Originally published in the Ancestry Daily News, September 20, 2001: http://www.ancestry.com/library/view/news/articles/4596.asp ===================================================================== NEW PARTNERSHIP FOR THE NGS LIBRARY ===================================================================== The National Genealogical Society (NGS) Board of Directors is committed to providing the highest level of information, services, and products possible to NGS members. To this end we have become immersed in a strategic directions initiative. We are looking to provide more services to our members with the same number of staff and the same level of resources. And as I am sure you can imagine, our financial resources continue to be rather modest, particularly in this time of economic downturn. Despite rumors, stories, and musings to the contrary, the National Genealogical Society Library is not closing nor are its collections being randomly dispersed to other libraries. It is important for me to state again for the record: the National Genealogical Society Library is not closing. Rather it is being reconstituted in a manner more conducive to providing better services to the society's membership. Historically, the book loan collection has been under-utilized by the society's membership. Yet no one, absolutely no one, is interested in terminating the book loan service. The NGS staff and board of directors appreciate that while little used by the majority of members, the book loan service is highly valued by a number of members. The challenge before us was to find a way to continue making the book loan service available while freeing the NGS librarian and her staff to provide more valuable reference services for our members-services that would make NGS an increasingly invaluable part of more genealogists' lives. After much study and deliberation, the NGS board voted to create the nation's largest family and local history book loan collection through a partnership with the St. Louis County Library (SLCL). This partnership creates some of the most exciting growth opportunities for a book loan collection the genealogical community has ever seen. As specified by the agreement, all of the books SLCL receives from NGS must be made available for loan, making the entire NGS book loan collection as close as your nearest public, college, or university library. The two organizations have committed to meet at least yearly to review the status of the arrangement and modify as needed to make the books as accessible as possible. I believe it is important to also note that having the NGS Book Loan Collection at the St. Louis County Library carries the following additional benefits. 1. Book loan requests will be filled five days a week, rather than just one day per week as we had been doing at Glebe House. The service will be much more responsive. 2. Neither the St. Louis County Library nor the NGS Library will have to close to perform the interlibrary loans. In the past the NGS Library had to close to perform loan functions. 3. The St. Louis County Library has a much larger staff to handle loan requests. 4. The St. Louis County Library is committed to assisting NGS with reference questions that result from use of the loan collection. 5. Housing the loan collection in St. Louis means that the book loan collection will be in one place and in one consistent order. Currently, the NGS book loan collection is in two different facilities on the Glebe House grounds as well as two different remote storage facilities. 6. The St. Louis County Library will market the book loan collection in ways NGS was never able. 7. The St. Louis County Library will be offering programs at national conferences on the riches and use of the loan collection. 8. The St. Louis County Library will be enhancing web access to the loan collection, and creating pathfinders and use-aids for the collection as well as highlighting unique items. 9. The staff of the St. Louis County Library is most competent, professional, and very excited about making this arrangement truly benefit both organizations. The administrative, special collections, and interlibrary loan staffs in particular are truly extraordinary. I know this from months of personal experiences and interactions with them. Both SLCL and NGS are committed to growing the book loan collection in very dramatic ways. While we are not yet at the announcement stage, we are contacting numerous genealogical libraries, societies, and other organizations that heretofore were not interested in giving their duplicate materials to NGS because of our space constraints and the manner in which we had to run our loan program. We are asking these entities to reconsider enhancing our national loan collection by designating this new partner collection as the repository of their duplicates. In addition to finding a much better way to conduct the society's book loan program, I believe the NGS board's commitment to enhancing its library and information services can be evidenced in a number of significant ways. 1. The NGS librarian remains an important, full-time position on the society's staffing table, on par with other professional staff employed by the society. 2. The society's valuable manuscript collections (including the marvelous Richardson Dougall European Manuscript Collection), its archive of Bible records, the AMA files, and the MAC chart files are all being maintained at the Glebe House Library. Indeed, efforts will continue to be explored to acquire other such unique collections of materials. 3. The society is maintaining its contracts with CAPCON (the OCLC library cooperative in the DC-VA-MD area) and The Library Corporation (TLC). Access to OCLC will allow NGS staff to assist members in finding important family and local history books worldwide. Maintaining our online catalog through TLC will allow staff to eventually catalog our many manuscript collections, making them far more accessible to our members. The TLC system can also be used for providing new member services in the information arena. 4. The look-up services of NGSearch (e.g. Germans to America, Italians to America, etc.) will be maintained and expanded. 5. The society will continue to accept donations for both its reference collection being maintained at Glebe House and the book loan collection. 6. A new service to retrieve information and records from Washington, DC area repositories is being explored as a new service to members. 7. A new, members-only Help Desk will be established as a part of library services to provide personalized guidance to researchers just getting started, getting started again, and those who have reached an impasse of some kind. Toll-free help lines, designated e-mail addresses, and partnerships with other genealogical libraries to investigate a 24-7 reference assistance model are all being explored. Indeed, I believe you will be pleasantly surprised and pleased when all of our plans for the expansion of services in our newly reconstituted library are unveiled. Your NGS Board of Directors truly believes this new partnership with the St. Louis County Library will make for a stronger and more responsive society as well as a stronger and more vital library at Glebe House. Curt B. Witcher President, National Genealogical Society http://www.ngsgenealogy.org Curt B. Witcher Manager, Historical Genealogy Department Allen County Public Library P. O. Box 2270, 900 Webster Street Fort Wayne, IN 46801-2270 [email protected] ------------------------------------------------------------------ Reprinted with permission of the "Ancestry Daily News" (http://www.ancestry.com/dailynews) Copyright © 1998-2001, MyFamily.com Inc. and its subsidiaries. http://www.ancestry.com/library/view/news/articles/4596.asp