The National Endowment for the Humanities announced June 16 that it has awarded an $18,996 emergency grant to the Hot Spring County Library in Malvern, Arkansas, to rebuild after it was destroyed by a lightning-caused fire in April.
The grant pays for the shipping and restoration costs of the 15% of the library's holdings that were not lost in the fire: 10,000 of its 65,000 volumes, microfilms of early county newspapers, and 400 reels of 16-mm film. A countywide referendum on a fundraising plan to replace the building is scheduled for early August.
NEH Chairman William Ferris said that the agency awards such grants "when funding permits," noting that "the staff of the Hot Spring Public Library acted quickly and followed sound preservation practices to save the most significant humanities collections from the library."
Posted June 22, 1998.