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(erielack) ELHS Board of Directors Statement and Selection Critira for New Archives Location

The following statement will be posted to the ELHS website
http://www.erielack.org <http://www.erielack.org/>   under the News and
Events section within the next few days.  This is also been posted to the
ELHS Members Yahoo Group.

 

The Archives Steering Committee and the Board of Directors of the Erie
Lackawanna Historical Society are working to move the Society's archives to
a location that meets all of the Society's criteria.  Those criteria, and
the reasons behind them, are:

 

 1) The facility must offer full-time professional staffing, adequate space
for the collection, and modern climate and fire-control systems at a cost
that is affordable. A professional archives facility offers the best
opportunity for access to the collection by our members, for work by our
curator, for conversion to electronic media, and for protection to our
collection from loss or damage.

 

2) The Society must maintain control over the collection. If the Society
loses ownership of the collection, it cannot assure access to the collection
for members or the public, cannot set pricing on reproductions, does not get
the revenue from reproductions, cannot control what is kept in the
collection or disposed of, and if the institution gets into financial
trouble as a governmental entity (which all of our candidate locations are),
it can warehouse the collection with ELHS having no say in the matter.

 

3) The location should be in a community on or near the route of the Erie
Lackawanna and the staff of the candidate location must have a demonstrated
interest in having this collection added to existing, relevant collections.
This criterion helps make the collection relevant to the institution housing
it, giving it an added incentive to be interested and involved with the
Society's collection and not "just a warehouse" for it.

 

4) The facility should be no farther west than it is now at Akron, and
inland from the extreme eastern end of the railroad. This eases access

for members.  These are the same criteria that were used when The University
of Akron was selected as the location for the archives.

 

Cleveland State University, Youngstown State University, and Steamtown
National Historic Site are among the locations that are under consideration.
Each institution has significant advantages and at least one significant
disadvantage which will weigh in the decision process.  In addition, there
are changes underway at the University of Akron that have opened the remote
possibility that the collection could remain at that institution under an
improved relationship.  Other potentially-viable locations have been
eliminated because they completely fail to meet one or more of the above
four criteria; however, members are welcome to propose other locations,
provided they do meet the Society's criteria.  Candidates for consideration
should be sent, with contact information, to Archives Steering Committee
chair Larry DeYoung at larry.deyoung_@_verizon.net.

 

We welcome the interest and participation of our members, but the ELHS can
not and typically does not conduct its business on open email lists that
include non-members. Information is conveyed to the membership in the ELHS
quarterly newsletter, The Extra Board.  Additional announcements and
information can be found on the website referenced above and/or the ELHS
Members Yahoo Group. The ELHS Board of Directors meets twice a year, once at
the Eastern Spring Meeting and once at the Annual Convention. These meetings
are open to the membership.  The next opportunity to attend a board meeting
will be April 1, 2007, at 10:00 AM  at the Parsippany, N.J., Holiday Inn,
immediately preceding the 2007 Eastern Spring Meeting.

 

  

Paul Cappelloni

President, ELHS

pcap.bprr_@_verizon.net

  



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