“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.” – Muhammad Ali
Back in July, departments throughout the American Philatelic Society and the American Philatelic Research Library were privileged to once again have the services of almost 30 volunteers who came to the American Philatelic Center to work on volunteer projects as part of the annual Volunteer Work Week. Taisia Osipova and Nick Miller of the APS coordinated the week’s activities, making sure that volunteers were given the opportunity to work in the department and on the tasks that interested them most.
The library saw many familiar faces with volunteers who annually return for Volunteer Work Week. There were some new projects this time around as well as some of the more familiar tasks that surface each year. The newer projects included the unboxing and sorting of the Dr. Herbert Trenchard donation. Volunteers opened boxes and sorted material by type (book, journal, auction catalog, price list, etc.) and then by title and date. By the end of the week volunteers were able to work their way through two full pallets of material.
Another of the newer projects was to sort through, inventory and organize the backlog of materials in the archives area of the library. Like the Trenchard donation, volunteers sorted material by type and also to determine whether the material was needed in the APRL collection (some of the material in the archives area was still in its original packaging when donated to us and on occasion includes material not relevant to the library). Volunteers were able to process more than 60 boxes of material and other miscellaneous items during the week.
Other volunteer tasks included processing book donations to determine whether they are needed in the collection; sorting and processing our used book inventory; and finally, indexing journal articles for the Article Index of the online catalog. The volunteers who performed these tasks exceeded expectations. As for the latter task, two of the volunteers have agreed to be remote article indexers for the library.
In all, the week was another great opportunity for the library staff to reconnect with friends and library patrons, and in turn, for volunteers to give back in a meaningful way to the library.
Joe and Diane Sullivan work on the Trenchard donation during Volunteer Work Week.
Where in the world wide web
During Volunteer Work Week I had the distinct pleasure of having a number of conversations with our volunteers in the library and one such conversation stood out. During a break I was able to discuss with a volunteer his interests in France and the French colonies, specifically some of the resources he often uses in his research. During our talk he mentioned a number of very resourceful and informative websites that he regularly frequents when researching a topic in his area of interest.
Our discussion called to mind that in the library we are always interested in hearing from our members and library patrons about the online resources they find useful. Online resources, whether they are databases or literature archives, are extremely useful to the online staff when answering library requests and also can be made available to patrons using the library through records in the online catalog. Currently there are more than 1,000 records in the online catalog that include links to resources found elsewhere online. These records can be accessed by clicking on the “Online Resources” tab at the top the online catalog landing page.
The library welcomes adding more of these links to the online catalog, so if there is an online resource that you feel would be of use to fellow researchers, you can send the link to [email protected].
Postal History Symposium 2022
We look forward to the Winton M. Blount Postal History Symposium to be hosted December 8-9 at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. The symposium will include 16 speakers presenting research papers over the course of the two days. The event will be streamed for those who cannot or choose not to attend in-person. Details of how to access the stream are still being coordinated and will be detailed on the Postal History Symposium page of the APS website when confirmed.
This year’s theme of “Political Systems, Postal Administrations, and the Mail” examines the missions, practices and regulations of postal administrations around the world and how these serve as reflections and agents of state goals and ideals. Among the papers to be presented are those exploring the postal systems and administrations of 19th century Brazil, modern day Russia, the Soviet Union, Italy, Finland, Vietnam and the United States. Some of the diverse topics to be discussed include iconography, postal unions, Sunday mail, privatized mail service, postal cards and transoceanic mail delivery to name a few.
As we get closer to the symposium we will have more information about the presenters, the abstracts for their papers and the schedule for the event. Check the Postal History Symposium page of the APS website, https://stamps.org/postal-history-symposium, for all the latest updates.