[Genealib] Donated Genealogy Research

[James Jeffrey]

Gang

This brings up the other issue of education.

This is a teaching opportunity that I like to take advantage of about every 2 years.  That is as part of our ongoing series of classes one of the special interest classes is You Can't Take It With You.  Yes, you get the point, what is going to happen to all of your stuff after you are done with it. It is hard sometimes to be tactful with an aging community of researchers.

So there are lectures about disposition of papers and estate planning.  You never give your researchers on opportunity to leave you a portion or all of their estate is you never ask them.  After all why should their greedy children get it when you are the true love of their life :)



James K. Jeffrey
Collection Specialist in Genealogy
Western History and Genealogy
Denver Public Library

>>> "M. Diane Rogers" <diane_rogers at shaw.ca> 7/1/2009 11:25 AM >>>
Appreciate your post, James, and Debra's question.  Very interested in 
knowing more about what other libraries do.

No written policy but our genealogical library does accept 'stuff' from 
members' estates and downsizing (once in a while from non-members), but then 
we must find an experienced member to go through the files/bags/boxes and 
weed out the material that's not useful or organized well enough. This 
usually is a long process - even for books - yesterday we received, I think, 
17 boxes of books and research binders.

We too are very limited with space, but don't want to discourage these 
donations. We have seen some very sad cases where family members have thrown 
out years of members' research.

I like the idea of asking people to focus on what's 'original' -- of course, 
that seems to be the hard part, convincing people to think ahead. Many of us 
talk about it, but do we do it? (Glad there is no video cam here or you 
would see a couple of unorganized piles around my own desk!)

Our society is sponsoring talks right now on 'writing your own history' - 
hoping that more of our members will write and print out their research & 
then donate their publications, of course.

M. Diane Rogers
British Columbia Genealogical Society, Canada: www.bcgs.ca 






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