Archives

The Archives Committee was voted into existence in July of 2016, with a start date of January 2017. The committee’s purpose is to collect and preserve physical items of historical interest to the Folk Project and the community at large and to find appropriate housing for them so that they can be accessed by researchers as well as FP members and families. As treasures emerge from private collections, we hope to use them to widen our appeal and to attract new people to the FP family. We’d like to house the collection in or near Morris County but that depends on how much material we collect and on space and mission limitations of any receiving institution.

To review, and for new Board members, here is our action plan as laid out at the June 2016 Board meeting:

ACTION PLAN

1. Educate: get the word out to members and former members about what we plan to do and why we need their help.

2. Conduct a survey to find out what people have and how much.

3. Find a secure space to collect and sort the donations.

4. Collect, sort, and remove duplicates.

5. Decide what to copy and digitize.

6. Contact archivist and director Chad Leinaweaver from Morristown and Morris Township Public Library so he can have a look. If MMTPL can't take it, he may be able to help us find another institution.

The first course of action is to educate current and former members. To that end, we plan to submit an article to the newsletter explaining the Archives and educating our members about the committee. We also need everyone’s help in locating former members.

This will be a long term work-in-progress and this report just scratches the surface. We’ll be learning as we go and are consulting with experts in the field. Many thanks to committee members Joanne Cronin, Nancy Kelner, and Bobbie Rosengarten.

Lindsey Meyer