UK Receives Large Transfers of Works Progress Administration Publications

UK Libraries is participating in an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant with the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL) to develop and catalog a complete collection of Works Progress Administration (WPA) publications.  Part of our responsibility as a WPA Center of Excellence (COE) in this ASERL program is to acquire any titles published by the WPA that we do not currently own. 

To that end, two libraries, the University of Missouri and the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, have transferred a large number of WPA publications to UK Libraries.  These transfers have allowed us to add both new titles to our WPA collection and add extra copies for archival preservation and digitization purposes. 

Missouri sent UK Libraries over 30 boxes of publications and Enoch Pratt Free Library expects to send at least a dozen boxes.   These publications provide a very complete picture of employment conditions in each state of the union during the Great Depression and will provide UK Libraries and other Southeastern researchers with a rich resource from a very critical period in our nation’s history.  We are very grateful for the generosity and cooperation of these two institutions.