The Big Chair...

Sometimes you get an opportunity that you just can't say no to. Hi, this is Nick writing again. First, please accept my apologies for the dearth of posts this year. Once you read further you may understand why things slowed down.

In June of 2011, Gregg Ames, the curator of the John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, retired. The library began a search for the next curator (the 6th for you Dr. Who types.) In August an announcement appeared on the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society's chat group and this announcement was forwarded to me.

Honestly I was torn about applying. The job, if I got it, would involve a considerable move away from my family and friends. However, after passing on an announcement for an archivist at Norfolk Southern, and being told by several folks that "this is the perfect job for you," I decided to give it a go.

Applications were due by the end of September and in early October I received an email from the search committee asking for a phone interview. After the phone interview some time passed and then I got another email asking if I could come out to St. Louis for an in person interview. Now things were getting serious.

The in-person interview was actually a series of interviews with multiple communities of librarians at UMSL and was followed up by another phone interview with members of the Barriger Library's Board. This was my first experience with an academic interview process and I have to say, even if I hadn't gotten the job, the experience alone would have been worth the effort of applying.

A couple of weeks later, I got a call and was offered the job.

I said yes almost immediately.

I've told people it's like being offered the Captain's Chair on the Enterprise. Who'd dare say no?

So, starting in February 2012 I'll be in the thick of one of the best railroad research libraries in the world. I expect this blog will be moving with me, probably to a Barriger page.

Expect more posts, more research oriented work and perhaps notifications of publications and articles coming out. I've got a backlog of them still gestating in my office. I think I'll be pushing them out into the wide wide world soon.

Why you should be thinking about state and municipal archives

Many researchers of railroad history, particularly if they are new to the field of historical research may neglect certain resources that are available to them that could greatly enhance their work. Some of those resources are contained in the various state and municipal archives throughout the nation.

For the "pioneering railroads" public financing was critical to their construction. As part of the "Era of Good Feeling" under President Monroe, the United States Government began pushing resources and expertise, in most cases engineering expertise from the young United States Army Corps of Engineers, to various national and regional transportation improvement projects.

At the state and municipal level, this translated to more tangible financial investment in these transportation projects. For the purposes of this blog, we'll use the example of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. The B&O Railroad, while a public corporation, received a substantial amount of money from the State of Maryland and the City of Baltimore when it was created. Later more funds were provided by the State of Virginia when it was decided to use that State's shore of the Potomac River to go west.

The funds committed to purchase B&O bonds were not insubstantial and in some cases the stock also purchased gave certain governments the ability to put directors on the company's board. This in turn led to the creation of a paper trail for the city and state governments about the railroad's finances, decisions made by the board and the views of those who represented the public monies invested in these companies.

In Maryland, these documents can be accessed via the Maryland State Archives and the Baltimore City Archives. In Virginia, one can find these items at the Library of Virginia in Richmond.

Pennsylvania invested heavily in its "Main Line" of State Works that was a canal-railroad hybrid from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia. The project was funded entirely out of state funds and was eventually sold outright to the newly chartered Pennsylvania Railroad. The state's papers are held at the Pennsylvania State Archives in Harrisburg.

Railroad History and Digital History

Professor William G. Thomas is running a really neat operation at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln titled "Railroads and the Making of Modern America." The project presents the impact of railroads on American society with a focus on western settlement, social history and labor history. It's a nice place to see what younger scholars and students are writing about railroads and may be helpful in focusing your own research inquiries or developing your ideas for a research project.

Railroad Museum of Pennyslvania Archives and Library

A new interface for the collection of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg, PA is now available:

http://rrmuseumpa.org/about/library/search.shtml

It's well worth checking out.

Yahoo! Groups and List Servs

It may be cliche, but the internet really does have the ability to bring together people who would not normally be able to meet. In many cases this leads to some good opportunities for research.

Back in ye olden days of the internet, that was usenet. Nowadays there are groups and list-servs around for pretty much any topic. One resource that has been particularly useful to the railroad historian and prototype modeler has been Yahoo! Groups.

Yahoo Groups related to railroad history and prototype modeling tend to be fairly heavily moderated. This is a good thing for the serious researcher as it keeps the trolls from taking over and flame wars from starting.

While there are many good people on these groups, one must always remember the need to critically evaluate a source. If someone is just spouting off an opinion or even an educated guess, that won't necessarily be a fact. If someone can provide some back-up either in the form of a citation or collection they used to learn this information, then you as a researcher have something you can work with.

Bearing this need for critical analysis in mind, there are many things people can learn on the various Yahoo Groups related to railroad history. Of particular use is the ability to learn things from retired railroaders or meet people who are on the other side of the country but may have a significant document collection that is of use to your research.

It also is a good way to get into or develop a network of like-minded railroad researchers. I got into the B&O Railroad Historical Society Archivist position because of being on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Yahoo Group. This in turn has allowed me to develop my own network of railroad researchers, archivists and historians. Together we bounce ideas off one another, call for research assistance and just generally share things we happen to learn that may be of use to others.

So, with my earlier words of caution in mind, have fun and happy researching!

Hagley Visit Part II

After lunch Dick and I visited the Soda House at the Hagley. This building houses the museum's collection of manuscripts and archives.  There is a lot of historical information here for those interested in railroads, particularly for those interested in either the Pennsylvania Railroad or the Reading Railroad.  While most modelers focus on pictorial collections, there is a lot of additional information that can be found amongst the manuscripts and archives.  We'll take a look at a few examples to give you an idea of the breadth of information that is available.  

If you visit the Soda House you can look at the finding aids for either railroad contained in a number of binders.  Even before you visit you can do some upfront work by simply going to the Hagley library's online catalog and doing some searches.  As I mentioned in my previous blog the most successful search is done by first casting a wide net and then narrowing the search down. 

To start, one can open up the online catalog and click on Manuscripts and Archives in the Quick Limit search just like we had clicked on Photographs, Prints and Moving Images when we were searching the pictorial collection. Then type in Pennsylvania Railroad for your keyword search and click on search. As you might expect the hits are numerous, roughly 10,000.  Fortunately they are ordered according to relevance so to look at major collections you probably will need to scroll through the first hundred or less.  You will notice there are a lot of corporate records which represents the business aspects of the railroad.  If you are curious about what is contained in any of these either click on the display number or the title. 

This will take you to a page that will explain more precisely what the files contain. Listed will be the author, in this case the Pennsylvania Railroad, the dates covered by the material, description of the material i.e. in one case there are 28 linear feet of files, how the files are organized and then two very important items, a history of the material and the scope and content of the material.  These last two items are fairly detailed and will be helpful in deciding whether it is likely to have the information you are looking for.

Let's take a look at a few examples.  For those people interested in engines you might try clicking on the records of the motive power department.  This is a huge collection that contains information on types and numbers of rolling stock as well as information concerning the design and construction of various pieces of equipment. If you scroll through you will also see records from the office of the chief engineer for different regions of the Pennsylvania Railroad system. These often describe construction projects on the right of way.  

For example the one from the Eastern Region contains documents describing the completion of 30^th St. Station and the demolition of the old Broad Street Station.  It is really worth perusing the various hits because more than likely you will find some items of interest.  While a lot of the archival material concerns the business aspects of the railroad there is still a lot of material that would be useful to the modeler.  Many times there are track diagrams, particularly when changes were being made to the right of way.  Also there are detailed drawings, sometimes in the form of blueprints for stations and other railroad structures.

While the examples  I have given so far concern the Pennsylvania Railroad there is also a lot of material from the Reading Company.  When Dick and I visited the Soda House we looked through the two binders containing the finding aids. While the pleasure of going to the Hagley is finding something you were looking for, it's also the unexpected is also very rewarding.  For us that day it was looking at the traffic density map for Fairhill Junction in Philadelphia one for day in 1941. The surprise was that a train was moving through on average once every 7 minutes. A busy railroad in wartime.

-Ron

"Quid pro quo (Clarice)"

Quid pro quo, latin for "something for something." One of the most important currencies in the field of research other than cash money.

It's a sad fact of life that no museum, library or archive ever has as much money, staff or institutional knowledge as they would like.  Preserving documents is an expensive business unto itself.  (That's one of the reasons that so many libraries and archives have taken Google up on the offer to digitize their collections.)   There are never enough people to go around and catalog the collection and help field research requests, no matter how large the budget is for staffing.  And even if you had a large number of staff in your facility, the subjects that railroad history covers are so broad that you would need scores of experts to be able to accurately respond to the many inquiries you receive.

Because of these restrictions, or rather facts of life, archivists and librarians who run these facilities are often very reliant on their volunteers.  These volunteers very often get their posts via their own knowledge of railroad history or railroad technology.  The benefit for many of these volunteers is that they get a better level of access to the items in the collection because they commit time to improving the institution and have shown that they are able and willing to respect the collection to a greater degree than the average patron.  For the railroad researcher this usually means being able to spend a lot of quality time with the documents they are most interested in.

Now, the big hurdle for anyone is getting a volunteer posting.  There's always a certain amount of "seasoning" that's doled out by the institution to make sure they are getting a committed volunteer and not just a daisy-picker who is volunteering in order to get enhanced access for their own agenda.  Here are some things you need to keep in mind when you're looking to become a volunteer:

1.) Are you able and willing to commit the time to really be able to contribute to the overall improvement of your institution of choice?  30 minutes a week is probably not going to do much to help out.  A day is better.

2.) Do you really care about this institution? There's a certain amount of passion required from volunteers.  They are supposed to want to come out rain or shine and spend a day working in the institution for FREE.  That's not to say you have to make it every day, but you have to be there and you have to care about doing a good job.  If you can't motivate yourself to do the work, it's probably a good idea to just pass on the position.

3.) Be ready to have to do some menial jobs when you first get in.  The fly by night volunteer is something that has burned volunteer coordinators in the past.  (I'm making a special effort not to use the term "foamer", but I'm talking about people who want to play and not work.)  One way to weed those people out is by giving out menial tasks to the new folks.  The committed stay with it, the uncommitted tend to stop showing up.  Think of it as your 30 day new hire period at your full time job.

4.) Spending some time talking with the archivist or librarian before you volunteer is always a good idea.  First, this is the person who will be directing your work and will be responsible for your actions in the library.  If there's not a good personality mix, it's probably a good idea to look somewhere else.  It's also an excellent way to look for things that need to be done, the cataloging of a particular collection, digitization of photographs, a box of images that are unidentified, etc.  If you can communicate your areas of expertise and come up with a project to utilize them to benefit the institution right away, that will go a long way towards helping you become a volunteer.

5.) Being a member of the institution or the institution's "friends of" group is also helpful.  It shows you're willing to put your money where your mouth is. 

6.) Don't be put off by a no.  Some facilities just can't have volunteers working in the collection, it's not a judgment on you.  If you get a no, accept it and still offer to help in any way you can.  Getting indignant won't help your cause.

7.) If you are able to volunteer and can help at your institution, remember to use it for good.  Don't abuse the privileges you are awarded by nature of your service.  Volunteers have been shut out of institutions as a whole because a handful have abused the collection via their volunteer access.  Don't let that happen.  Remember that these resources cannot be replaced in many cases.  By becoming a volunteer at a library or an archive you are taking on some responsibility for their protection.

Once you get your post, you are not truly in a position to trade your time an knowledge for the privilege of helping out the institution and getting a greater level of access to the collection.  It is truly "something for something."

-Nick