The Carnegie Library Museum aims to reopen at the first of the year thanks to an agreement recently struck between the city of Perry, Hometown Heritage and the Perry Public Library.
“We have been meeting since September to come to a mutually agreeable arrangement that will guarantee that the Carnegie Library Museum will stay open for both residents and visitors to Perry,” Perry Public Library Director Mary Murphy said Friday. “We are now looking to hire two part-time employees to staff Hometown Heritage at the Carnegie Library Museum.”
The Fullhart/Carnegie Charitable Trust, doing business as Hometown Heritage, moved into the Carnegie Library Museum in January 2017. When the COVID-19 pandemic forced the closure of public buildings in 2020, Hometown Heritage also closed. The new three-party memorandum of understanding will “reopen Hometown Heritage at the Carnegie Library Museum, giving access to two wonderful Perry assets,” Murphy said.
Hometown Heritage serves the residents of Perry and the surrounding rural communities with access to history and the arts through free events and speakers. Their past programs have included authors and artists from across Iowa and the Midwest, such as Joy Neal Kidney, Darcy Maulsby, Lea Rosson DeLong and Gary Earnest Smith.
Before the pandemic, Hometown Heritage offered a program series on World War II, genealogy workshops, exhibits of photos from their collection, a program that created and exhibited pictures documenting generations of Perry residents and a children’s program on local comic artist and veteran V.T. Hamlin.
Hometown Heritage’s collection includes 15,000 historic photographs and almost 600 oral histories of Perry residents, documenting and preserving their stories and Perry’s history. The proprietary database, one of the largest image archives of small-town life, was developed in collaboration with the College of Design at Iowa State University from materials donated and loaned from local residents.
In order to operate the Carnegie Library Museum, the Perry Public Library seeks to hire a part-time museum library assistant and a part-time library circulation clerk I. If the two staff positions are promptly filled, then the Carnegie Library Museum will reopen Jan. 4, 2022, for six days each week: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sundays from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Interested applicants should call Murphy at 515-465-3569 or visit the Perry Public Library for an application.
