DECATUR - The Decatur Public Library has accumulated a treasure trove of items highlighting the community's history.

But most library patrons probably don't know about the treasures, and if they do, they'd have a hard time finding them.

Big plans are under way to change that.

In January, library leaders announced a $2 million campaign to create a 20,000-square-foot cultural center with unused space on the library's second floor.

A fund-raising campaign continues to open the center in about a year-and-a-half.

"It's a very aggressive timeline," said city librarian Lee Ann Fisher. "We're still hopeful that we can meet it."

Plans call for constructing a local history room packed with print collections, genealogy records, computers and microfilm readers.

Gallery space could house treasured artifacts in the community and help the library secure nationally known exhibits. A preservation room would house historical books, artifacts, documents and photos.

"We hope to accomplish a lot of things," Fisher said. "We hope to collect a lot more memorabilia and artifacts. We'll be able to handle a lot more.

"We hope to start digitizing some of the collections that we have that are fragile and make them available to the public."

The cultural center could be another tourism draw for downtown Decatur and improve the community's quality-of-life offerings, project leaders say.

"There are a number of people in Decatur who, for many reasons, won't ever have the opportunity to go to a big, fancy museum in Washington or even Chicago, maybe," assistant city librarian Scott Pointon said. "This is a way to bring the stuff right to them. The artifacts we could bring to this room are things many people would never see otherwise."

The library secured a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to have a nationally known preservationist review the library's rare and historical collections.

The library also has applied for a $500,000 challenge grant from the endowment agency to support the $2 million capital campaign.

Of funds raised, about $1.35 million would be used to renovate the empty space and $650,000 would help create an endowment to fund an archivist and curator position.

"It would be totally self-supporting," Fisher said. "It wouldn't take any taxpayer money; it wouldn't take from the general operating fund of the library.

"We're not going to not get books because we have this. It's not going to take away from anything we do here."

The Friends of the Decatur Public Library kicked off fund-raising efforts in January with $50,000.

The library is expanding its offerings and needs the space on the ground floor currently used by the local history room, Fisher said.

"There's just no room to add anything," Fisher said.

Memorabilia of the community's past is now crammed into a 1,700-square-foot local history room on the library's ground floor.

The last tire made at the former Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. plant in Decatur is tucked into a display case behind filing cabinets in the room.

An aging 19th century registry of soldiers who joined the Union cause during the Civil War is stacked atop a bookshelf.

"The Grand Army of the Republic was formed in Decatur, and we have many of their records," Pointon said of the Union veterans organization.

The current site isn't secure enough to display some of the library's most treasured holdings.

Librarians and volunteers keep a close eye on the holdings on display in the local history room, especially high school yearbooks.

"You have to watch them like a hawk," librarian Bev Hackney said. "They're high vandalism targets."

Fisher said the library will depend on plenty of volunteers once the cultural center is open.

"We already have a core group of volunteers who assist people doing research," Fisher said. "But if we have an exhibit coming, we'll need people to volunteer to be docents to show a bus of schoolchildren or maybe some seniors.

"With the digitalization and preservations, we'll need volunteers to do that - to do the hands-on saving of the material."

The library has a sizeable collection of photos and negatives of Decatur's history donated by the Herald & Review and others that could be sorted and identified.

Volunteers also could continue to record and transcribe oral histories from residents.

"There's a lifetime of work that can be done," Pointon said.

Mike Frazier can be reached at mfrazier@;herald-review.com or 421-7985.