Recently, I had a fortunate opportunity to learn about a unique United States military oriented library and research center that is open to the public. If you find yourself out in San Diego, California, or are planning a visit to the West Coast of the United States, I encourage you to check it out. If you have visited, please leave a comment below and let me know about your experience.
Patricia Alderman, a librarian volunteer with the USS Midway Research Library, provided a very succinct and nice overview of the library at the 2020 Special Libraries Association conference. She focused on how library volunteers and “the Library [are] helping to help make the Midway magic.” The secret is empowering their sixty volunteers; there is only one staff member for the library — a gentleman named David Hanson who serves as the curator.
Before discussing the library itself, it is important to recall the institution within which the library is housed. The USS Midway (CV-41) was one of the longest serving ships in the United States fleet operating from its launch in 1945 until it was decommissioned in 1992. The ship partook in military ventures such as Operation Mainbrace, Vietnam, Operation Frequent Wind, and Operation Desert Storm. The USS Midway now serves as a ship museum in San Diego.
The library is located on the hanger deck of the ship and is situated behind the wing of a Douglas SBD Dauntless. It has three rooms, one section of which is organized chronologically with the history of the ship. They have partnerships with other local and international libraries. Their mission is to preserve navy and naval aviation history, and their core interests are Midway history, aircraft carriers, and naval aviation.
The collection is eighty percent donation and includes over 7000 magazine issues, 7000 books, 1800 manuals, 800 videos, 670 unique aircraft carrier cruise books (i.e. memorable events during the cruise; ports entered; famous people encountered), 500 eManuals, and 100 vertical files (aircraft and ship binders). Within their Midway history resources, the library has are command histories from 1945-1987, muster rolls and cruise books which were generated by sailors, newsletters from 1945 to 1991, manuals for the CV-41, newspaper articles, and former crewmember reminiscences which are captured when former crew members come aboard.
The library volunteers are creating a database of men who served with approximately 85,000 names already entered. If you are curious about specifics in the collection, the library team has made their catalog available online as a pdf file here. Any donated items that do not make it in the collection are sold through the bookstore to help sustain the library. The library is accessible to the public by appointment.
As mentioned earlier, the library is aided by a team of sixty volunteers: lead librarian, special project teams, and book sellers. Many of the volunteers are retired military. The volunteers identify the needs of the library. Ms. Alderman informed us of the Midways top four volunteer projects: The US Navy Institute Proceedings Project, deck logs, a master crew list and crew member look ups, and the Battle of Midway bookstore.
Proceedings, a journal from the US Naval Institute, has been around since late 1874; fifteen to eighteen volunteers aid in summarizing articles and putting them online. The first volume of the journal included information about the forming of the institute and its constitution and bylaws. One of the first articles in the journal was The “Monitor” and the “Merrimac” by Commodore Foxhall A. Parker, U.S.N. In its early years, the journal was produced quarterly; today, the journal is produced monthly.
Patricia and another colleague, Wendy Hill, visit the National Archives in College Park, MD to download deck logs, the official daily record for the ship during its lifespan, to thumb drives and then upload the records to the cloud for the USS Midway. Four volunteers then transcribe the deck logs to be made accessible in their database.
For the master crew list and crew member look up project, five volunteers add names to the list and ten volunteers are trained to look up the names. This includes names listed on an in memoriam panel of crew members who died on ship, names of crew members on planes, benches and other places around the ship. This was an all volunteer initiated project, and it is one of the most appreciated guest experience take-aways.
The last volunteer project is the Battle of Midway bookstore which had eight volunteers prior to the onset of COVID-19. Among items in the store are books about the battle of Midway and the video Voices of Midway. “Proceeds from the sale of the books and posters benefit the Research Library (enabling [them] to buy needed volumes for the library); and proceeds from the sale of the Voices of Midway videos benefit scholarships given by the Education Department to visiting school groups.”
If you would like to see the original presentation, it was recorded. It can be viewed online, behind a paywall, here.
Seeking Wisdom In A Library 