The Associates of the Boston Public Library manages the David McCullough Conservation Fund, established in 2001 to provide a consistent source of funding for the restoration and preservation of books, manuscripts, works of art and historic documents in the Library's Rare Books and Special Collections.

The Fund is named after historian David McCullough, who during his tenure as a Boston Public Library Trustee (1995-2000), became convinced of the growing need to conserve the Library's many irreplaceable treasures.

Not so incidentally, Mr. McCullough made extensive use of the Library's Special Collections while writing his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography John Adams published in 2001 and subsequently 1776, published in 2005. The John Adams Library of over 3500 volumes is housed at the BPL and was showcased at a recent exhibition.