The Alutiiq Museum has been closed for over a year for an expansion to nearly double its size. Museum officials plan to display more items from its collections as well as feature more art from contemporary culture bearers.
But now with this grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the museum will make it easier than ever to access its library, too.
“In the past, we had a library – I don’t think anyone knew that,” said Amanda Lancaster, the museum’s curator of collections. “It was in the basement, it was very inaccessible, you had to make an appointment, you had to have a staff member with you just because it was in the basement and sort of more of a staff space.”
Since 2018, the library has served as the official tribal library of Koniag, Kodiak’s regional Native corporation. Now it’s received $149,451 to revamp that library, as the museum enters the last stages of construction on its building.
The library features thousands of printed materials, hundreds of audio/visual items, and well over 10,000 photos as part of the collection for people to research Alutiiq culture.
The new funding will help the museum pay for renovations for a more friendly library space. Lancaster says they’re aiming to have matching shelving units, furniture for a seating area and computers for research.
Patrons won’t need appointments or staff supervision just to be in there – they’ll just need to check in and use the library at their leisure.
“We’re just hoping that it will make it much more accessible so that people will want to come and use it,” Lancaster said.
While the new money won’t cover new acquisitions, it could make room for future donations.
“It’s going to be much larger and much more spacious and (have) space to sit and read,” she said.
It’s also a reason to recatalog and reorganize all of those resources.
“I’m just really excited to have one sort of dedicated project where we make sure everything’s in the right space,” Lancaster said.
After the renovations, the grant will also pay for an outreach effort to solicit comments on how to make the library as useful as possible.
The Alutiiq Museum is set to have a grand reopening in May.
