GEN-NYS-L Archives

Archiver > GEN-NYS > 1998-04 > 0892999699


From: sherrill madden <>
Subject: Re: How do you deal with libraries?
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 1998 08:28:19 -0700


I would ask any and all relatives, neighbors, members of the local
historical society to each volunteer to copy x number of pages. This was
you could get the entire book, piecemeal.

At 09:54 PM 4/18/98 -0400, Garry & Kim Grimes wrote:
>Greetings NY researchers. I am having a problem dealing with the Huntington
Library in Oneonta NY and am appealing to you for help. I am desperate and
need everyone's advice:
>
>Background: My great aunt, Ella Schermerhorn, spent her entire life
compiling her family tree. She never completed her research or published any
of her work. When she died, her notebooks passed to her sister, my
great-grandmother. When she died, the books passed to her daughter, my aunt,
who then donated them to the Huntington Library sometime in the early 1970s.
The library copied the entire collection (on a xerox), and bound them into
51 hard-cover volumes that they keep in their New York Research Room. This
work is valuable to any Otsego County researcher, but is especially to my
mother and I.
>
>Problem: I don't live in Oneonta any more, and visit only once or twice a
year for a few days. The NY research room has very limited hours and no copy
machine. To get a copy I have to ask a librarian to make it for me. They
will only copy 20 pages at a time. No more than that, and they'll "keep
track so I don't get the whole book". With about 4000 pages, it could take
me several lifetimes to obtain all of my aunt's information. When I appealed
to the Director, she said it was a violation of "copyright". I then appealed
to the Library Board, and they said I could copy the entire work if I used a
special book edge copier and hired someone "specially trained" to do it.
Total cost: over $1100.
>
>My Unacceptable Solution: I have a personal copier, and my mother has
volunteered to do the copying of the copy that they made, not the original
notebooks. She promises to do it out of the way of other people and not make
herself a bother to the staff. Plus, she only needs to copy what we really
want, not all of it. The Director just won't let her. It's either pay the
$1146 or nothing. Personally, I think the Director is holding my family
history hostage by setting impossible conditions...
>
>Any suggestions? Do I have any rights whatsoever to my family's personal
notes? Or am I just asking for too much?
>Kim
>
>
>
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Sherrill Madden

"Words form the thread on which we string our experience."
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Seeking : COX [KS, CA] ~ QUAY [NY, MI, IN] ~ SHUEY [IA]
southeastern US: MADDEN, SHIRLEY (Myra Maybelle SHIRLEY aka: Belle Starr)]
Erie/Niagara/St. Lawrence Co's NY: MORRELL, ROSCOE, TAYLOR, TUCKER, WHITNEY

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