The Lilly Endowment has made a $2.5 million grant to the library through its religion and cultural institutions initiative.
“We are going to endow a cataloger of religious collections which is really going to help us, in so many ways, to make our collections more accessible to people,” Curator of Religious Collections Sarah McElroy Mitchell said.
Lilly Library has its religious pieces scattered throughout the building, including the Gutenberg Bible. One of only 50 copies in the world, this is just one example of how the library brings transformative and unique pieces to Bloomington’s community.
“We have about half a million books, we have 8.5 million pieces of manuscript, and we are growing all the time,” Mitchell said.
With such a collection, it's vital to have a solid organizational structure.
“It isn’t until we have a really good cataloging and description that people are going to be able to search our collections for themselves and really explore them to their fullest potential,” she said.
The grant isn't just opening a position, but the door for connection across centuries.
“The people that used these books, hundreds of years ago, aren’t so different than they are today and I think it really opens people's eyes to the fact that we are all in this together,” Mitchell said.
The library offers free admission Monday through Saturday.
