EAST WILLIAMSBURG — A photo from a block party, the takeout menu from your favorite neighborhood restaurant, a clipping of your mother's favorite recipe — these are the things that capture a snapshot of the neighborhood from a particular time.
Now, thanks to a $12,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for several libraries in Queens and Brooklyn, mementos like these will be scanned into the libraries' digital archive for future researchers.
This fall, residents will be invited to bring in the valuables they think represent neighborhood culture and history to the Brooklyn Public Library branch at 340 Bushwick Ave. in Williamsburg to include in the archive.
Those who bring objects will be asked to describe them and their significance.
The expanded archive that will incorporate items that residents think should be in it will allow for a broader, "community-based history telling," Ivy Marvel, Brooklyn Public Library's manager of special collections, said.
"You'll get all that historical stuff we already have...but alongside that you'll get the items that people from the community have contributed."
Library branches in Canarsie and Sunset Park are also receiving a portion of the latest grant, as well as a few library branches in Queens.
