University of Richmond Library Receives NEH Preservation Grant
January 10, 2006
The University of Richmond’s Boatwright Memorial Library has been awarded a $5,000 Preservation Assistance Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The grant will enable the library to conduct a critical assessment of preservation needs for its humanities collections. Library staff and a consultant in library materials preservation will assess current preservation activities and make recommendations for future needs.
The humanities collections that will be the focus of the project include circulating books, bound periodicals and rare books and other special collections. The latter group includes some 12,500 volumes, ranging from an 11th-century hand-inscribed Latin prayer book to a 1998 facsimile of the “Leningrad Codex.”
The library’s special collections include the Meredith Collection of 500 Confederate imprints, the Millhiser Collection of more than 200 18th- and 19th-century fine bindings and the Mark Lutz/Carl Van Vechten Collection of more than 1,000 letters, photographs, manuscripts and signed first editions that focus on African American writers from the Harlem Renaissance and other prominent American writers.