HISTORIC POSTCARDS

Library Administrator's Digest, Jun 2004 by Robinson, Charles W

While I generally look askance on rare book collections in public libraries as rarely used by few people and really expensive, I feel differently about local history collections. Which, admittedly, are used by few people and can be expensive to maintain.

The lucky communities have historical societies. Many of these are fairly well funded and have a good corps of people maintaining them, mostly volunteers, I assume. I have the impression that a lot of their energy is spent collecting three-dimensional stuff like furniture or farm equipment or even buildings rather than printed ephemera, but I could be wrong.

But then there are many communities that don't have anybody collecting and preserving local history. This is where many public libraries can have a useful and appreciated role. This is where, apparently, the New Hanover County (NC) Public Library finds itself. (See article in News Section, this issue.)

I've fiddled around a little on eBay myself, selling and buying, and find that there is quite a trade going on there in old postcards. It used to be that the only place you could find these was in a tray of them, arranged by state and town, in antique shops. Now all you have to do is go to eBay with the name of your place and a postcard often shows up.

Come to think of it, does no one ever throw old postcards away? And is it a dying practice to send them, with the advent of the telephone and e-mail?

Whatever, a lot of these postcards picture things as they were years ago in communities all across the nation. Some of these show buildings in the town where I have my beach house. I knew there was once a railroad that ran through it. That railroad line, originally founded as some other railroad that was bought by the Boston & Maine in its 19th century orgy of expansion, is long abandoned, with nothing to show where it ran. But a series of old postcards for sale on eBay pictured a station in the town, complete with steam locomotive, train and people in, I estimated, 1890 clothing; another with a train on a trestle crossing tidal flats; and yet another at an earlier version of the same station, showing a train with open sides, like some old streetcars. Well, I didn't buy the postcards, but I figured they had been pictured on the eBay site by use of a digital scanner, so I copied them on my computer, and enlarged, printed and framed them. All digital, so no loss of clarity from the originals, I figured. Free, although my wife wondered whether I had "stolen" them, like music. I said no.

A little piece of local history preserved on my beach house wall.

New Hanover County, quite rightly, I guess, is interested in having the original postcards themselves for its local history collection. Local citizens will be able to copy them digitally on a library scanner, perhaps. I know that in the library I directed, one staff member tracked down thousands of photographs of local scenes from various sources, and I see copies that the library has provided in a number of places, including restaurants, where they have been enlarged and placed on a wall.

A great job for a volunteer, and a great contribution to the record of local history in New Hanover County. And another library which is preserving local history, perhaps the only institution which is doing that locally. Not every community has a historical society, and there's often a place for the public library to do the job.

Even if it takes space and staff. And volunteers.