Brewster Ladies' Library Receives Preservation Assistance Grant

Public library receives grant to preserve archival and manuscript holdings

BREWSTER - The Brewster Ladies’ Library has received a Preservation Assistance Grant for Smaller Institutions in the amount of $4,998 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The grant will be used to preserve and care for the library’s archival and manuscript holdings and to make them more accessible to the public.

Suzanne Teuteberg, Library Director proposed the grant so that the library can adequately address its preservation needs. “We recently completed a Long Range Plan for the Library and one of the goals is ‘To improve access to information about Brewster’s history’ with a key objective to ‘increase by 15% the number of people who will use Brewster history resources’. This project is pivotal to the accomplishment of this goal and objective. We are extremely pleased to be awarded the Library’s first ever federal grant, which will strengthen our role in serving the public interest.”

Kathleen Remillard- Adult Services and Reference Librarian and Sally Gunning-author and historical researcher co-authored the NEH grant proposal. Kathleen notes "The archives and manuscript collections are important because they transmit culture from one generation to the next.” This grant allows the library to preserve its archival holdings for future generations. A “finding aid” or detailed index of the library’s archival and manuscript holdings will be developed and made available to the public at the Library, through the Brewster Ladies’ website, and on the Cape Libraries Automated Materials Sharing (CLAMS) catalog.

The Library’s preservation plans dovetail with that of the town-wide group the Brewster Archives Committee whose mission is to identify, preserve, catalog, and provide access to Brewster historical and archival records.

The Brewster Ladies' Library is located at 1822 Main Street (Route 6A) in Brewster.  Contact the library at 508-896-3913 or via their website here.