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History collection awarded

Library’s history collection gets honorable mention in nationwide contest

A project of the Martha Woodroof Hiden Memorial Collection of the Newport News Public Library System has been awarded an Honorable Mention in the Heritage Advocate Award competition.

Virginiana Room Librarian Gregg Grunow led a project to increase awareness of the Martha Woodroof Hiden Memorial Collection of the Newport News Public Library System. The project was awarded an Honorable Mention in the Heritage Advocate Award competition.

A project of the Martha Woodroof Hiden Memorial Collection of the Newport News Public Library System has been awarded an Honorable Mention in the Heritage Advocate Award competition.

One of six organizations nationwide to receive this distinction, the Martha Woodroof Hiden Collection was selected based on an outstanding project that educated the public about the risks faced by collections and the importance of appropriate care to protect these treasures.

The competition was sponsored by Heritage Preservation, a national non-profit organization, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), a federal agency. The Martha Woodroof Hiden Collection is an extensive assembly of more than 4,300 volumes specializing in Virginia genealogy and history. It is located in the Virginiana Room at Main Street Library in Newport News.

Virginiana Room Librarian Gregg Grunow attended the Raising the Bar Workshop in 2010 sponsored by Heritage Preservation and IMLS. Grunow and Collection staff used tips from the workshop to develop a media awareness campaign. Their efforts resulted in publications of news articles about the Collection’s digitization efforts in the Daily Press newspaper and the Virginia Libraries Journal.

These articles garnered interest in the Collection from a local, state, and national audience and contributed to a record number of online visits to the Library’s website, www.nngov.com/library. The Collection is using this increased attention to continue to make the case concerning the value of preserving the Collection, methods of preservation, and in fundraising campaigns.

“The two award winners and six honorable mentions came from large cities and small towns,” said Lawrence Reger, president of Heritage Preservation. “In every case, their commitment to their collections and enthusiasm for involving their communities will serve as an inspiration to other museums and libraries across the nation.”

The Heritage Advocate Awards are part of Connecting to Collections: A Call to Action, a multi-faceted national initiative of the IMLS. Museums, libraries and archives in the Mid-Atlantic and in the Midwest were invited to attend workshops at which experts worked with participants on ideas for media relations, public outreach and fund-raising on behalf of collections care. Public fascination with conservation can be an untapped resource. The goal of the workshops was to demonstrate how to use conservation issues to broaden funding and public appeal.

In order to encourage participants to put what they learned into action, all were encouraged to conduct a project at their home institution, with the most successful receiving this award. First place was awarded to the Missouri State Museum in Jefferson City, Mo., and the Muscoot Farm in Katonah, NY.

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