Get Connected

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The story of Thanksgiving gets a lot of play in New England in general and the Congregational Library in particular, especially this year as we commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower’s landing. Rather than re-examine that story--we have scholars and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving for that--I have taken the time to consider the library and archives related things I am particularly grateful for this year, and polled other members of the library’s staff for theirs.

I spend a not insignificant amount of time shaking a fist at librarians past, usually when I stumble across a cataloging choice I cannot fathom the reasoning behind, as I’m sure librarians of the future will be shaking their angry bionic fists at me. But I do want to take the time to appreciate the good work done by everyone who came before me which makes my job easier all the time, sometimes in quite unexpected ways. A few years ago, I was working the reference desk when a disheveled-looking patron arrived less than an hour before we were about to close. He was in town from Korea doing research at another library when they told him the CLA had in our collection the signature of evangelist Dwight L. Moody and he rushed over hoping to catch us before we closed. He was leaving the next day.

I’ll be honest: I wasn’t excited about this request. It was close enough to the end of the day that it was almost too late to pull new material, and usually, searching for one signature in a collection is like looking for a needle in a haystack. I hate delivering bad news, so I agreed to take a look, and I have the work of previous CLA staff members to thank for what happened next. Dwight Moody was a member of the Mount Vernon Congregational church and was included in the list of subject headings in the finding aid and catalog record. Not only that, but some helpful previous staff member had indicated on the finding aid not only in which record book Moody’s signature could be found, but also on which page. This allowed me to find and pull the book so the patron could take a picture in record time. He was so thrilled he cried, and later, sent me the article he wrote about it. Without the work of previous archivists, this wouldn’t have been possible. I have them to thank for a well-processed collection, the foresight it requires to anticipate what pieces are going to appeal to researchers, and the wherewithal to write it down to make their successor’s lives easier. Plus, without this I wouldn’t have gotten the satisfaction of making one of our patrons cry from happiness.

There’s a lot to be grateful for at the Congregational Library and in the GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) field generally. Here’s what other members of the staff had to say:

• A good spatula. This invaluable tool makes removing all those rusty staples and crusty rubber bands if not ‘a breeze’ then at least less of a chore.
• The knowledge that we’re providing a useful service in taking a church’s records and that we’re able to validate for them that the work they’ve done is important and worth preserving.
• The existence of archives as a bastion of evidentiary source material in the face of misinformation, fake news, propaganda, and nationalist myth-making.
• The ability to make records accessible online! The opportunities the internet provides for democratization of access and breaking down geographical boundaries.
• that archivists and librarians seem to be some of the best work colleagues imaginable (even if we do say so ourselves!)