If you can believe it, the NAM processing project has just entered its final year. All the pieces will be coming together over the next 12 months – a prospect I still am having trouble imagining. As I mentioned in my earlier post on May 20th this year, the project has been ahead of schedule which has allowed for work to be done on the older NAM material to make it more easily accessible for researchers. I am now approaching the time during which the integration of the older and newer NAM material will take place, which will lead to the collection being unavailable to researchers.
Yes, you read that correctly. The NAM collection will be closing to researchers beginning March 2, 2020 for approximately six months. To quell some of your fears, the collection will not close all at once, but rather series by series, leaving the most widely used material accessible as long as possible. Once a series closes, it will remain closed until rearrangement of the whole collection has been completed. This means there will be a short amount of time where the entire NAM collection will all be unavailable.
I cannot provide more exact dates, other than our integration start date in March, when the first series will close. If you do intend to use the NAM collection during your 2020 research visit, please contact askhagley@hagley.org to see if the material will be available.
Ashley Williams is the Project Archivist for the NAM Collection at Hagley Museum and Library.