Presbyterian Historical Society
Greetings, everybody: Thank you for attending the pre-presbytery workshop on records and archives! As promised, you’ll find my slides and notes, attached.
We’ll happily take on deposit any of your congregation’s original records which are no longer frequently referred to. Session minutes and registers are of chief importance, but we gladly take in minutes of any councils of the church, such as deacons, trustees, women’s and youth groups. There is no charge for this service, and the records will be housed in an environmentally controlled archival storage area with specialized fire detection and security systems. The congregation retains ownership of the records held on deposit, and may request their return at any time with written authorization of the clerk of session. Routine inquiries, such as baptismal attestations, may be directed to our dedicated staff of professional archivists. We do not bring in church bulletins, Bibles, objects, attendance records, or Sunday school class roll books; you are free to preserve or dispose of those yourself.
We can image records for congregations in addition to holding them on deposit. In this way, your congregation would have a surrogate to search and refer to, and the original records would be secure. Our planetary scanner shoots up to 16 x 24” in 24-bit RGB color at 600 dpi. We compile the images to PDF, and deliver them by DVD or download, at a cost of $0.50 per page. As a point of reference, I’ve attached a guide to our digitization services. Once we have your records in hand, we will complete an estimate of the project and return an invoice for one-half the estimated cost. Upon receipt of this deposit payment, we will queue the records for imaging. Our current turnaround time is one month. You can view a sample of our work here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gjm28qoj2z00ajy/01_15-0109_session-minutes_1887-1916.pdf?dl=0.
Congregations may also contribute to the careful stewardship of our collections by becoming members at any one of a number of levels, receiving our bi-annual print newsletter, our monthly email newsletter, and discounts on digitization. More information can be found on our website: http://www.history.pcusa.org/join-support/church-membership.
Thank you for your time, and please feel free to contact us in future with any further questions.
Yours,
David Staniunas
Records Archivist
Presbyterian Historical Society
425 Lombard Street
