JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Mellon Foundation granted the Jacksonville Public Library a historic $1 million Wednesday. It is the largest private grant in the library's history.
The donation will go towards expanding Memory Lab services and the library's African American History Collection, Mayor Donna Deegan announced. The grant will also provide two support staffers to the Special Collections team, and a semi-annual speaker series is also planned.
The Memory Lab stations allow customers digitize and preserve books, photos, slides, negatives, audiocassettes, films and other media. The grant will allow these stations to be updated with furniture, scanners and transfer units.
The Library Foundation plans to grow the African American History Collection through new acquisitions and subscriptions, the recording of oral histories, and the digitization and publication of newspapers, yearbooks, annual reports, church directories, and other community materials.
“The Library’s mission is to enrich lives, build community and foster success by bringing people, information and ideas together,” said Tim Rogers, Jacksonville Public Library’s chief librarian and library director. “I am so pleased that the grant will enable the Library to help our residents to digitize and share their individual histories in order to build a better understanding of our community's journey from past to present."
Patricia Hwse, program director for public knowledge at the Mellon Foundation, said: “Public libraries are perfect places for memory labs, where community members may receive help to care for their personal artifacts in the form of audio and video recordings, for example. We are pleased to support the Jacksonville Public Library to undertake this important work and highlight the richly diverse communities in its midst through these labs.”