More thoughts about DC's libraries and archives and the crisis of collections support and management

Union Station, Kansas City, Missouri.

(From an AP story) Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri, The Kansas City Museums of Science and History, is pitching the National Archives to store millions of documents at the old railroad terminal. The current Central Plains archives in south Kansas City must move late next year, and the historic train station has a $13 million plan to house the facility. The plans call for renovating an old dairy west of the terminal and adding a 20,000-square-foot building to house classrooms, research rooms, exhibition space and storage.

From the Union Station Kansas City website: This fully restored 1914 landmark is Kansas City's most prominent destination for entertainment and cultural activities. The Station is home to a permanent rail exhibit with vintage rail cars, an interactive science center, a vibrant Theater District featuring giant-screen movies and live theater, fine restaurants, unique shops, and much more. Of course, you can still catch the train at Union Station, once again among Amtrak's busiest stops.

Union Station in Kansas City Missouri is a model that DC could learn from, similar to the State Library, Museum, and Archives in Augusta, Maine, that I wrote about in this blog entry in December, "Central Library Planning efforts and the City Museum, how about some learning from Augusta, Maine ... and Baltimore?"

In that entry, I suggested that in the planning for a new (or something) Central Library, that we need to look at linking City Museum functions with the library, as well as the DC Archives.

In a meeting in January on these issues, the crisis in collections was expanded to encompass the DC Public Schools Archives and Museum, at Sumner School, as well as the DC Register of Deeds.

Last night at a gallery opening in Brookland, I was talking with someone about the Moreland-Spingarn Collection at Howard University, and he said there is a similar financial and collections management crisis there as well.

Like Kansas City, can't we seize these opportunities in adversity, and come up with a grand solution?

Photo by Ron Goodson.

Christmas cards and Latin book mark, Dunbar High School, c. 1920. Source: DC Public Schools.

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