The Frank J. and Betty M. Quirk Endowment

The Frank J. and Betty M. Quirk Endowment was established in 2000 to support the technological needs of the Libraries. Frank served as a board member on the Smithsonian Libraries advisory board from 2001-2009 and served as Vice-Chair and Chairman. The Quirk Endowment bolsters the technological infrastructure of the Libraries and ensures excellent service among staff by providing devices and software that enables staff to serve our patrons with up-to-date technology.
 

“As some of the ‘unsung heroes’ of the Smithsonian, the Libraries deserved our special support.   We chose an endowment approach for our gift in support of the technology needs of the Smithsonian Libraries,” says Quirk. “We wanted our gift to have a long term impact, while providing flexibility to the Libraries in addressing its information technology needs.  Since we made our initial gift, these technology changes have been even more dramatic than anything we anticipated back in 2000.   For us, the endowment approach was perfect, allowing us to have impact initially, add funds over time, and to include the Libraries in our estate planning."

The Quirk Endowment enables our librarians to keep in touch with other staff and their users whether they are in the library, working with collections in another part of the museum, or shuttling between any of the Smithsonian Libraries’ 20 branches located in the Smithsonian campus. With library locations from the Republic of Panama to New York City, the networking of on-the-go Smithsonian librarians would not have been possible without the Quirk Endowment.