 March/April 2001 (XXXIX 2) |
s the fruit of your Quaker work spoiling like forgotten gourmet items in the corners of your refrigerator? This abiding “Good Housekeeping” concern by your PYM Record Services Group prompts us to republish below the advisory which we published in PYM News some two years ago. It is about attending to the paper trail that records your Meeting’s ongoing faithfulness to God’s guidance.
How recently have you been frantically searching for that important deed, or contract or memo that your committee or Meeting needs to go forward? How often have you been reduced to relying only on the memory of whoever was present when a decision was made? Have some of the minutes of your committees disappeared into the estate of a deceased committee clerk? Probably all of us have had some variant of these experiences.
Early Friends, worried that their doings would be misunderstood or misinterpreted or disputed by an unfriendly world, kept meticulous records of what they were up to. Hence, we know a great deal about what early Quakers believed, and the witness they practiced in their lives and in their communities to live those beliefs. Our Friends’ communities have relied on this information to help us stay true to ourselves. Quakers are famous among historians and genealogists for the completeness of their early records.
But how will future Friends know what we here in present-day Philadelphia Yearly Meeting believed? How will they know what we did? Ironically, as Friends’ communities have become more secure in the world, the gaps in the modern records have often become greater than those for the records of times long-past. Too often, modern Friends have forgotten or neglected to write things down, or to carefully preserve what they have written.
Through our records, Friends make our testimony to the world public and permanent, and hold ourselves accountable for decisions and actions. Our records are therefore not just a bureaucratic convenience or a quaint artifact for antiquarians and collectors, but an essential facet of our testimony of Truth.
Every Quarterly, Monthly, and Preparative Meeting and every Yearly Meeting standing committee and working group needs not only to create a full record of its activities, but also to ensure preservation of that record.
Fortunately, there is lots of assistance in this process. Over many decades, the Quaker Collection of Haverford College Library and Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College have agreed to share the task of storing the records and making them available to the public through library catalogues and through staff trained in the idiosyncrasies of Quaker parlance and organizational structure. The two libraries provide space for storage of records and reference service for those needing them and will happily assist Meetings and committees tackling questions and concerns related to their records.
If your Meeting would like help figuring out where its records are or should be, or how to arrange for their care, feel free to contact either Emma Jones Lapsansky at Haverford (610-896-1161; e-mail elapsans@haverford.edu) or Pat O’Donnell at Swarthmore (610-328-8497; e-mail podonne1@swarthmore.edu). Either of them can help with questions about when, where and how your Meeting’s records might best be housed.
Once at Swarthmore or Haverford, records are examined for any conservation problems (e.g., moldy or worn-out paper), and then a description of the records is prepared to place on TRIPOD, the on-line catalog that is shared by Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore [http://tripod.brynmawr.edu].
Though staff at the two colleges also coordinate microfilming, original records sent to Haverford or Swarthmore remain the property of the Meeting that deposited them and can be withdrawn by a minuted decision of that Meeting or its successor.
Plan today to assure that your meeting will always know where that deed is, where that memo is, and what was decided at that committee meeting ten years ago — even if no member of that committee is still living.
Emma Jones Lapsansky
Lansdowne Meeting (PA)
PYM Records Services Group
Last modified: Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 08:18 AM