This past summer, Groton Town Historian James Streeter offered to donate a trove of Groton-related historic documents, pictures and artifacts he's been collecting since 1960. Last week he began moving his vast collection to Groton Public Library.

At the same time, the state awarded the library a $413,000 construction grant to enlarge its local history room and handle other needed maintenance. The project would nearly triple the size of the history room and create a new computer lab, replace ceiling tiles throughout the building, replace the heating, air conditioning and ventilation systems and reconstruct the parking lot.

The grant requires Groton to provide or raise about $445,000 within one year to receive the grant, Town Manager Mark Oefinger said. The library is working on fundraisers, but Oefinger will likely include the money in his proposed capital budget because of the short deadline, he said.

"This is a tremendous opportunity for the community," he said of getting state help with maintenance. "These are not frivolous things. These are things we would be doing anyway."

Streeters collection includes a 15-drawer map case, a 10-drawer artifact cabinet and about 16,000 photos scanned into his computer, including thousands of originals.

"Some of this stuff is pretty valuable," Oefinger said. "You generally don't put this type of information on the stacks in the library and let everybody and anybody rummage through it."

The collection also includes 40 yellow hardcover city directories that list everyone who lived in Groton in a given year by street, by name, and by telephone number, dating back to 1929. Streeter also has a collection of never-used calendars from local businesses, dating back to the 1940s.

"He's got a ton of stuff," said Michael Spellman, reference librarian who oversees the local history room. He visited Streeter's house to take an inventory and Spellman's colleagues thought he'd be gone a half hour. It took three hours.

Much of Streeter's documents and photos are not organized, so the library will have to go through them. Spellman began that task last week, writing down the titles, authors, copyright dates and other information about the first 70 books Streeter carried in. The piles include a hard-cover reference book published in 1859 called, "History of Connecticut".

Students from the University of Connecticut at Avery Point will also help sort through material as part of their public history class starting Jan. 18, Spellman said.

"Each student will be assigned a box," Spellman said. Two other Groton residents have offered to help as well, he said.

Spellman wants to catalogue photos so they're easily accessible, but the task will take time depending on how it's done. For instance, one aerial photo could show multiple buildings, homes or people, and would have to be filed under many different subjects.

"One picture might contain five or ten subjects," Streeter said.

Spellman expects it to take five years to catalogue all items in the collection.

Groton Public Library opened in 1977 and the town put on an addition in 1990s. But the library ceiling tiles and parking lot are original.

The construction project would not change the size of the building, but move walls inside. The State Bond Commission would also have to approve the project.

D.STRASZHEIM@THEDAY.COM

@DSTRASZHEIM