[Genealib] Donated Genealogy Research

[Susan Scouras]

Another point:  When researchers have left us their "final" work, many
have given us permission to copy as much as anyone may want of it with
no copyright restrictions.  Our computer donor previously mentioned had
promised copies of her files to a couple of younger, more distant family
members, but illness prevented her from doing so.  As soon as we were
able to get the dang thing out of the hard drive, we sent off two
copies, charging for the copy costs and a modest shipping/handling fee.
We have purposely kept loose copies of the manuscripts so we can run
them through the document feeder easily.  A couple of other researchers
who gave us relatively finished work or more organized collections of
notes and trees put a message on the title page that says researchers
may copy as much of the work as they want, or the whole thing if they
choose.  

Quite often, by being open and understanding when a researcher or the
researcher's heirs want to talk, we have received sizeable collections
of genealogy-related books, hard to find local history books,
photographs, collections of church bulletins, postcards, yearbooks,
etc., that they did not realize we would be happy to take off their
hands until we told them so. The wife of a late professional historian
called to see if we wanted his library, and in the course of the
conversation I learned that she had all the original manuscripts of his
books and research files for each one. She was worried about what to do
with them, since he had never expressed any intention of giving them to
either of the universities he had been associated with.  We picked up
the books from her home, and she will call us to pick up the papers
after she goes through them checking for personal documents.  As Jim
said, sometimes you don't get something unless you let it be known you
would like to have it.

Susan Scouras
Librarian
WV Archives and History Library
The Cultural Center
1900 Kanawha Blvd. East
Charleston, WV  25305-0300
(304) 558-0230, Ext. 742
 


-----Original Message-----
From: genealib-bounces at mailman.acomp.usf.edu
[mailto:genealib-bounces at mailman.acomp.usf.edu] On Behalf Of James
Jeffrey
Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 4:10 PM
To: Librarians Serving Genealogists
Subject: Re: [Genealib] Donated Genealogy Research


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 






_______________________________________________
genealib mailing list
genealib at mailman.acomp.usf.edu 
http://mailman.acomp.usf.edu/mailman/listinfo/genealib

_______________________________________________
genealib mailing list
genealib at mailman.acomp.usf.edu
http://mailman.acomp.usf.edu/mailman/listinfo/genealib