FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Floyd Council, Executive Director
Phone: 601-968-5810
Email: fcouncil@jhlibrary.org
Website: jhlibrary.org
The Jackson Hinds Library System’s Eudora Welty Library Recovery Project Funded $3.7 Million Grant
JACKSON, MS, March 9, 2024 – The Jackson Hinds Library System’s Eudora Welty Library Recovery Project Funded $3.7 Million Grant
The Jackson Hinds Library System is set to receive a $3.7 million dollar grant for the Eudora Welty Library Recovery Project. In March of 2023, the City of Jackson’s Office of Planning & Development and Library Board prepared a HUD Congressional Directed Spending Grant request at the invitation of the Office of Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. Senator Hyde-Smith personally called on Friday afternoon to inform Board Chairman, Peyton Smith, to congratulate the Library, and inform the Board that the appropriations bill was headed to President Biden’s desk for signature. On Saturday March 9, 2024, President Joe Biden signed the $460 billion spending bill which includes the historic funding for Jackson’s Eudora Welty Library. The funding is a restricted grant to go towards a new Eudora Welty Library in downtown Jackson. This is an incredible head start on what will hopefully prove to be a new era for the Library in downtown Jackson. Thanks to the Library Board and Executive Staff for hard work in pursuit of this money–in particular, Floyd Council, Executive Director, whose trip to DC last year initiated this process. Special thanks to Chloe Dotson, Director of Planning and Development at the City of Jackson for professional consultation and final grant request review and submission for the City of Jackson.
This historic federal grant is noted to be one of the largest grants to a single library in Mississippi history. The Eudora Welty Library is at 70% completion of the current move project to storage at the Jackson Medical Mall. The Library System is also launching a new 5-year strategic planning process this month. The Library Board has retained the nationally notable firm of Library Strategies to conduct the research, community engagement, and data analysis toward designing the future of the Jackson Hinds Library System.
About Jackson Hinds Library System:
We provide public library service to urban metropolitan Jackson and Hinds County Mississippi, the state capital. Our goal is to provide quality service through our 14 locations with a focus on community, education, and digital life. We currently operate under our historic 1986 City/County agreement, but our history dates back to our original Jackson Carnegie Library founding in 1910.
“A City/County with Soul is a City/County with a Great Library System.”