honored as an icon of American values, and by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as one of three Main Street pilot sites in the 1970s. It is one of the largest National Historic Landmark Districts in the country, designated in 2006 and it is documented by HABS and HAER with over 36 listings. The Jefferson County Public Library has been an important part of the humanistic research required by all of these distinctions.