University of Kentucky, to commemorate its libraries' recognition as 'Centre of Excellence' for preserving the Works Progress Administration records, will hold a celebratory event Wednesday.

As the part of the celebration, the University of Kentucky Libraries will present a talk titled "Putting America Back to Work during the Great Depression: Preserving and Improving Access to the Works Progress Administration Records for the Future," by U.S. Archivist David S. Ferriero which will be followed by a panel discussion.

During Great Depression, WPA provided millions of jobs to the Americans and helped their spirits to remain afloat. Nearly 8 million jobs were created by WPA in America from 1935 to 1943. The goal was to provide one paying job to each family that had suffered from long-term unemployment.

According to UK's Web site, WPA construction and renovation projects on libraries alone employed more than 27,000 people by 1940.

The documents of WPA are now carefully collected and preserved at the University of Kentucky libraries, thanks to the three-year leadership grant awarded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL).

The collection includes more than 2,000 publications from the mid-1930s to the 1970s, reports Kentucky.com.

The grants aided the university libraries in acquiring, preserving, and providing access to historical records and publications produced by the U.S. WPA. These efforts and the WPA collection cumulated at the university led to UK Libraries' recognition as a 'Center of Excellence' among southeastern research libraries.

"Building the most complete collection of WPA publications here at UK puts the UK Libraries at the forefront of collection management initiatives in Federal Depository libraries across the nation," said Sandee McAninch, head of the UK Federal Depository Unit and regional depository librarian.

Now, as a 'Center of Excellence,' UK Libraries will be able to actively replace damaged or lost pieces, catalog their collection and submit the cataloging records to a worldwide union catalog for libraries, enhance their collection through digitization, provide active preservation for the collection, among other benefits.

The celebration will be held at the William T. Young Library Sept.5 at 1.30 pm.