The Martha's Vineyard Preservation Trust will convert the old Carnegie library into a heritage center showcasing the trust’s 24 historic properties around the Island and the stories they tell.

Edgartown selectmen Monday voted unanimously to transfer ownership of the town’s historic Carnegie Library building to the Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust, which plans to transform the building into a visitor center and repository for historic books, papers and art.

When artist Margot Datz begins a new project she finds it hard to stop. “Until someone rips me off the wall I’m there,” she said on Wednesday morning at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown. Although no one is coming to rip Ms. Datz off the wall, her brother Stephen Datz is on hand to “help her out the door,” he said. Good thing, too, as this weekend there will be a wedding held at the church. Scaffolding and bridal gowns do not really mix. But magnificently-restored murals serving as a backdrop for wedded bliss definitely do.

The new pews are still empty, and the fresh pine they are built from won’t begin to creak until parishioners arrive later this month, adding their imprint to the long history of the Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs.

A historic catboat named Edwina B. is the most recent acquisition of the Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust. The 22-foot wooden boat, built by Manuel Swartz Roberts in Edgartown in 1931, is possibly the last of three catboats he built still in the water. The nearly 80-year-old boat has had a circuitous life with different names and different ports of call. She has been part of the Edgartown waterfront for at least the past 20 years. The former owners see the boat’s journey bringing her to Edgartown to stay.

The Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust announced this week that it will buy and preserve the Norton property on the Edgartown harbor that includes the Osborn building, the oldest structure on the Edgartown waterfront. The trust will buy the Dock street property owned by the Norton family which includes two buildings and a dock adjacent to Memorial Wharf. The boathouse was built after the 1944 hurricane. The Osborn building is much older and dates to the 1830s.