The consciousness of its Secretary of State, at least
Another major genealogical collection is under major and imminent threat of being lost — this time in Arizona.
Unless something changes — and fast — the Arizona State Library Genealogy Collection — a vast collection of more than 200,000 volumes (correction: 20,000), many of them irreplaceable — is about to be lost to public access.
So our help is being sought in educating Arizona officials, and particularly the Secretary of State there, as to the value of maintaining this priceless resource.
Here’s a description of this amazing collection from Daniela Moneta, former Arizona State Library Genealogy Librarian:
The Genealogy Collection started when Arizona was made a Territory by President Lincoln on Valentine’s Day in 1863. The Governor of the new territory was assigned to purchase books for the Territorial Collection. This is when many of the genealogy books were purchased. These books were sent by buckboard to the new capitol in Prescott. The Territorial Collection moved to Tucson, back to Prescott, and eventually ended up in Phoenix where it is today. The collection built steadily from then on to include sets of the colonial records from all states. The largest collection of genealogy books in the Arizona Genealogy Collection are for Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, New York, etc. The Arizona books in the collection are the most complete in the country and available for reference by mail from the Genealogy staff. Many of these books still have the Arizona Territorial stamp in them. The collection is now over 200,000 volumes (correction: 20,000 volumes) that the people of Arizona and people from other states use to do their genealogy.
And now here’s what’s going on:
The Secretary of State of Arizona, who oversees the State Library, wants the space now occupied by the genealogy collection for other uses. Under the misguided notion that everything genealogists really need to use is online, the original plan was to simply close the collection. Pushback from the genealogical community has resulted in a plan to move the collection to the State Archives.
The hitch, of course, is that the State Archives doesn’t have room to make this 200,000+-volume collection accessible to the public. If this move goes forward — and it could be as early as this Friday, July 31st — the collection will most likely end up in storage … and ultimately piecemealed out or lost forever.
The Arizona genealogical community asks for our help, in emailing Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan (www.azsos.gov/contact), Arizona State Librarian Joan Clark (www.azlibrary.gov/contact), Digital Content Director Laura Stone (
If you live in Arizona, your voice is particularly important, since politicians listen to constituents a lot more than they do to those they consider outsiders.
But if you have roots in Arizona, your voice is almost as important: tell them how valuable it is to have a collection like this to attract tourists and others — like you — who’ll spend money there!
And if you have ever used the collection, for any reason, tell them how important it is to maintain this priceless resource.
No, Ms. Secretary of State, it’s not all online. We need the books. Arizonans deserve to have the books. Keep the books, and keep them accessible.
Please speak out, and help save the Arizona State Genealogy Library!
Judy,
Thanks for the help in getting this information out. This plan was put in place without any formal opportunity for the genealogical community to comment, long before we were officially notified. Over the weekend we launched a campaign to let the state genealogy societies know. Our wish is they will inundate the offices of Sec of State, Az Librarian, and legislators with our protest.
We ask your readers to help with this. Please help us fill their email boxes. I can be contacted at sybrayer@gmail.com for more specifics.
Fingers crossed — and emails sent!
Judy
Thank you for publishing this. I would like your permission to make a copy of this to send to Dick Eastman for his column. We’re trying to get the word out to as many people as we can about this travesty.
Permission granted, of course.
I sent an email to the Secretary of State and the Library Director and the local news channel watch dog on ABC 15. I also sent a note to the Arizona Balladeer and Historian, Marshall Trimble, an advocate for Arizona History.
Thank you for speaking out, Bonnie!
Done! Emails sent! A similar thing happened in Georgia with the Georgia Archives and we were able to turn it around!
Linda
Thanks for speaking out!
You have got to be kidding about not saving important items that recorded the history of our beginning. Just one a more short sighted politician showing his ignorance.
Her, in this case: the Secretary of State of Arizona is a her, rather than a him.
Emails sent. I have both early contributors to Arizona Territorial History as well as post WWII history in that state. Most of which I did not know until recently. Would so hate for that genealogy to be lost! Thank you.
Please leave the genealogy library in place. I have been doing my family history for some time and there is a very big need for these books to stay in place. Not everything is online and you can only find it through the libraries and the books that have been kept.
Thank you and hope you will reconsider, keeping them in place, please.
Sincerely,
Ronda
Don’t tell us — tell the folks in Arizona!!
E-mails sent to all suggested addressees. Having used the collection myself I can testify to the usefulness of the content. It would be a terrible blow to researchers if this collection were rendered unavailable.
Thank you for making this issue known.
Thanks for speaking out, John!
The Secretary of State’s office issued a Press Release today, marketing this as a move of location and an improvement:
http://www.azsos.gov/about-office/media-center/press-releases/558
Unfortunately, the Press Release does not address a number of questions and concerns of the local genealogy community, mainly how the collection will remain available to the public in the limited space available at the Polly Rosenbaum Archives building.
That’s precisely the issue: how do you move 200,000+ volumes into space that’s already tight — and do anything other than make much of the collection inaccessible???
The 200,000 may be overstated and a typo; it’s probably more like 20,000. Nevertheless…
Thanks for the notification, Judy,
I have two questions:
1. Could one of the knowledgeable people above make a list with all the links we out-of-staters need to email, so we can quickly send a copy of essentialy the same email to each. (People are so busy, that if those who need our help can make it easy on us to just go down the line and not have to spend time looking up email addresses for each of the great places they mentioned. It helps tremendously and we will likely have more participation. Media addresses are great, as some of the news channels would more than likely jump on this story and get the word out across AZ, if they are flooded with emails from thousands of frustrated genealogists.)
These politicians apparently don’t realize that genealogy is one of the top addictions in the nation nor how many potential voters they can reach by ensuring that the genealogists have easy/full access to the records needed. Why waste money campaigning, when they can accomplish something positive and impress genealogists at the same time?
2. Since this is unfortunately happening in a number of states and we are not notified until the last moment, with the various politicians’ false marketing stories of how this is an improvement, why don’t we as a community become proactive and organize a national campaign targeting each state and even giving Congress a shoutout?
If some of the better known genealogy bloggers/authorities could compose several press releases that inform decision makers and the public, and if genealogists from each state (and/or who’ve done a lot of research in states where their ancestors lived and who know the archives/resources in those states) can work together to make master lists by state, we could go down the list and bombard the state/local/federal politicians, media, and anyone who may at some point be making crucial decisions about records that affect us, making our presence known and hopefully becoming an important group to decision makers.
Rather than reacting at the last moment, why can’t we be a force to be reckoned with? The AARP, which seems to actually be a front for an insurance company, certainly did that years ago. It’s a big project, but would be better done from a position of strength than from a position of constantly trying to put out the fires and having to settle for whatever mediocre deal the politicians hand us.
Just sayin’…
Judy,
A suggestion:
In addition to contacting the powers that be, perhaps we can contact our Historical Records Advisory Boards in each state to try to put some gentle pressure on Arizona. The Boards are under the auspices of the Secretaries of State in each state, part of a mandate of the NHPRC, an arm of NARA. To be honest, these volunteer boards have little power, but they have far-reaching constituents. SHRAB can be foudn here: http://www.statearchivists.org/shrabs.htm
Also, the Council of State Historical Records Coordinators is here: http://www.coshrc.org/
Most State Archivists serve at the pleasure of the Secretaries of State, so they don’t have much power, except that they can advise.
Obviously, this is a bad decision. This is probably a political move if not purely economical, so we might be “fighting city hall.”
You may want to add in your emails that not everyone is online. Many of their older constituents do not have internet access or the technical know how. Their less affluent constituents may not even have a computer! Talk about being out of touch with their constituents!
We’ve already lost this battle, I’m afraid — but good points for the future. Fortunately, FamilySearch stepped in and is digitizing many of the volumes that would otherwise be lost in this move.