The Patrick Heath Public Library in Boerne (in Kendall County, about a 40-minute drive from San Antonio) recently received the largest grant in the library’s 72-year history.

The Mellon Foundation, based in New York City, awarded the library $694,000, to be used over a five-year period.

The grant will fund an expansion of the library’s Memory Lab and its services. This lab was first established in 2018 with a Library Technology Academy grant from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. It’s a space where local citizens record their family histories and stories. The funding will also help enhance the public spaces used by thousands of patrons annually and includes new furnishings for the large main atrium space.

With the grant funding, the library will be able to:

• Hire a full-time Memory Lab coordinator
• Expand outreach to the community to utilize the Memory Lab
• Develop gallery exhibits and work with local artists to bring art to life inspired by local history
• Record history, family stories, music and recipes from a wide range of community members; to include in ongoing local and family history archives digitization projects

TSLAC funding planted the seed

Robin Stauber, Adult Services Librarian at Patrick Heath PL, said the Mellon Foundation learned about the library’s memory lab and reached out to see if library staff would be interested in applying for a grant to expand the lab and its work.

 “We had been doing some of this work since 2019 thanks to the TSLAC grant,” Stauber said. “Without that first smaller grant from TSLAC, we would not be in the position we are in now. Thank you, TSLAC!”

With the creation of their digital media memory lab, “we have extended our community’s ability to save their own family memories and collections in formats that make that knowledge easily accessible,” Stauber wrote in their grant application to the Mellon Foundation. “We believe deeply in the power of the human story to transform lives and community.”

Reaching out to the local Hispanic community to document the history of the area known as “the Flats,” as well as finding images, stories and resources from African American community members whose forebears resided in freedom colonies in the Boerne area are two goals of the project. Training other libraries to build similar efforts is also part of the plan.

Preserving the history of the area has long been a priority for Patrick Heath PL. An additional TSLAC grant (a TexTreasures Grant, FY 2024) allowed them to digitize the 1994-2010 printed issues of their local newspaper, The Boerne Star, and make them accessible through the University of North Texas’ Portal to Texas History.

Internet Café for all patrons

While a portion of the grant will go to the Memory Lab and related efforts, another portion of the funds from the Mellon Foundation will refurbish the lobby area and transform it into an internet café.

“We will make this area more of a gathering space,” said Natalie Morgan, Assistant Library Director. “Patrons enjoy catching up with each other. The café will be an outstanding location, with the all the windows everywhere” that bring in so much natural light. An adjacent gallery will feature artworks related to the Memory Lab projects.

Added Stauber, “We have a lot of people in here all day long. They are studying, working, we are well-loved and our furnishings show it. We are getting some new chairs, new tables, to freshen up our community gathering space.”

To be able to improve their library and extend the reach and depth of the library’s efforts to capture and preserve family and local history from all parts of the community is a dream come true for Stauber.

“Boerne is in a huge growth area; our population has seen explosive growth recently,” Stauber said. “When you are growing so fast, you always run the risk of losing that connection to who you are. This grant lets us keep these connections and make a well-rounded portrait of our community.”