General Institutions
Alexis
de Tocqueville noted the rise of voluntary associations
in the United States during the Jacksonian period, and the wealth
of materials about such groups in the Society's collections
reflects the "institutionalization" of America. Approximately
23,200 items, most of which are pamphlets published by various
kinds of organizations during the years 1821-76, constitute a
collection of institutional reports, proceedings, constitutions,
bylaws, historical sketches, membership lists, prospectuses, and
promotional literature. The institutions range in nature from
businesses to voluntary associations. Banks, churches, insurance
houses, social clubs, hospitals for the physically and mentally
ill, missionary groups, racetracks, temperance associations,
museums, and masonic groups are a sampling of the establishments
represented. (Publications of auction
houses, canal corporations,
libraries,
railroads, educational
institutions,
learned
societies, and book,
art, and manuscript dealers are housed in separate
collections.)
The collection is arranged as follows: institutions that
operated or operate on a nationwide basis are shelved alphabetically
by title of organization; statewide (or "general")
organizations are arranged alphabetically by title within separate
series for each state; and organizations that claimed or claim only
particular cities, towns, or counties as their province are filed
under town or county, then title, in "local" boxes that follow each
state's "general" institutions. As machine-readable records are created,
items are assigned unique call numbers and shelved in a separate section
of the collection, arranged in a similar fashion to uncataloged
materials. All materials for the years 1821-40 are cataloged online, as
are a modest number of later titles.
For uncataloged materials, checklists provide access to all the national
institutions and to
the general and local institutions of seven states: Connecticut,
Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island,
and Vermont. The staff is able to search through the remainder of
the collection by name of institution on demand. It should be
noted that the presence in this uncataloged collection of any
given institution's publications does not preclude the presence of
other publications by the same institution in various of the
Society's cataloged collections.
- Keith Arbour, former Head of Readers' Services; updated by Alan
N. Degutis, Head of Cataloging
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For current information on the cataloging status of this and
other AAS collections, choose "Collection Access" below.
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