ROOTS & BRANCHES

Fair warning to my readers that today’s “Roots & Branches” is another one of those that delves more into philosophy than practical application. But hopefully those of you involved history or genealogy organizations will come away with something of use.
Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the figurative landscape of history and genealogy organizations in Pennsylvania is that … there are so many of them!
Virtually every county in the commonwealth has a historical society or genealogical society, and many have both. Groups covering geographic areas within counties—sometimes consisting of nothing more than a single township or borough (or even smaller areas!) abound. Add on groups that cover particular religious, ethnic or racial groups and you have a whole bucketful and a half!
A goodly number of such groups have libraries. And often it’s with libraries that an organization’s space needs (and therefore financial needs!) are turned into an important driver of the group’s energy.
And that’s where a debate often begins on what the collections policies of an organization should be.
For organizations in which such a debate does not occur, libraries grow somewhat haphazardly—dependent on donations, which in turn are fueled by what donors make available to give and which might not be in the interest of the recipients. And then there is the issue of space always being finite and additions to space costing more money.
But signs of an organization with a good library policy start with an awareness of its particular mission and the collection’s role in that mission.
Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania (2100 Byberry Road, Suite 111, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19116), where I’m interim executive director, has been carefully putting together a library core collection, and we’ve recently had to evaluate potential donations from a couple of sources.
One was from the Evangelical & Reformed Historical Society in Lancaster. They offered hundreds of books (including many surname family histories) and some manuscript collections. The E&RHS was running out of room and wanted to divest itself of items not tied to this historical denomination (congregations of which in Pennsylvania began as German Reformed and currently are in most cases part of the United Church of Christ). GSP had the opportunity to improve some of its core collections, so this was a win-win for both parties.
GSP also received notice from a publisher of a defunct newspaper in the northwestern part of the state offering bound copies of a long run of its issues. While we stood ready to be a recipient of last resort, we were a matchmaker to direct those historical newspapers to the State Library of Pennsylvania, where prospects for digitizing those issues were much better. Once again, a win-win-win.
The moral to the story is that bigger isn’t always better; coordination is sometimes best of all.