Northwestern University Alumna Donates $8.6 Million to University Library

From Crain’s Chicago Business:

Northwestern University has received an $8.6 million gift from the estate of Marie Quinlan to bolster the preservation department of its library.
The gift, announced today, will be used to hire staff, purchase equipment and renovate and expand Northwestern University library’s conservation lab. The funds also will create an endowed position for the head of the library’s preservation department, a job currently held by Scott Devine.
Ms. Quinlan, a Chicago Public Schools math teacher for 25 years, and her husband, George, both graduated from Northwestern in 1933. He died in 1990. She died in 2010.

From Evanston Now:

The gift from Quinlan’s estate is funding many exciting new projects within the preservation department, including:
Addition of a project conservator for high-priority projects, including the repair of items from the Siege and Commune of Paris Collection, which will undergo a major digitization project.
A renovation and expansion of the conservation lab, which is responsible for the repair of books and archival material as well as a broad range of objects from the library’s diverse collections.
Purchase of specialized equipment to preserve collections through digital reformatting. Creation of a core infrastructure needed to keep digitized collections and born-digital archives healthy and available to researchers over a long period of time.

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