PHOENIX

Researchers lament Arizona genealogy library's sudden downsizing, relocation

Mary Jo Pitzl
The Republic | azcentral.com
The Genealogy Collection at the Arizona State Library is closing Friday.
  • Arizona’s genealogical library is being downsized and relocated
  • The move puts family-history information in same area as state archives
  • The library’s space will become offices and a meeting room for secretary of state personnel

Researchers see history disappearing before their eyes, as the state’s genealogical library is being packed up and only partially relocated to a new building.

News of the pending Friday closure of the genealogy library inside the state Capitol has fueled a wave of complaints and concerns from researchers who fear they will have less to work with as they trace family history.

On Monday, a small portion of the 20,000-item collection will open to the public at the Genealogy Center at the Polly Rosenbaum Archives and History Building, located a few blocks southwest of the Capitol.

The move will put Arizona archives and genealogical records in one location. It also will free up space in the wood-paneled library to house staffers who report to Reagan, such as Capitol museum and law-library personnel, said Matt Roberts, spokesman for Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan.

Reagan’s office oversees the state’s library system. The move is part of a restructuring it undertook of the library, archives and public records division, Roberts said.

The move caught the family-research community off guard, with most of them learning about it over the weekend. Roberts said there was no outreach to research groups, though Reagan’s office is meeting with two groups this week.

“It certainly hasn’t been transparent,” said John Risseeuw, a Tempe resident whose wife has used the genealogical records.

For a library that gets low usage — four people total had visited on Tuesday, and the annual average is around three a day — news of the pending move lit up e-mail in-boxes at the state Capitol. Gov. Doug Ducey’s office reported receiving 93 e-mails, all complaining about the change, as of Tuesday. Reagan’s office had received 50 e-mails, some of which were duplicated to other members of her staff.

Phoenix resident Marianne Cole said she is stunned by the lack of notice and at what she sees as a disregard for researchers.

“I learned of this through a genealogy website,” said Cole, who has visited the Capitol library to research family history. “It (the library) will be way downscaled.”

The new center will have fewer tangible materials than the current collection. Most of the new Genealogy Center will consist of online databases available for free to the public at three computer terminals. The library staff is moving the most-used reference books, such as a collection of volumes on Mayflower families and materials covering territorial days.

But the bulk of the items now readily available in the 77-year-old library will be either placed in archival storage, offered to outside groups or otherwise disposed of, Roberts said. Records will be stored in the archival “pods” at the Rosenbaum building and can be retrieved upon request.

Other items in the genealogy collection are duplicated in the archives at the Rosenbaum building, so those redundant items won’t make the move, he said.

“All the things that will be eliminated from our collection are things that aren’t being used right now,” Roberts said. That means items that haven’t been used in “years,” as well as many individual family histories that have been donated to the state.

Roberts said staff is still working on what to do with the unneeded items, but added “there won’t be any book burnings.”

For Cole and other researchers, the lack of ready access to records is troubling.

“All those documents and manuscripts and vertical files: I want to be able to put my hands on it,” she said. Even the individual family histories could be instructive, she said, since “who knows” where a family line might lead.

The reduced collection will open to the public Monday at the Genealogy Center at the Polly Rosenbaum Archives and History Building.