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The Evolution of Galveston's Rosenberg Library with Mike Miller
I sit down with Director of the Rosenberg Library, Mike Miller and discuss the history and importance of the Rosenberg Library over the past 12 decades in Galveston, Texas.
Watch this episode on YouTube: The Evolution of Galveston's Rosenberg Library with Mike Miller
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the sam houston dueling pistols yes, which? I think is such a cool artifact. It's a pair of german-made flintlock pistols and they were donated by a nephew or a great nephew of sam houston, if anybody's listening. The answer is not to just digitize it all because, as archivists, yes, we want to digitize that because it'll make it more available to you, and we will continue to do that, but we still want to preserve that original.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to Galveston Unscripted. In this episode today I sit down with the director of the Rosenberg Library, mr Mike Miller. Mike and I discuss the 12-decade-long history of the Rosenberg Library, as well as a few other library-related topics. Mike is also an author who has written several books, one of which relates to one of Texas' earliest cookbooks and another on the history of hockey in Texas. You are sure to enjoy this episode on one of Galveston's great institutions, the Rosenberg Library. Without further ado, let's hop right into this episode with Mr Mike Miller, director of the Rosenberg Library. The Rosenberg is it is the premier you know place to research history here in Galveston. So I wanted to have you on and just kind of talk to you about the history of the library, whatever you know about it, and then kind of what is going on today, and talk a little bit about research libraries and what you guys have to offer certainly uh.
Speaker 1:So a little bit about the library itself, uh and I'll. It's kind of like a dual history because you talked about the research side. So there's the research part, then there's like the public library part which overlaps some, but uh, and you can adjust this for me. Yeah, I do. I talked to my hands too.
Speaker 2:That's okay. Yeah, you can move it around. That's the Italian in me coming out. That's good, that's perfect.
Speaker 1:Uh, uh, as the Rosenberg library, uh, we were uh got our start uh from Henry Rosenberg, who was a uh Swiss merchant in Galveston. He came here. In terms of being a historian, I'm really bad with dates, that's okay. I'm not a historian that bothers with dates, because that's why we have Wikipedia and phones we can look up dates. It's the story that matters.
Speaker 2:You're 100% right.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So he was a very successful merchant, made a whole lot of money and died childless, and so he had all this money to leave and in his will he set aside portions of money for certain causes. Around Galveston there's the Rosenberg Fountains. I think it's about 17 of them left around, A few of them still in their original location. Many of them have been moved, including the one that's at the library. That's not where it was originally placed. It was moved there.
Speaker 1:The orphan's home was funded with Rosenberg money, but the biggest chunk of its estate was set aside to create a public library for the city of Galveston. Public library for the city of Galveston and that was Henry's wish, that there was a place for people to come to learn, to grow, to hear lectures, to have access to literature and information, and that was really important for him to do that. So that's the bulk of his money. At that time it was $1,895. It was $600,000.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:So you know, factoring the inflation stuff.
Speaker 1:I know there's internet calculators that we could run that and forget what that number is today. Millions of dollars today's dollars, uh, but that was the genesis of the library. In his will he also said that nothing could happen for five years, or four or five years, because he wanted the money to sit and grow. Oh, and then, before they before, they would form what's called the Rosenberg Library Association, which is their governing body of the library. And so they did form in 1900, and they started the process to figure out how to build a library, start a library. Of course things got delayed when the storm hit, because I did think they incorporated the association before the storm, if I remember the dates correctly. And of course everything got stalled and delayed with the storm. And then they started meeting again, put out bids for a building and they erected the building that we're in now in 1904.
Speaker 2:That's the.
Speaker 1:Rosenberg Library. But our history actually dates earlier, in 1871, the Chamber of Commerce of which Henry Rosenberg was a member and was. I don't have any verified documents that says he was a part of this effort, but I believe he was a part of this effort to create what was called the Galveston Mercantile Library and by its name. Mercantile was a library put together by the area merchants. It was a subscription library, so people had to pay an annual subscription to be a member and be able to go in and use it at start and that was a pretty typical way that the library started. You saw that all across the country. Within a couple of years or less it became a free library. So they dropped the subscription and it became a free library.
Speaker 1:And then over time from 1871 to 1904, it went back and forth between the chamber running it and the city running it. So at one time the city agreed to put up some money and they ran it and then the city stopped caring about it. So the chamber stepped in to keep it going and it just kind of went back and forth. But at this time it was never really managed too well. Just people don't want to invest a lot into it. It's really what it came down to.
Speaker 1:And so when the Rosenberg Library opened in 1904, there was a competing it was called the Galveston Free Library at that time and it was run by the city at that time. And so the city approached the Rosenberg Library Association and said you know, we don't need two libraries, so why don't you take over operations of the Galveston Free Library? So why don't you take over operations of the Galveston Free Library? And the city will commit some funds to keep it going and the Rosenberg Library Association can take over that public library duties that you usually see in municipalities. And so we date ourselves back to 1871 because we claim that library's history since we assumed their operations. Since we assumed their operations, we brought their collection over. I say we I wasn't there at the time and took of that, and so that's kind of the genesis of the Rosenberg Library. I'm going to pause there in the library history minute and talk about how we started the Galveston Texas History Center which is the research arm that you were referring to.
Speaker 2:Which I just so everyone knows I use that for most of my research and photos and things like that on the videos that we do, yeah, and hopefully you credit us. I do, I do. I leave the watermarks on there on purpose. I know you do, but I have to say that as the director of the library, that's my job.
Speaker 1:Just in case my board is listening, they know I'm doing my part.
Speaker 1:So at the same time that the Galveston Mercantile Library started, there was an organization that was created in Galveston called the Texas Historical Foundation and it went by different names at different times and when it started essentially it was a group of guys and it was guys I mean, I know it's very patriarchal, but that's who was running things at that time.
Speaker 1:They were acknowledging that a lot of the people who had lived through the Texas Revolution and the early republic days of when Texas was an independent republic, that they were starting to die off and move off like that and no one was making an effort to preserve their history. And so they formed this organization for the sole purpose of reaching out to these people, collecting documents, collections, stories, to create an early Texas history collection. And they, off and on, they were active, inactive, active, inactive and the collection just kind of floated around Galveston throughout the first 20, 30 years. When the storm, great storm hit, the library and the Historical Foundation were both officed in the Scottish Rite building. The library and the historical foundation were both officed in uh the uh, uh, the scottish right building oh, okay just down the street here.
Speaker 1:Uh, they were on the top floor, uh and uh, that building was, of course, damaged, like as most of the island was. It wasn't completely destroyed. The library side was spared. The side where the, the historical group, was, uh, that's the side where the wall collapsed and whatnot, and so they lost a significant part of that collection. Oh man, uh and the, the guys that were running at the time, you know, during the early 1900s, recognized that one. Maybe they weren't the best equipped to be managing and protecting these records. They were also starting that's when you started to see their focus to the built environment. So this organization is the predecessor to what's now the Galveston Historical Foundation.
Speaker 2:GHF.
Speaker 1:They renamed it as the Galveston Historical Society. They went through different names at the time before they finally realized okay, we're going to be focused on the built environment and historic buildings and maybe we don't need to be collecting paper and protecting that. And so, shortly after the Rosenberg opened, this organization approached the library and said can we deposit our collections at the library to keep them safe? And within a year after that deposit, they came back and said well, why don't you just own them? Or just why don't you just? They're now your collection. And that is the genesis of what is now the Galveston and Texas History Collection.
Speaker 1:And that's also why our collection has a statewide focus for Antebellum Texas because of the collecting efforts of that early organization and we had such a phenomenally rich early Texas history collection that came with that, and so we still, and we still, you know, build on to that, but we don't collect Texana after the Civil War.
Speaker 1:Essentially oh, I see, okay, so the focus is pre-Civil War Texas For Texas and then Galveston, from prehistory to present day, so the city in Galveston County we will sometimes reach out. Of course some of the other county cities have their own museums and libraries that collect as well, so we try to play nice with each other Of course.
Speaker 1:As we should. Uh and uh, yeah, but, yeah. But the texas stuff is early texas up through the through the end of the civil war yeah, and you guys have some pretty amazing artifacts in in the library.
Speaker 2:on top of written accounts of early galveston, early texas, you guys have old maps, I mean dating back to I mean the 15, 16, 1700s.
Speaker 1:We do, we do. Yeah, we have the first map that's known that identified Galveston Bay as Galveston Bay. It's a early 18th century, 1722. It's a map, it's a French map.
Speaker 2:That's how it got the name St bernard's bay, I believe they called it saint bernard's bay before galveston.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, a french uh.
Speaker 2:French explorer yeah yeah, it's pretty amazing, yeah, but uh and then, yeah, so, talking about the archives and and things like that you guys are still collecting up to the present day. Are you guys like inundated with people trying to deliver stuff to the library, like here, take this, store it, I would?
Speaker 1:say inundated, it comes in waves. I think yeah. So yeah, inundated is probably not the appropriate word, but when? We do get. I mean, you know, at least you know I, you know we get a few donations. I didn't forget to mention there's. There's a third kind of arm of the library. Uh is our museum. Yes, which is under this. This is the, the special collections department of the library. It, you know, oversees the archives and the museum.
Speaker 1:Uh, but uh, you know, in the information world, we're what is referred to as a glam, and glam stands for gallery, library, archive and museum oh, okay and so those are the kind of, those are like the four pillars of, you know, the the information library world and very few institutions have all four in one there's many institutions that are two or three of those perhaps, uh, and so we're kind of unique that we have all four under one, and for a city of Galveston's size you know, I think the last census estimate was like 55,000 or 58,000 in that range For a city of 58,000 people to have, you know, a glam, the size and scope of what we have here, it's truly amazing. It's what it was what brought me to Galveston. It was the ability to be a part of this, because I think it truly is unique.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I interrupted, you were asking oh no, it's fine, it's fine, no, no, no, no, it's fine. Um no, it really is for, like you said, like for a city the size of Galveston to be able to have it. That's why, every time I go in there, and every time I you know I'm doing research, I'm like I cannot believe.
Speaker 2:Like the Galveston and Texas History Center, the Rosenberg Library it is here in Galveston, and going inside that library, especially the old section, the 1904 building, the original part, it's really, really cool to see how fascinating that is. So the original building, of course, is still there, and then it's had the addition onto the back, the Moody Wing the Moody Wing, yeah, which was built and opened in 1971.
Speaker 1:So even that is now more than 50 years old. So, yeah, it's actually now part of our National Register listing. It's actually always listed but it didn't qualify as the historic part of the library because it needed to hit that 50 year mark, but it did a couple years ago. Yeah, uh, now that's part of the, the historical building. Yeah, it's really just kind of it's. It's two buildings that are kind of bushed together.
Speaker 1:uh, yeah, and you've walked it, so you know that. Uh, you know, the moody wing is four floors and the rosen, the original, is three, and so they had to get kind of creative to how to make things match up and so I'm sure it was really, really smart design at the time. Now we're kind of like oh, this is kind of interesting, how do we get to this floor, how do we get here? So yeah.
Speaker 1:But it essentially doubled the size of the library itself. I think it allowed the library to continue to build and grow the Galveston Texas History Center collection, because that was originally in just one room and then stuff up in the attic, and then of course, library collections.
Speaker 1:Those get refreshed regularly. You know, one thing that libraries do is you know there's a new book out, you know, by a real popular author like John Grisham or something like that. You know, libraries tend to get lots of copies of the new book because there's a lot of demand, and so we want to make sure we have enough to satisfy that demand, you know. But then as soon as the next big one comes out, that demand wanes and then we'll take, you know, take those extra copies out of circulation and either sell them in the book sale or recycle them if they've been worn out, depending on how well loved they were by the readers. And so that collection is constantly refreshing and changing. And we don't have any kind of mandate to be an archive for popular fiction or anything like that. But we do on the archive side. We're not refreshing that collection, we're not taking things out of circulation and selling or recycling it. Our goal, our mandate, is to save that history. So that collection is always growing, and so that's the challenge.
Speaker 1:That's the challenge that all archives face across the country is how do you manage that space? And if anybody's listening, the answer is not to just digitize it all, because, as archivists, yes, we want to digitize that because they'll make it more available to you, and we will continue to do that, but we still want to preserve that original, because the goal is to preserve the record in its most original state that we can.
Speaker 2:What are some of the pain points with digitizing things? Because I know for people who are doing research it could be kind of frustrating where you can find maybe 90% of what you're looking for digitized on the Galveston Texas History Center website, but then there's some stuff it's like this has not been digitized yet. You actually got to go into the library.
Speaker 1:There's a few, you know. I guess I'll call them choke points in the workflow. The first one is the actual capture process itself. Right now, this will be changing very, very soon. We use old flatbed technology, which is what most people are familiar with, for digitizing, but flatbeds are incredibly inefficient.
Speaker 2:Is it like a big scanner?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like a scanner you put it down, you press a button, then you have to wait two, three minutes for it to capture it. To capture capture at the resolution that we're trying to capture at, because our goal is that we only want to do that once, because the process of digitizing is harmful to the original. Basically, any time you touch or expose a piece of paper to light or anything like that, you're causing damage and our goal is to minimize that as much as possible because there's damage that's cumulative and it's irreversible. A case of what I was just talking to the State Archivist at a conference last week the famous Travis letter that always comes, you know talked about. You can barely read the original now, it is so faded.
Speaker 1:And that's just because of the cumulative light exposure over time since William Travis wrote that letter in 1836 at the Alamo. And so of course the State Archives is very cautious about allowing that out and to be visible by any light, just because they know that every time you do that it's one more little notch in that damage level. So that's what we face with digitizing little notch in that damage level. So that's what we face with digitizing. We are in the process of building a new digital lab in the archives using a camera-based capture system which goes from, you know, a process with lots of lights and stuff that takes, you know, anywhere from two to five minutes to capture, and maybe 10 minutes if it's a big object like an architectural drawing or a map, at the click of a button. And then the software that comes with the system does a lot of the post-processing. You can program it to do a lot of this post-processing so we can increase our efficiency and capture a hundredfold or more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the, that's the easy fix in terms of workflow, the hard part is in order you to find it. So when you search, you know the catalog or you search other archives. There's what's called metadata, that's all the descriptions behind that object. So whether it's a photograph, whether it's a manuscript, someone has to describe a, put in a system, some kind of database system, all those words that are now discoverable. When you put in a keyword, you have a box where you type in a search. That search has to go somewhere and match up against words somewhere to find that object. Right now, most of that a human being has to go and type, has input that, and so that's the cataloging process of the digitization, and it's labor, it's time intensive and there has not been an easy solution created to speed that up. Ai technology, I think, is going to be promising in that to be not a replacement for cataloging, but I think there's things that can happen with some AI technologies that will allow that process to be improved and more efficiency, it's still going to require a person.
Speaker 1:We all know if anybody's ever played on chat GPT, you know you don't always get the best stuff out of it, and so you're always going to need that person to do quality control. But there's a lot of potential promise with that, particularly with some of the efforts that are happening to create tools to read handwriting and cursive. It's like a typed document. You can OCR it. That OCR text now becomes searchable and so your keyword search can find that, and you might be able to find a document that way. It doesn't do that with cursive writing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can't even read that old handwriting, so I can't imagine training an AI model to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but there's a couple large institutions that are attempting to do some work with that and some have had some success.
Speaker 2:Okay, so, yeah, so those are some of the pain points with digitizing some things in the archives. What are some of the most surprising things to you when you first arrived at the library that you guys had in the archives? Because I was really surprised. I was talking to sean. He was telling me some of the stuff that you guys have. I was like there's no way you guys have that yeah, uh.
Speaker 1:So the first thing I wanted to mention is actually not an archival object, it's a museum uh object or pair of objects, and you talked about this, I think, before we were recording. Uh was the sam houston dueling pistols yes, which?
Speaker 1:I think is such a cool artifact. Uh, so it's a pair of german-made flintlock pistols, uh, and they were donated to the library by a nephew or great nephew of sam houston, a guy named sam pinard, who donated some other things as well, uh, to the library. To me it's just fascinating. They were near. As I can tell, they've never been fired, Although Sam Houston was involved in a couple duels in his lifetime. I think that predated this gift and there's a little plate on it that says from your Cincy friends, 1836. It says From your Cincy Friends, 1836. And as near as we could tell is that these were probably a gift from. You know, one of the volunteer groups that came to help with the Texas Revolution Probably never fought. I know you know most of those groups that were formed. There's a lot of militia volunteer groups that formed in the United States to come to Texas to help with the revolution. Most of them arrived after San Jacinto.
Speaker 1:And so you know there was no need for them. They didn't get involved in the armed conflict and they milled about. Some of them probably tried to lie to get their 640 acre you know, veteran, you know land bounty or whatever.
Speaker 2:I was here, I promise, I fought, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because there's no evidence of any land grafting in Texas's history at all so, as we can tell, that's probably what they were.
Speaker 1:It was probably some volunteer militia that came from Cincinnati, ohio, and it was just a gift that they gave to him. That's our guess. There's no documentation that says that. One thing I was fascinated about and I think most people who do any property research at Galveston knows about this I did not know about it until I got here were the records of the Galveston Insurance Board, which you know, for you know a significant part of the 19th and 20th centuries. The Galveston Incher's Board collected tons of documentation on just about every single structure built on the island Data, construction, architect, builder, information about the owner, information about the design, information about renovations and changes. This kind of collection doesn't exist in other cities. You know this is so. Galveston is so fortunate, you know. I think it also helps with our all of our historic preservation work. All the work that GHF does is that we have access to all this information, to properties. I think anything built from the post-Civil War up to the 1970s there's probably a file on it in this collection. Wow.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you and I was just floored that it existed. So one of the first things I did is I looked up my house that I bought when I moved to the island and also learned that, you know, the appraisal district had the construction of my house I live in Fish Village as 1964, which kind of matched with a lot of houses there. But when I looked it up in this record I found that it was actually built in 1951. Oh my gosh, it was one of the first houses built in Fish Village.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, yeah, not the first it was one of the first houses built in Fish Village. Oh wow, yeah.
Speaker 1:Not the first, but it was one of the earliest houses in Fish Village. The reason why the appraisal district has a 64 is my house was originally a wood frame house and in 64 they bricked it and they built an addition to attach the garage to the house. And so that's where and I learned all that because all this information is in those insurance board records man.
Speaker 2:I'm going to have to go look up my house now, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I was even able to go into my attic and I could see the old construction, just because the addition it was definitely a DIY project. Like most Galveston housing projects, and so yeah hopefully the guy who did the work was not listening, but let's just say that yeah, it wasn't up to any kind of contemporary professional standards.
Speaker 2:So how do we access that? Like, if I want to come in and research my house, do we have to come into the library, or is that digitized?
Speaker 1:It's not digitized, it's just far too voluminous. But, yeah, you, just you come in or you could call and or email the reference staff at the Galveston Texas History Center and just tell them your address and say you know, I would like you know to see if you have a file. You know, on my address. Man, okay, yeah, and the the files aren't organized by address but they have a cross-reference to how the files are organized. They can get to the folder that will have the documentation on your particular address, if there is documentation. Gotcha, yeah, to me it was pleasantly shocking that we had a collection of that value. So any realtor listening to this, if you're trying to sell an old property, come to the Galveston Texas History Center. We can hook you up with all kinds of information that you can use to help sell that property. That's perfect, that's perfect.
Speaker 2:So yeah, the next thing I wanted to ask you about was kind of about the collection of books and libraries today. So are libraries across the country, I mean, are they strong and as used today as they were, you know, 50, 100 years ago?
Speaker 1:I would say yes. I would say in many ways more so. But libraries of today are very different and they serve a very different purpose in many ways than libraries of 50 to 100 years ago. Uh, one, books are still important and people still read. Uh and. And our circulation numbers, and that's the number of items being checked out and checked back in uh and uh, you know, our numbers are showing that that's still the case and those numbers are growing.
Speaker 1:Interestingly, the American Library Association issued a report recently, or it may have been the Public Library Association, which is a part of ALA that was studying the behaviors of what we term new adults, the 18 to 30-year-old range, and that that demographic is coming back to the library in droves. And not only are they coming back and using libraries, they're checking out physical items, not necessarily e-materials that's surprising to me. They are using e-materials as well, obviously, and so that was a very telling report. But it also talked about barriers that exist just in how libraries have always functioned. That makes it harder for that demographic to potentially use the libraries. It was also very useful for libraries to be thinking about how can you kind of pivot some sources and pivot services to make library services more attractive to that demographic and that's something that our adult services team is working on.
Speaker 1:I've challenged them that that was their big challenge this year is like let's really focus on, you know what we're doing with that demographic and what can we do to to improve? Uh, uh, yeah. So, for instance, we just recently had a uh a program. Uh, it was. We had. We were still set on a title. It was the equivalent of speed dating, but it was for finding new friends. That is so awesome and it's really good, and it's one thing that we're discovering. And it's one thing that we're discovering especially in the pandemic. It created a lot of pockets of isolation and as human beings, we're social people. Yeah, we cannot thrive when we're isolated. But we're also finding that there's a demographic that, because of the pandemic and because of where they were when everything shut down and we were all sent home, we thought it was going to be for a couple of weeks and it ended up being a lot longer than that is growing.
Speaker 1:And not only were those ties broken, but the ability to learn how to make those connections and not necessarily like really deep friendships, that most people have a few of those, but it's what they call the weak connections, like acquaintances, people you know around town, people that you might hang out with, but those are important, and so we had this program. I'm not sure if Evelina, who's our adult services program, if she came up with the idea or if she borrowed it from another library, because we're all stealing from each other anyway, but it was basically called Speed Friending.
Speaker 2:I guess, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:It's an opportunity to bring people together and you just move around and you have like two minutes or whatever, and it's just a chance to meet new people and start find a way to kind of broaden that circle.
Speaker 1:I love that, yeah, and so, and it wasn't just for the new adult category, it was in, you know, all adult ages, but it was specifically kind of with the eye of encouraging them to come in. So it's things like that. Yeah, you know, and you know, libraries are really becoming like a community hub, and that's really what libraries are about today is. You know, we're one of the last places left that is truly open to all. You know, I don't have to tell you that we're living in a very polarized world. We're in an election cycle that's very contentious and polarizing. Polarized world. We're in an election cycle that's very contentious and polarizing, and there's not a lot of public spaces left where you can't avoid that. The public library is being one of those, because our focus and our mission is to be a place for all. You know, whether you're, you know I don't want to start doing labels because I think that's unfair, but everybody is welcome, everybody can use the library.
Speaker 1:And our goal is to have collections and services and programs that serve all of the Galveston community, regardless of where you are in life, regardless of where your political needs are, regardless of your religion or whatever. We want to be able to try to have something you know for you. Of course, we can't have everything you know. As the great Stephen Wright comedian said, you can't have everything. Where would you put it? But, yeah, that is the goal and that's where libraries are today. Yeah, so I mean, for example, we've got I know there's a Galveston County Democrats group. They use the library for their meetings. And then we also have this Saturday the Galveston Republican Party is doing their election canvassing at the library, and so we've got both ends of the political spectrum. They're both using the library, they're both welcoming to use the library as long as they follow all of our meeting policies, which they do. I mean we haven't, you know, but that's the role of the library is.
Speaker 2:We are truly a democratizing entity, you know so, yeah, so you got, you know, your freedom of expression and speech in the books that you have and offer, and you got your freedom of existence to be, able to come in and enjoy the library and use it for whatever purpose, as long as you're following the rules of the library, right?
Speaker 1:Sure, yeah, I mean like any place you know you have to. We have a code of conduct when we want people to you, know to you know, treat each other and treat the building and treat the collections you know kindly. But yeah, other than that, yeah, that's the only requirement we don't track what people do in the library. Libraries have always been a harbinger of privacy and individual privacy. So, for instance, if you check out books as soon as you bring it back, we have no record that you checked those books out.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:Now I think in our current system you could elect. If you wanted to save a history for your own knowledge because you want to remember, did I read this book already? You could look it up on your account. But we don't track that because it's not our job. Our job is to have the materials and make them available. The only time we know that you've checked out a book is if you still have it checked out because it's on your record and it'll be until you bring it back.
Speaker 1:But beyond that, our job is that we also protect our customers' data. It's not available. Library information is one of the few classes that's actually even defined in the state code and federal code as protected private information.
Speaker 2:Oh, really Okay.
Speaker 1:So, like you know, most libraries are, you know government, usually municipal or county, you know, and of course government records are subject to open records requests. Customer data is not customer data is not.
Speaker 3:The only time we would release it is if we had a court order issued by a judge that said you have to release this for. And at that point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we would follow the law, because that's what law says and it actually happened recently, just because there was a crime in Texas City, I think, and there was some Rosenberg Library property that was found, a crime in Texas city, I think. Uh and uh, there was some Rosenberg library property that was found at the crime, really Uh, and they had our barcode on it, which is why the detective reached out to us and asked if they could you know?
Speaker 1:have the information tied to it and I said you know, we, you know, without a court order we cannot yeah you know, divulge any of that information and then, a week later, yeah, yeah, he sent a quarter. I'm like, okay, now I can divulge the difference and again yeah, well, yeah, we're not. We're not trying to be obstructive, it's just. You know this. This is a protected class of information, you know?
Speaker 2:we're just following the law yeah, well, that makes sense and it it kind of naturally leads me into, you know, what's been going on recently with, uh, book bans and and things like that, where there are attempted restrictions on what's available at libraries not just you know, public libraries, private library, whatever, what's available to read and to access, um, so I mean what is maybe not your stance, but what is kind of the general.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'd be happy to share my stance, yeah, but you know.
Speaker 2:I'll start off with. My thing is information and being able to access information, regardless of where it is. It's imperative to be able to make decisions, to move forward, and that's with anything, with history, with thoughts, with ideas, with expression. In my opinion, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Thoughts with ideas, with expression and in my opinion.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I think I can say anything better there, uh jr, yeah, uh, yeah, I mean essentially what's happening you know, it's yeah, there there are.
Speaker 1:There are people who, for for many reasons, don't like, don't agree with, have problems with certain topics, subjects, and you know the. The argument of the push is that because you know libraries are publicly funded and available to the public, that they have a right, or should have a right, to dictate what's in that collection, which is very contrary to what libraries you mentioned, with the whole freedom to read. There's a whole statement. It's been a guiding principle of libraries for the last century or more. Is this idea of freedom to read? Is that people have the freedom to read what they want. The people who are trying to get books moved or removed for various reasons. Obviously that behavior is contrary to that basic tenement of libraries, of this freedom to read. Behavior is contrary to that basic kind of libraries, of this freedom to read.
Speaker 1:You know some of the arguments about is like oh well, we're protecting children because children can find these things, you know, on the shelf. You know our stance is that libraries aren't parents, we're different than schools. So schools, there is a legal justification that you know during the school hours that school officials are acting was as in parentis locus or there's, I don't the s we call the latin public libraries. Do not do that. It does not our job. It is not our job to tell a parent what they could or could not allow a child to read. You know, if a parent does not want a child to read a book about X, Y, Z, topic, amen, that is 100% the parent's right. But it is not that parent's right to prevent another parent from having access to that information if they choose if that's what they want.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's what it comes down to. What it comes down to is our job as libraries is to try to build a diverse, inclusive collection that reflects the, the, the community we serve, as well as their information needs. When you do that, you are bound to have something that is going to offend somebody. You know. My personal thought is is like if you are offended by something good, because now you're thinking that's how we learn and grow, a hundred percent, yeah, and, and I'll tell you, there are things at the Rosenberg library that offend me, I'm not going to take and remove them because they're part of the collection.
Speaker 1:Now, the only time I would remove them and I would do it because I don't do that work it's Now the only time I would remove them and I would do it because I don't do that work, it's my staff that does. It is if it's now either outside of a collector's soap or it's not being used, no-transcript, and that's part of trying to find things that the community wants. Yeah, but it's not my job to make sure that the collection reflects my views and it's not the job of somebody else to make the collection reflect only their views. Our job is to try to get a collection that reflects Galveston and what the community of Galveston would like to use of its library.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and by doing that, by nature, we are going to offend somebody. Yeah, our goal is not to offend, our goal is to build a diverse collection, but that's a repercussion of building a diverse collection. As a parent, if you are worried, then you know.
Speaker 1:Stay with them the whole time they're in the library, mm-hmm you know, talk to your kid and say, hey, if you're gonna check in a book, bring it to me first. Yeah, let me look at it before you check it out. Let me look at it before you look at it. That's, that's a parent's right now, that I I 100% support parents' rights in that. But that's where it ends. The parent has to step in and be the parent of that child.
Speaker 1:If that's what they would like to do, yeah, and I don't begrudge them that right to do so. If there's another parent that wants to be able to, for their child to find that book, yeah, yeah. Makes sense. Yeah, I don't want to take that away either, of course, of course, yeah, well, I'm in the same way. Take a little break here. We could do a whole podcast about censorship and book banning yeah, about censorship and things like that.
Speaker 2:Well, so back to a little bit of history here. So, whenever the let's go back to 1871, the Mercantile Library. So, the original library here in or one of the original libraries here in Galveston 1871, it was kind of put together by the businesses down here and I would assume I don't know, I haven't done research here, but I would assume that was just to provide information on business, on history, on things like that. Do you know if they were putting all kinds of books in that collection or was it they were and it?
Speaker 1:was usually the subscribers could request titles or would vet the titles, yeah, and it was kind of like what a subscription library sounds like. It was an opportunity for these businessmen. It wasn't just the businesses, it was the business owners.
Speaker 3:It was the merchants.
Speaker 1:Instead of them all buying their own copies of books, they could go in together, so it was almost like a co-op in that way in some ways for people who know what co-ops are. So that's what it was doing and it would be newspapers, magazines, so they would do like a subscription, so that then the Mercantile Library would have a subscription to.
Speaker 1:The Cincinnati Times or something right, and then they could have it and then they could go sit and read it in the reading room at the Mercantile Library. And then a book collection but there also probably was reference collection as well to you know, help them with you know things that they might help them with their businesses. Instead of, again, instead of each business buying their own you know copy, they could go in together and, yeah, it's our library, which is why this was a fairly common phenomenon across the country. As you saw mercantile libraries popping up in the mid to late 19th century.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it makes so much sense because before you had movies, before you had Netflix, before you had really like big entertainment venues, you would go to the library and read, or go check out a book or get your hands on a book and sit down for hours and hours and hours and read something that I wish I could do these days, yeah.
Speaker 1:There was always, like you know, you know, know, town festivals like that for entertainment, you know, or go to the town hanging, yeah yeah, right, right yeah it's kind of sad to think about that.
Speaker 1:It used to be a spectator sport, yeah, watch people get hanged exactly. So we have been working with a consultant team headed by group for architecture out of San Francisco, and they are one of the preeminent library planning firms in the country, which is why we hired them doing kind of a deep dive, excuse me, into the library, to our services, into the community, to come up with a strategic vision for the next five to 20 years for the Rosenberg Library. And this would be it's it's kind of a two part process. We have a strategic plan that we just at the at our February meeting. We just at the at our February meeting, yeah, yeah, just just a month ago, the board voted to adopt a new mission, vision and value statements and six strategic goals for the library, and I'm not going to recite them here, but we will.
Speaker 1:We will be pushing that out very soon and sometime late spring, early summer, we will be, you know, pushing out our you know a new strategic plan for library and this would be kind of our programmatic vision of what the library should be doing and how we're going to go about achieving that, and it's based a lot on community feedback we did, as well as stakeholder feedback. So lots of meetings with our board and with staff to get their thoughts. But we did focus groups, we had a community survey and, if anybody's listening to this, that they did the survey. Thank you very much. One of my goals was I wanted to beat the the per capita survey return that they did at Austin public library, which is where I used to work before I came here, and Austin had a survey return of 3.7 per per thousand residents, which is actually really good.
Speaker 2:That's really good, yeah, yeah we were over five. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that also shows that Galvestonians give a crap about their institutions which I'm very thankful that they do, and I always use a different word, but I don't want to lead into their case. They didn't make the edit.
Speaker 3:So we were thinking about it.
Speaker 1:So I mean a different word, but I don't want to lead to their case. They didn't make the edit, so we were thinking about it. So I mean a lot of information. But then we also looked at you know I mentioned before about kind of libraries are new things now, and you know things that happened because of the pandemic and that happened to libraries and happened, you know, by libraries.
Speaker 1:In response, you know, richard, this was like an opportune time to take a step back. Look at our services, look at what pivot services we created to accommodate changes in our society and you know what's, what is the best path forward for serving Galveston. So we're very excited about that. But then we're also looking at our facilities because of course now we know what we want to do. Now the question is where do we do it? How do we do it? Do we have the right space to do it? I mentioned that the Moody Wing, which is the newest part of the library, is now 53 years old, well past the lifespan and lifecycle of a commercial structure, and so we are really now well positioned to be thinking about what is the future space for the library and what kind of space do we need to be a library of the future for Galveston.
Speaker 1:We're not ready to. You know, I think maybe by the time this podcast is edited and airing, we might have that out. I don't know how long your process is, but I will say that at this moment we are thinking of something really kind of big and iconic. We have what we call a generational opportunity. So the Moody edition was a generational opportunity to create something big for the library and for Galveston the original Rosenberg building. That was a generational opportunity. You know it's been 50 years. It's a new generation.
Speaker 1:We are primed to do something, make generational change for the library and how the library serves the island and how the library serves the island, and something that you know it's not. You know I mentioned that the plan is a five to 20 year plan, but the result isn't a five to 20 year. We're looking at something for the next 50 to a hundred years. Create and build something that would serve Galveston for the next 50 to a hundred years. That's our hope. That's what we're looking to do because we have real estate.
Speaker 1:The library owns a block and a half. You know that entire block that the building sits on, plus the half a block behind ashton villa. That's all library owned and so we have. We have, you know, we're kind of a step ahead of the game a lot of other institutions that are looking to, you know, expand or change uh their facilities footprint. You know we don't. We already have the land uh, potentially uh to to do that, as opposed to others that would have to go acquire land and then think about what to build uh, and so. So we're really excited about that. I think I think in the next few months we're going to be bringing some things out for the public to see that hopefully, wood yeah, that's what it's it's fake wood, it's fake wood uh hopefully, uh, it'll be something that excites and energizes the current generation of galveston.
Speaker 1:Uh, and and they recognize that this is a uh, we're, we're poised with a great opportunity to build something truly transformational, uh, for the next 50 to 100 years, for.
Speaker 2:Galveston. Well, of course, keeping the original 120-year-old building right we have no intention of knocking that down.
Speaker 1:I mean there are moments, if anybody you know when we're in a historic building, you know we have great historic preservation on this island. But anybody who manages or owns a historic building knows they're a pain in the took us to keep up.
Speaker 3:They're expensive.
Speaker 1:It's hard, but no, we have no plans.
Speaker 1:There are no plans Of course, the only plans are to continue to care for and preserve the original Eiffel Wing. Now, I would say there's no plans to tear down the moody wing uh, to to start anew, uh, although I think that was discussed at one point, that that was a was a potential path of doing something new would be to tear it out and start over on that side, uh, but we could fundamentally change the the moody wing, uh, you know, as part of this, uh, you know process, yeah, uh, that's what they get. You know, one of the things that we suffer from, uh, in that half of the library is no natural light oh, yes, because that was.
Speaker 1:That was a design aesthetic of the of the late 60s and so he said you built these, you know, uh, because neo-modern buildings that, uh, that had no windows, that were all boxy and uh, and the idea was like at the time, especially with libraries, is, you know, as I mentioned before, light damages papers. They're like, okay, let's just cut out all the natural light, uh, but that's not good for the people. No, it's not it's.
Speaker 1:We need our vitamin D and you're seeing some really amazing library designs coming out that are incorporating a lot of natural light in various ways.
Speaker 1:And there's design things you can do without making a glass building but you can bring in, you can create things that draw that light in and then disperse it around the building to create open, airy spaces that people want to be in.
Speaker 1:And I think that's something that perhaps the Rosenberg Library suffers from a little bit, especially in the Moody Wing, is that aesthetically, it's not a place that people necessarily want to be in. It's not the that people necessarily want to be in it, it's not, you know, uh, you know the old wing, obviously there's the historic charm of the, of the 1904 building, uh, you know, has a lot of attention and I think it draws people in there, uh, you know. But the moody wing, it's just, it's function, it's all function, yeah, and it's and it's serving well. I mean it is functioning well, but it doesn't promote people wanting to come and stay and hang out and do things, and I think a big part of that is it's dark and dizzy. Yeah, because that was the design aesthetic of that time. Now is a good time to change that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then I can have a window.
Speaker 3:I don't have a window in my office.
Speaker 1:I call it my sensory deprivation chamber.
Speaker 2:Nothing but artificial light, so very excited about the future. Yeah, I want to kind of talk about you for a minute. So, you're an author of a couple books, or one or two books. How many books have you written? Four.
Speaker 1:Four books.
Speaker 2:And I'm under contract for my fifth. Okay, so tell us about the books that you have out.
Speaker 1:Okay A little bit. So I'll back up a little bit just to take a chance to talk about me a little bit, just to mention that I run a library but I'm a historian by trade and training and so I've been, but I've always done my history of work in public libraries. The first book I did was called Austin's First Cookbook and it was a book that came out of an exhibit I curated at the Austin History Center about 19th century foodways in Austin, and that exhibit was all kind of a look at the whole foodways, how food got to places, how people got to food, what they ate and what they grew and whatnot. And in that exhibit I uncovered a copy of a book. It was called Our Home Cookbook, published by the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Austin, texas, and it was published in 1891. Uh, and I discovered that, to the best of my knowledge, it was the very first cookbook ever published in the city of Austin and the second cookbook published in the state of Texas. Uh, and I thought amazing, but this copy, our copy, was falling apart.
Speaker 1:It was in many, many pieces. I said this would be great to share with the world as a reprint. But I didn't want to just reprint it. I wanted to use that reprint as a foil to talk about the history of Austin Foodways, the history of cookbooks and why we do cookbooks, why this cookbook existed, a little bit of history of the women who submitted recipes, because it was one of the few early cookbooks where the recipes were signed, and so that's what. That was the book. So it's really it's a story of that cookbook and kind of the food scene in Austin in 1891 that led to the creation of that cookbook. And then I even took I took a few recipes and tried to update them to to modern tastes. No-transcript, what was the best recipe.
Speaker 1:There is a recipe in there for something that's called dressed eggs. Dressed eggs, dressed eggs, and the best way I can describe it is think of deviled eggs. But up to notch and I'm saying deviled eggs is my kryptonite I could eat it. You put a platter of 24 in front of me, I could eat the whole thing, and then future me would then regret that decision. But I love that. But these dressed eggs decision, uh, but I love that. But these dressed eggs and they're. The key is is it doesn't use a cream in the, in the, in the egg yolk mixture, it's butter, okay, and then they're baked oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:And then served cold oh my gosh. So yeah, uh, that sounds delicious. Yeah, yeah, so, and I still make them.
Speaker 1:Oh my god that's, that's one of my like. If I'm bringing something to a potluck or something that's, that's a, that's one of my go-to. You know potluck recipes. I love these eggs, uh, so, and then the next book. Uh, so, the next book it was, uh, the first part it was. I did two books with, uh, the dallas stars, uh, and an organization that I now head called the Texas Hockey History Society. Oh, my gosh.
Speaker 1:So I'm a sports historian. I've always done a lot of sports and I've done journal articles and stuff about minor league hockey in Texas, but also Lamar Hunt, who's still, to this day, the only person inducted into three different sports halls of fame.
Speaker 1:He's in the football, tennis and soccer halls of fame Because of his role as starting soccer, football and tennis leagues in the country. So I did a book. It's called Texas on Ice Early Strides to Pro Hockey. It's really kind of a coffee table book and I did it with two other guys in Dallas and it was a book. It's not something that's widely available. It was published by Brown Books in Dallas but it was done as a giveaway to Dallas Stars season ticket holders.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's cool, that is really cool and it was really just kind of telling the early story of development of ice sports in Texas up until the very first pro teams that played in Texas in the 1941-42 season.
Speaker 1:There was a team in Dallas and a team in Fort Worth in the American Hockey Association and in between the two hockey books I did a book on. It was one of the Arcadia Images of America series books on historic movie houses of Austin and also from an exhibit I curated in Austin about the old movie theaters and kind of the development and change of movie exhibition business in Austin.
Speaker 1:And then I did a second hockey book with the Stars group. It was called Texas on Ice Pro Strides to the Stars, and so it told the story of the post-war World War II up until the arrival of the Dallas Stars in Dallas as the first NHL team in the state. But I can say this is the book I'm under contract with. I'm writing with a friend under contract with Texas A&M University Press and it's a narrative history of ice hockey in Texas, from the first organized game in 1925 to present day.
Speaker 2:Where was that?
Speaker 1:San Antonio, san Antonio, san Antonio, at the Crystal Palace Ice Rink, which was built across Myrtle Street from San Pedro Springs Park, which is the oldest park in the state.
Speaker 3:Kind of fitting that the first ice rink.
Speaker 1:It wasn't the first ice skating, because I found news stories and evidence of when winters used to be colder. The first ice rink. It wasn't the first ice skating, because I found news stories and evidence of, you know, when winters used to be colder, although we've had a couple of colders recently. But you know lakes and things Like. There's news stories of the Trinity River freezing over in Dallas and then people going out with ice skates and skating on the Trinity River and a lake freezing in Waco in the 1890s and people ice skating there.
Speaker 1:And there's a great oral history from the the, the son of the founder of lamb's candies in Austin. He remembered in the 1870s of a lake like a little neighborhood pond, I guess, more than a lake that would freeze over in the winters and they would go out and try to skate on it and and play shinny, which is like a precursor to hockey so didn't you mention to me galveston had a hockey team at one point?
Speaker 1:so there's reports of that, uh, in in the 30s uh, you know there's. There's from that time that first organized game in 25 up until the first pro teams in 41, there was attempts off and on to form new leagues and there was like what would probably call semi-pro leagues or senior leagues that you could sometimes see in other places. And in the in the mid to late thirties there was what was called the South Texas hockey league. This was after the Dallas ice rink burned down so they stopped skating because they didn't have an ice rink. After that that ice rink burned in 33, and so they didn't have ice out there. So everything was south. It was San Antonio and Houston were the two cities that had rinks.
Speaker 1:But there's new stories in the Houston paper of a Galveston entrant in this league and that the Galveston team and it was mostly soldiers that were at Fort Crockett that had been had been at Fort Sam Houston and played on the Fort Sam Houston team in San Antonio. They got transferred, or you know whatever, to Fort Crockett but they wanted to keep playing hockey. But they would be coming up, they would come to Houston and use the Houston rink. But I can't find any. There was nothing in the Galveston papers that mentioned any team that played. And when you actually get into league play and you'd see the news reports in the Houston and San Antonio papers by the time league play started, there was no mention of a Galveston team playing. So, yeah, but it's possible that some of the players on the Houston they were the polar bears that they that there was maybe some of those Galveston guys that they would come up to Houston and play.
Speaker 1:Of course there's probably a lot of pickup games and stuff when they would get going. That's all I could find on Galveston's connection.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Damn, that's awesome. That's awesome. Jay, did you have a couple questions? Oh yeah, Turn the mic on.
Speaker 1:I do, I do, oh good I can turn it.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, yes. So you were talking about how libraries used to be like subscription to free. Was there any like? I guess, like people now have it open to being free, like free to go in, and then they would request items to be in there was libraries controlling what was coming through still, or were they just like okay, you want this?
Speaker 1:Let me just get it Uh.
Speaker 3:and then when it was under the subscription kind of model, um under, like going from subscription to free, because I'm assuming there was an influx of people going into the libraries now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I can't speak to specifics, but traditionally the way it's worked is, yeah, the public could always request stuff, but there would usually be a librarian or the collection development department that would vet those requests and try to build a collection. So not necessarily everything that was requested, but even on the subscription model, not everything that was requested would eventually be bought. There would usually be a committee that would review the requests and make recommendations, hopefully based on some type of collecting philosophy. Right now we have libraries that have what's called a collection development policy and most libraries have one. The libraries that do their jobs well have one.
Speaker 3:We do at the.
Speaker 1:Roseburg and it's on our website. Go to the homepage, go to the bottom, click on policy. You can read our collection development policy so you know how we make our decisions about what we add to our collection. That's kind of the governing idea behind making those selections.
Speaker 3:Another question is at any given time, was there any gender or age restriction for people going to the library?
Speaker 1:Libraries in general, the Rosenberg in particular.
Speaker 3:Let's do libraries in general, and then Rosenberg.
Speaker 1:Quick answer for libraries in general is yes, at different places, different times, there have been various restrictions on age and gender, as well as race and and and whatnot. At the rosenberg uh, I I do not know. Uh, I am, I could be wrong, but there's nothing that I have read or learned that had any restrictions for children or women in the library when it was open as a Rosenberg. Now, there might have been spaces within the library that that they didn't allow children to go into. Maybe they had a quiet reading room that was maybe just for adults, which I could certainly see that happening, because libraries still kind of do that today, not that they forbid, but they'll maybe more control the behavior in a space because they want to have a quiet space.
Speaker 1:Versus children, that's kind of loud, and if you go to our children's library now, except when school's in session and we don't have homeschoolers in the library, the children's department is quiet. That's the only time the children's department is ever quiet is when school's in session and we don't have homeschoolers at the library. So we do get homeschoolers that come in during the school day as well and we're glad to have them. And we're glad to have them. Now, there's always been an issue. If I can expand your question to talk about race in libraries, just because you know, for so much of our history has been segregated and the Rosenberg Library was no different than that. But we did have one of the, if not the first, libraries for African Americans at what's now the old central cultural center.
Speaker 1:That was the old central high, and then so the Rosenberg had what was then called the colored branch, which was the terminology of the day.
Speaker 2:And that that is actually still written on the side of the on the entrance to that on 27th and M.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that was something it was actually. The community had requested the Rosenberg Library Association to open a branch there and the Rosenberg Library association agreed, uh, without any uh contention that I could tell in the minutes and stuff. Uh and uh, it was one of the very first libraries for african americans in the state and then the rosenberg, you know, desegregated pretty quietly, uh, I think like a lot of things in Galveston, it just kind of just happened, and when that did, they no longer saw the need to maintain a second you know location and so all that just kind of got absorbed. You know, if you go to the Rosenberg Library Museum's webpage and go to our Treasures of the Month all the backstories there's two or three really nice blog posts on there about some of those first librarians of the of the color branch and the work that they did. So that's a great place If you want to learn more about that story. Cool.
Speaker 2:Anything else.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, oh yeah, okay. And then do you ever turn away any donation that is, I guess, being sent to you guys to be added to a collection or an archive?
Speaker 1:Was it monetary? No, but if it doesn't fit our collecting scope we won't accept it. And we have two different kind of classes and so a lot of people always want to bring us their books, and all books that are donated to the library go to their friends at the Rosenberg Library, and it is rare that we will add a donated book to our collection. And it's not to say that that book is not worthy of a library or something we would want. The way libraries work today purchase books to add to the collection. We don't just purchase the book, we purchase the catalog record and the spine label and all the stuff that goes to make it ready for someone to check out. So that we don't have to do that, we have our acquisitions department, for the whole library is one person, so we have one person that places all the orders, checks the books in when they come from the vendor and gets them sent out for the different departments to put on the shelf. If that person had to also put a wrapper on the book, create the catalog record, update the catalog record to our database, put the barcode on it, put the RFE all that physical processing that goes into making a book library ready, we would never get books on the shelf. Yeah, and so that's why most vendors who supply books to libraries that's one of the services they offer that we pay a fee for, and so it's just much more efficient for us to just buy the book, uh and uh and uh, get it on the shelf that way and then the friends can take nice books and sell them, and the friends are the friends of the library, do an amazing job supporting the rosenberg.
Speaker 1:Uh, you know we get anywhere from 50 to 75 000 a year in direct financial support from them, uh for uh, mostly for collection development. So they sell books so that we can buy books, which is kind of fitting. But they also support some of our programs. They usually give us money for the our annual Galveston Reads program as well as our summer reading for the children, and so so that's kind of the book side. Then, in terms of, then in terms of archival donations, again, if it fits our collecting scope, we will generally accept it. We don't usually turn those away. We do get people like there's the Texas Immigration Company land grants that come up on the market all the time and we get many of them offered to us from time to time, and they're amazing because they have this great little map on the bottom of the land certificate. That's a map of Galveston Bay. They're a really, really cool piece, but we've got dozens and dozens of them. We don't need more.
Speaker 2:Oh, they're all generic, they're all the same.
Speaker 1:It's a land certificate. Basically the difference would be who who was issued to or or if it was even issued to anybody. You know, maybe a signature uh on it uh might be important, uh, but uh, uh, you know, we, we just have so many, cause we have the records of one of the founders of the company, james Morgan, and so in the James Morgan papers we probably have a whole box of them issued to various people and whatnot. So we try not to duplicate.
Speaker 1:Again, space is such a commodity in archival collections so you have to be very mindful. We have to be mindful of before we accept something. One of the questions we have to ask ourselves is can we take care of this? Can we be a good steward of this collection that's being or object that's being offered to us? And if the answer to that is no, then we're kind of ethically bound to say, well, no, we can't accept this because we won't be able to take care of it, and that's something that you see in archives. And then same thing with museum objects is that we have to ask that same question. I will say that museum donations so if it's like art or an artifact the way our policy currently reads is those have to be approved by our board of directors before we can accept them. So we can tentatively accept something. We can say, okay, if it's our collecting soap, we can recommend it to the board so that the board approve our accession of this item.
Speaker 1:And then, yeah, that has to go to the board vote at the next board meeting and I don't know if at the time the board hasn't accepted something, but yeah.
Speaker 2:You never know yeah.
Speaker 1:You're right, and so we just have to be careful of that.
Speaker 3:But again, we have to follow our collective policy and stuff like that, uh, so you good, yeah, yeah, I feel like now I'm watching tennis.
Speaker 2:I know right well mike, thank you so much for coming in today I really appreciate you. I appreciate everything the library has uh helped me with with my research and um live events that we've done over there in the past year or so. So thanks for everything, man. I really appreciate you, thank you. Yeah, thanks, appreciate you R.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, awesome. Next time we'll talk about Galveston's charter work. Oh dude.
