With the anticipated completion of a new Special Collections Library just over a year away, the University announced last Friday that it has received two grants which total nearly half a million dollars which will benefit the collections.
In December 2002 the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation donated $265,000 to the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, which is one of the largest such libraries in the country. Funds from the Mellon gift will be used to develop and evaluate methods for processing and preserving large research collections.
The McGregor Fund also will provide $150,000 over three years to restore the Tracy W. McGregor Room in Alderman Library. It will continue to serve as a reading room in the future.
"We are ensuring that the room continues to be available for student use," McGregor Fund President David Campbell said.
The McGregor Room currently houses the Tracy W. McGregor Library of American History, which has outgrown its current space and will move to the new Special Collections building in front of Alderman Library upon its completion.
Additionally, a $50,000 endowment from the McGregor Fund will finance an annual lecture series to be held in the McGregor Room.
"We hope this will help attract speakers who are notable and attractive to the University," Campbell said.
The McGregor Library presently contains over 16,000 items and is one of over two dozen individual collections in the Special Collections Department of the University library system.
"It's a cornerstone of the University's special collections," Director of Library Communications Charlotte Scott said.
The McGregor Library contains many items from early American history, including a first printing of the Declaration of Independence, and 95 percent of the material in the Lewis and Clark exhibit comes from the McGregor Library.
Tracy W. McGregor, the son-in-law of a wealthy real-estate lumber baron, established the McGregor Fund in 1925. The fund mainly concentrates on supporting emergency human services in metropolitan Detroit, Campbell said.
"Our work with U.Va. is different from the rest of what the McGregor Foundation does," he said.
During his lifetime, McGregor amassed over 5,000 volumes of rare American books, literature, maps and writing.
"He put together what was considered to be a notable collection of Americana," Campbell said.
Although he did not attend the University, McGregor visited Charlottesville several times late in his life. Two years after his passing in 1936, the McGregor Fund trustees donated his collection to the University. In 1938, the collection was appraised at a value of $307,307.
At the time, the fund also provided nearly $40,000 in separate grants toward the McGregor Room. Since then, the fund has continued to support the library, most recently with the establishment of a $250,000 endowment in 1994 to help expand the collection.
Campbell said the University historically has been a good steward of grant money.
"We are extremely pleased with the job the University has done with the McGregor Library," he said.
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