Bourne Archives Staff Seeks Help

By DIANA T. BARTH
Bourne is awash in paperwork. It is piled on the floor next to desks in town hall and is placed in marked boxes in that building’s basement, or in the “vaults” now used for records the town clerk’s office is required by law to preserve.
Police and fire records also end up in boxes, like those in the attic of the town’s main fire station.
In the town archives at the Jonathan Bourne Historic Center, however, not only has order been emerging, but collections are being catalogued and computerized, making them more accessible to the public.
Everything from family or building histories to historical maps of the town, from postcards to photographs, are available at the center, which is home to the Bourne Historic Commission as well as the Bourne Historical Society.
It is not often that a town department asks for more oversight, but Jean Campbell, head of those archives, said that the “new” archives operation now requires a new committee.
She is coming before selectmen on Tuesday to ask that the old group be disbanded and a new one created.
The existing committee, Ms. Campbell said, was formed in May of 1979 by Town Meeting vote. Its charge was to study the feasibility of creating an archives and, if the project was found to be found feasible, to help fund its creation.
Voters established a seven-member committee that consists of the town clerk and members designated by the library, the school committee, the Bourne Historic Commission, the Bourne Historical Society, and two members at large.
While the archives have long been up and running, a committee exists on paper to this day, even though it has rarely had reason to meet of late years.
The archives are a town department, in a town-owned facility, with fiscal oversight by the town.
Working at the center is a fully volunteer staff trained and experienced in archival work, such as Goia Dimock, a photo archivist who has been volunteering during the winter months to organize and correctly preserve the town’s historical photographs.
Bourne Historical Society’s Thelma Loring, for example, has volunteered to organize and catalogue the school photos. The society’s Judith McAllister also spends hours at the center.
Ms. Campbell said the archives’ staff is made up of people who are either professionals or experienced volunteers who have attended courses given by various organizations.
For the past two years, the archives were closed to the public for the month of January to allow the staff to try to catch up with their huge backlog.
They could then concentrate on the never-ending job of cataloguing all the documents, photographs, slides, tapes, and books that had been sitting on the shelves and in boxes, entering all items on the computer and organizing collections.
What this volunteer-supported effort now needs, Ms. Campbell said, is a governing body that is familiar with how archives should be run and who can keep town hall informed of issues.
Rather than organizational and financial oversight, the operation needs help with the more technical decisions, including how to keep the balance between preserving the documents in pristine condition and allowing access to the public who want to consult them.
The archives’ volunteer staff could also use an oversight board as it makes decisions as to what can be kept and what need not be kept.
Ms. Campbell said the societies that share the Jonathan Bourne Historical Center cooperate in ensuring that all records are accessible.
Asked whether the archives staff has extended its cataloguing work to the records stored in other town buildings, Ms. Campbell said they had not. Consideration of a town-wide system might be something the proposed new “Town Archives Committee” might tackle.
Everyone from professional researchers to schoolchildren are encouraged to visit and use the archives. They are open on Mondays and Tuesdays from 9 AM to 3 PM, on Wednesdays from 6:30 to 8:30 PM, or by appointment.