Russell Museum/Library Update

Great progress has been made on the completion of our new addition to the Museum/Library building.  This addition will house the museum and the present building will be the library.  This will create more room for both of them. 

Many thanks goes to Ed Sellers who has spent many hours finishing the interior.  Lights and ceiling fans have been installed; a small utility/storage closet has been built; trim was sanded, stained and installed; display stands have been built and painted.

All interior items were purchased with grants from South Central Iowa Community Foundation and Alliant Foundation.

We also want to thank the many other volunteers who have made this project something to be appreciated in the years to come.

An open house is being planned for this spring when everything is moved in. 

Thank you to Robin Thompson and Betty Cross who have taken on the task of designing display areas and supervising the move.

Our current loan balance is a little over $10,000 and fundraising will continue to be an ongoing project. 

We also want to thank the community for supporting recent chicken/beef noodle dinners.

We recently lost our valuable volunteer, Mary Reeves.  She was involved in so many aspects in keeping the Museum vibrant on a daily basis.  Please be patient while we work out the details of filling the void.

Lynne Wilson and Betty Cross have completed the Russell History Book that Mary started.  If stories have been left out, we apologize.  Mary was working very hard on completing the book and had taken stories and notes home with her and some stories were still in email.  We did the best we could to find all of them and get them into the book.  The deadline was March 1st and no more stories will be accepted after that date.  Publication will be completed after all research is completed on how is the best way to do it.  Soft-cover, hard-cover, glued spine, spiral-spine, etc., etc.  Please be patient and we will get it out to you soon.  There are 244 pages, plus a table of contents and an index, bringing the total number of pages up to 274.  The pages will be printed on both sides.  We hope you will enjoy it.

One of the stories from the book appears on page 3 - Russell Historical Items - and can be selected from the right column of this page.
Thank you again for your support.  We look forward to seeing you at the Museum/Library so you can enjoy all the effort that has been put forth.