Cornell University Library has received a $331,000 grant to conserve its extensive Samuel May Anti-Slavery Collection. The grant was awarded through the "Save America's Treasures" initiative, a public-private partnership between the White House Millennium Council and National Trust for Historic Preservation, and it will be administered by the National Endowment for the Humanities. It is one of 62 projects funded nationwide and is one of only two awards made to libraries.

The collection was started by Andrew Dickson White, Cornell's first president, and is named after Samuel May, a 19th-century Syracuse minister and anti-slavery movement leader. Housed in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections in the university's Kroch Library, the collection documents the anti-slavery struggle at the local, regional and national levels and includes more than 10,000 pamphlets, posters, newspaper articles, manuscripts, letters and other documents.

The conservation project entails a comprehensive analysis and treatment program to preserve the collection. Over the next three years, the library's Department of Preservation and Conservation will carefully take apart the bound volumes to separate each individual pamphlet and determine the most appropriate form of conservation treatment for each title. Treatment options include thorough washing and de-acidification, paper repair and re-sewing. Each treated pamphlet will be placed in its own cover, effectively restoring it to the form in which it was originally issued. The collection also will be digitized so that in the future students, teachers and scholars worldwide can view the documents online.

For more information contact: John Dean, director, Cornell University Library (CUL) Department of Preservation and Conservation at (607) 255-9687, jfd5@cornell.edu; Elaine Engst, director, CUL Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at (607) 255-3530, ee11@cornell.edu; or Katherine Reagan, acting rare books curator, CUL Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, (607) 255-3530, kr33@cornell.edu.