When you can join Grace
Start times are local to Asheville, NC.
- Keep an Independent Library for a DayStarts 10 AM, 4 hours
- Rare Book Care & Restoration WorkshopStarts 1 PM, 3 hours
What Grace hosts
Keep an Independent Library for a Day
Curate the stacks, restore rare editions and run a community reading room.
- Length
- 4 hours
- Group
- 1–4 guests
- Price
- $90
Rare Book Care & Restoration Workshop
Learn how a conservator assesses damage, then repair a practice book with archival materials.
- Length
- 3 hours
- Group
- 1–6 guests
- Price
- $85
About Grace
Grace Holloway spent the first part of her career as an academic librarian and rare book conservator, repairing bindings and advising on collections. She always wanted a library that belonged to its neighborhood, so she bought an old storefront and started building one.
The collection now holds about 18,000 volumes, including a small room of regional first editions. She runs the library with two part-time staff and a group of volunteers. Her week includes sorting donations, cataloging, repair work in the conservation room, community reading hours and grant applications.
Grace hosts because she wants more people to see how a small library actually runs, and because basic book repair is a skill that is easy to learn and useful for anyone who owns books.
What you’ll learn from Grace
- How to decide which donated books belong in a collection
- Basic repairs: loose spines, torn pages and cloth cover cleaning
- How a cataloging system keeps a large collection findable
- How a member-supported library pays its bills
