Could people who have library facilities please chime in if you know:
Reading Room square footage
Archive square footage
Research Room square footage

You needn't have all three to answer if you know stats for or have just one area in your facilities, please respond.

At the Walker Transportation Collection our entire facilitiy is apporximately 1500 to 1700 sq ft of space. We have the entire basement of the Beverly Historical Society & Museum in Beverly, Mass. The Collection has been there since 1969. When the Collection first went to the BHS&M, the basement was just a dirt floor, a couple of hanging 40 watt light bulbs and a lot of cob webs. Since then we have expanded into other areas of that basement to where we now have a very modern facility with a concrete floor, walls that allow us to hang shelving and dispalys from and very well lighted. All done with volunteer work and monies.

This space holds approximately 750,000 images of all forms of New England transportation (New England railroading is the majority of the Collection). The images are both printed and negatives along with a library of books, documents, videos, DVD's, films, slides, some hardware and display's of models and other artifacts. This space serves both as a research and work room. We do not have a dedicated reading room. We have strategically used just about every nook and cranny. We can comfortably accomadate about 15 to 20 people at once.

Dave

Thanks. This is exactly the kind of information I am looking for. Others please join in.

With the "much rejoicing in the land" over RyPN's return, this question got bumped to page 3 in a hurry. If you have info on your library facilities, please chime in. Thanks in advance.

Here is a link to the F. M. Smith Library and Archives.
http://www.wrm.org/archives/articles.htm

IRM purchased an empty ex library building in Marengo IL and just as a rough guess maybe 6000 sq ft. It has been returned to use as a library and now houses about 15,000 volumes and 20,000 negatives. It is open to walk ins two days per week, as the work continues. No lending, operated as a research library. It retains the name Strahorn Library in honor of its early benefactor and philanthropist.

We also operate the Pullman Library as a research facility, perhaps with slightly less floorspace in a two story building in Union, IL. This collection focuses on drawings, specifications, and records of the Pullman Company, predecessors.

Bob Kutella

If you are using this information to plan a new facility, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) offers preservation and access grants that can be used to perform a needs assessment. The awards are valued up to $5,000 and can be used to hire a preservation librarian/archivist to determine what your needs are based on current requirements and anticipated future growth. This type of study typically provides detailed information about how best to provide preservation and access for your collection in your environment. Check out www.neh.gov for more information.

Grants are the way to go if you can get them. We are in the process of digitalizing our vast Collection and it is a very time consuming process. This will help in terms of that ever present problem of space. We haven't printed all of our negatives, mainly because we simply do not have the space to physically store the photos. Digitalization greatly helps in that area and it allows everything in our Collection to be more easily seen by a researcher.

As for grants, we just received the 2007 H. Albert. Webb Memorial Railroad Preservation Award. This has allowed us to hire someone to actually do the scanning of images and enter those images into a PastPerfect database. It has also allowed us to purchase an additional computer and scanner. We have found that once you get a grant, it is important to continually seek others, even if the grant you seek is for a completely different project. The past grants show that you have some sort of track record. This will make anyone giving grants see that there are others invested in your project/organization. Make sure that your organization completes the promised project. I have seen other organizations have to give back some of the monies because the promised projects were not completed. This is the kiss of death when it comes to grants.

A resource that we have used is the Associated Grant Makers. They serve Massachusetts and New Hampshire, but if you have organizations like this in your neck of the woods, they can be extremely helpful.

Anyways, my two-cents.

Dave Fletcher
Assistant Curator
Walker Transportation Collection

I saw the IRM Pullman Library a couple of years ago during an ARM spring meet. As I recall, the main floor had stacks of flat files that were about six or eight feet in height ( the ceiling was the 12-14 height of a commercial building.). Besides the Pullman library, IRM had a refrigerator car or two full of material from the Pullman company awaiting time and resources to process.

To add to what Dave posted, I work at the F.M Smith Library and archives. The Bay Area electric railroad association has been collecting paper about the electric railways and steam railroads of northern California since it was founded.

Our present facility was opened in 2001 and already several books have been produced by researchers using the museum collection especially the photo collection. The latest is an Acadia picture book on Sacramento Street Cars. Another is on our own Sacramento Northern Railway.

if anybody has the Street Railway Journal for 1900 that you might give, trade or sell to the Library I would like to hear from you.

Ted miles

Is there a library at the B & O museum? I don't recall one from my 1997 visit. How about Pennsylvania RRM? What is the size of theirs?

There is a research library on the 2nd floor of the B&O Museum. I don't know its dimensions or number of volumes in the collection.

One issue that I'm sure many of you who do have photograhic or paper ephemera is what to do with material that does not pertain to your library/research center's mission? An example that we often see is that we will be gifted a Collection, but there will be images in there that do not pertain to our mission of covering New England transportation. When that is the case, we would much prefer to give that non-New England material to another organization that would most appreciate it and share it with their audience. That is the ideal senario, but most of the time we do not have the proper contacts.

We do get permission from the donor to properly deaccession material that doesn't fit our mission. On occassion, we do receive Collections whereby the donor doesn't want a Collection split and we will honor that as well. The Albert G Hale Collection is that way. Not only did he take a lot of photos of railroading all over New England, but he went all over the country and Canada in the steam era (1930's up until the late 1990's) and beyond.

So what do all of you do in those situations?

B&O Museum's library has been "appointment only" since the disabled-access issues came up post-roof collapse in 2003.

I should let Herr Bell answer on the RR Museum of Pa., but it's BIG once the rolling shelves in the basement are added in.

Baltimore Streetcar Museum has the Maryland Rail Heritage Library, joint NRHS Chapter/BSM project. All one massive room; I'd give you square footage but it's oddly shaped--maybe the equivalent of a 60' circle? If/when the Ma & Pa roundhouse up the road becomes Museum property, part of the offices will be converted to more generous library space.