My Lodge’s building is big. But it is also over 100 years old. In those 100+ years, it has been generating paper records. So has the Order of Eastern Star, so has the Rainbow.
Plus, the neighbors have started moving in.
Our neighboring Lodge moved in, so now we have two. Our neighboring OES moved in, so now we have two. We have all three York Rite bodies, and they have been merged into again and again. Plus our Rainbow Girls.
That is a tremendous amount of paper that has moved in, and more paper is generated every day.
At some point, we will have so much paper that the building will collapse under the weight.
I’ve always known about this problem, but have been quite content to ignore it. When I was Lodge Secretary, I just generated paper, I didn’t worry about what would ultimately happen with it.
But, alas, I can ignore it no longer. They made me President of the Temple Corporation. We discussed it at our last meeting, decided that something has to be done with all of this paper, for alas, we presume that more of our Masonic neighbors will be moving in with us soon, and they will bring even more paper!
We have made some attempts to use a scanning machine at our local big library to digitize a lot of stuff. Compress all of that paper into a thumb drive and make it more accessible to masonic research to boot.
Our Grand Lodge has a library and the most historically important stuff like minutes from old meetings end up going to the Grand Lodge library who has a professional librarian, organization system, the works.
But there's still spillover. I wish there was a pretty way to say this, but there isn't. It gets discarded one way or another. If it isn't valuable enough for a brother to take some time to digitize it, it isn't apparent that it's valuable enough to be kept in perpetuity. It's OK to just admit a lot of stuff is going to get thrown out because that is how history usually works. We can't change that most of those records will be destroyed / discarded, we more get to choose which ones it will be. If you keep everything, then during some move, or a fire, or some other issue that may come up - some random selection will be lost.
The issue (in my opinion) is whether you want to choose the subset that is lost, or basically randomize it.
First, make no more paper. Issue digitally whenever you can and convert to digital as quickly as you can. Store all of that in two places: on separate hard drives and encrypted securely on the cloud.
Does your Emergency Preparedness plan to preserve your historic and important paper and ephemera include a plan to protect it in case of fire, earthquake, etc?
Second: Digitise everything you have now. Get a book scanner and a feed scanner and start. Just start.
Also, photograph, with measurements, all your ephemera and included detail descriptions of each item including provenance if you have it. If there are cemetery records, once you scan them, put the information into a searcheable database so that researchers can find it. The Pacific Northwest is earthquake country and if for no other purpose than preservation, in the certain eventuality of The Big One, digitisation with cloud storage, and photography, will at least ensure the *information* is preserved for future generations. This is also good to append to your insurance policy.
Archival storage is always a problem. What if you contracted with a Lodge, or a Grand Lodge, in a territory that has good dry storage caves - like eastern Oregon, Utah, or Arizona, to store it?
Alternatively, find out who your artists are, and if something *has* to be discarded, see if they can turn it into an art piece that can be auctioned to raise money. Mixed media art is very big right now and done properly it can be both quite interesting and beautiful, as well as tell a story and become an heirloom that will be passed in families for generations. If it really does need to be discarded, batch that stuff into mixed media art bundles, make an Etsy store and sell it to mixed media artist - they are *always* looking for interesting paper ephemera for their art and they'll pay for it. That brings in money which every Lodge needs.
I also recommend the yeoman's work of Past Master and present Secretary Bro Johnny Edwards of Union Lodge #3 A.F. & A.M. in McMinnville, OR who completely reorganised and preserved all of their documentation and ephemera as well as worked with the Masonic Museum at the Grand Lodge of Oregon, and also is doing an excellent job of preserving and documenting the two historic cemeteries for which he is Sexton. He's become somewhat of an expert at archival work & preservation, and he's an historian by avocation. He is also a sterling individual. If ever you'd want some expert advice, he'd be the guy I'd turn to.
I digitized most of ours. The most important things to keep are the minutes and correspondence. Bind them and put them on the shelf. Receipt books etc. Ehh, nice to have.
My Brother it is time to consider purchasing a scanner called Czur. Our Grand Lodge of Oregon Library and Museum has one for our ongoing scanning project of historical records. I doubt that the paperwork in question is all historical but it will be 50 years from now. I recommend purchasing this scanner which is lightning fast and start scanning your monthly papers and go digital. Obviously keep historical membership records but start discarding non essential papers. My 2c
Excellent discussion. Our Lodge has been working with our local county museum to digitize our older records but we haven't had the heart to dispose of them completely. There's just something about seeing the gentle strokes of indelible ink on aged paper.
Every receipt doesn't need to be kept. Once the 7 year limit of IRS requirement is over toss all old receipts. Only the ledger is needed for checking historic Financials.
Even the ledger isn't that big of a deal if nothing significant happened. Maybe keep records of a custom order for a particular pillar decoration that could only be gotten from some specialty manufacturer in Germany, but good heavens an order of hotdogs from walmart is not a significant purchase worthy of indefinite archival.
After the annual review of secretary and treasurer bookkeeping, all but essential records should be discarded.
As others have said, digitizing the records is the obvious solution. The issue is that this would involve thousands of documents, especially for lodges that are old and perhaps merged with other lodges. While a member of Port Orchard lodge, I took it upon myself to digitize all of the past master photos to archive with grand lodge's online photo storage. It took me several weeks just to scan and catalog the 100+ photos. I was aided by the efforts of someone in the 1990s who had created a scrap book with all of the PM photos as smaller 5x7 pictures I could simply take out of the album scan and replace. But that didn't account for the photos not included in the album that were hanging in the tylers room. I had to drag my scanner to the lodge and spend the weekend taking down each photo, removing it from the frame, scanning it, replacing it and hanging it back up. I can't imagine how painful it would be if I had to take each picture down of all of the PMs in the tyler room instead of taking a photo album home and scanning it on my home PC.
So the issue is probably mostly inertia. The mountain is so daunting that it's hard to muster up the will to start. Also finding someone willing and stupi....errr...brave enough to undertake the task is the hurdle.
MW: We have a similar situation in Scouting where I teach a post-grad course on leadership. The students are generating a tremendous amount of paper for their doctoral dissertations or senior projects. At one of my Lodges, I will walk into the Secretaries office and it's wall to wall stacks of paper and books. If the fire marshal sees this, we'd be closed down. One solution, which will cost money, is to have the GL purchase a scanner and scan all this stuff and make it available for research. In my writings for Lodge presentations, I've found a treasure trove of material that no one knows about unless they dig. If we do this, it will not only lessen the number of trees killed in service to the Craft, but also provide material for those of us interested in history and anthropology of our craft. Scanners are coming down in price. The only real cost after the scanner is having volunteers devote time to cataloging and cross-referencing material for the GL museum or wherever we house this stuff.
OK ... I will take a contrarian position here ... one I am pretty sure will brew a bit of controversy and perhaps ...sadly ... contention ...
Aside from preserving the actual charter ... and the legally required legal entity records (7 years normal corporate records) and a year by year membership list (simple easy database ... could even be a spreadsheet) ... do we need to actual maintain any records from the past at all ?
I mean ... who cares what we paid in 1844 for a new wagon wheel at the blacksmith ... or such stuff ?
Too often "masonic research" has come to mean "trivial and useless historical debris - junk from the past" instead of "practical tradecraft knowledge" or "useful philosophical and life insights" ...
We should as a craft ... be looking to what we can do to change and improve the future ... not worshipping the past ...
We need to stick to our "worthy mission" to make ourselves and our communities and future better ...
Build a new playground, do new science, build new technology, improve infrastructure, be the voice of reason and rationality in your community politics or management, make a better real world ...
IS our mission to be historians of the trivial paperwork from the past ... or is our mission to better ourselves and the future ?
Resources and time are always limited ... we need to choose wisely which we spend our respources on ...both as individuals and as lodges ..
Sure scan and database the critical records ... but be lean ...very lean ...about what you include ... and what time you spend invested in the process.
I would just like to take a moment to say Thank You to everyone for sharing all of these ideas. They are all extremely valuable.
Last night, at dinner prior to our Lodge meeting, a few of us discussed the ideas presented here, in relation to our Lodge and the other Masonic groups that meet in our building. I think that a more formal discussion will be happening in our Lodge soon.
What we talked about last night was throwing away all that which will never be of interest, old financial records and the like, and then seeking outside help to digitize what can be digitized. That would result in likely only tiny fraction of paper remaining from what we have now.
The idea we kicked around for assistance is our local college. We presume that it might well be a valuable resource for us in dealing with very old documents that hold importance not only to our Lodge but to the history of our area as well. We imagine that there would be financial cost for whatever assistance we were able to receive, but luckily we are in a position to manage that.
I don't doubt but that other Lodges can benefit from all of the advice offered here, so once again, a huge thank you to all of you who took the time to offer your expertise!
We have made some attempts to use a scanning machine at our local big library to digitize a lot of stuff. Compress all of that paper into a thumb drive and make it more accessible to masonic research to boot.
Our Grand Lodge has a library and the most historically important stuff like minutes from old meetings end up going to the Grand Lodge library who has a professional librarian, organization system, the works.
But there's still spillover. I wish there was a pretty way to say this, but there isn't. It gets discarded one way or another. If it isn't valuable enough for a brother to take some time to digitize it, it isn't apparent that it's valuable enough to be kept in perpetuity. It's OK to just admit a lot of stuff is going to get thrown out because that is how history usually works. We can't change that most of those records will be destroyed / discarded, we more get to choose which ones it will be. If you keep everything, then during some move, or a fire, or some other issue that may come up - some random selection will be lost.
The issue (in my opinion) is whether you want to choose the subset that is lost, or basically randomize it.
First, make no more paper. Issue digitally whenever you can and convert to digital as quickly as you can. Store all of that in two places: on separate hard drives and encrypted securely on the cloud.
Does your Emergency Preparedness plan to preserve your historic and important paper and ephemera include a plan to protect it in case of fire, earthquake, etc?
Second: Digitise everything you have now. Get a book scanner and a feed scanner and start. Just start.
Also, photograph, with measurements, all your ephemera and included detail descriptions of each item including provenance if you have it. If there are cemetery records, once you scan them, put the information into a searcheable database so that researchers can find it. The Pacific Northwest is earthquake country and if for no other purpose than preservation, in the certain eventuality of The Big One, digitisation with cloud storage, and photography, will at least ensure the *information* is preserved for future generations. This is also good to append to your insurance policy.
Archival storage is always a problem. What if you contracted with a Lodge, or a Grand Lodge, in a territory that has good dry storage caves - like eastern Oregon, Utah, or Arizona, to store it?
Alternatively, find out who your artists are, and if something *has* to be discarded, see if they can turn it into an art piece that can be auctioned to raise money. Mixed media art is very big right now and done properly it can be both quite interesting and beautiful, as well as tell a story and become an heirloom that will be passed in families for generations. If it really does need to be discarded, batch that stuff into mixed media art bundles, make an Etsy store and sell it to mixed media artist - they are *always* looking for interesting paper ephemera for their art and they'll pay for it. That brings in money which every Lodge needs.
I also recommend the yeoman's work of Past Master and present Secretary Bro Johnny Edwards of Union Lodge #3 A.F. & A.M. in McMinnville, OR who completely reorganised and preserved all of their documentation and ephemera as well as worked with the Masonic Museum at the Grand Lodge of Oregon, and also is doing an excellent job of preserving and documenting the two historic cemeteries for which he is Sexton. He's become somewhat of an expert at archival work & preservation, and he's an historian by avocation. He is also a sterling individual. If ever you'd want some expert advice, he'd be the guy I'd turn to.
I digitized most of ours. The most important things to keep are the minutes and correspondence. Bind them and put them on the shelf. Receipt books etc. Ehh, nice to have.
I used a czur book scanner for our stuff.
My Brother it is time to consider purchasing a scanner called Czur. Our Grand Lodge of Oregon Library and Museum has one for our ongoing scanning project of historical records. I doubt that the paperwork in question is all historical but it will be 50 years from now. I recommend purchasing this scanner which is lightning fast and start scanning your monthly papers and go digital. Obviously keep historical membership records but start discarding non essential papers. My 2c
Excellent discussion. Our Lodge has been working with our local county museum to digitize our older records but we haven't had the heart to dispose of them completely. There's just something about seeing the gentle strokes of indelible ink on aged paper.
Priorities
Every receipt doesn't need to be kept. Once the 7 year limit of IRS requirement is over toss all old receipts. Only the ledger is needed for checking historic Financials.
Even the ledger isn't that big of a deal if nothing significant happened. Maybe keep records of a custom order for a particular pillar decoration that could only be gotten from some specialty manufacturer in Germany, but good heavens an order of hotdogs from walmart is not a significant purchase worthy of indefinite archival.
After the annual review of secretary and treasurer bookkeeping, all but essential records should be discarded.
I've never understood our Fraternity's fascination with paper, especially old paper. My thoughts are:
1. Keep only the documents that will be useful, and be very disciplined about we mean by "useful"
2. Keep only the information that's conveniently retrievable ... if we can't retrieve it we may as well not have it.
3. Digitize anything that makes it through the first two filters
4. Responsibly recycle all papers after #3 is complete.
Digitize. Just do it. Don't argue over the cost, just budget so much a month for someone to do it until it's done.
As others have said, digitizing the records is the obvious solution. The issue is that this would involve thousands of documents, especially for lodges that are old and perhaps merged with other lodges. While a member of Port Orchard lodge, I took it upon myself to digitize all of the past master photos to archive with grand lodge's online photo storage. It took me several weeks just to scan and catalog the 100+ photos. I was aided by the efforts of someone in the 1990s who had created a scrap book with all of the PM photos as smaller 5x7 pictures I could simply take out of the album scan and replace. But that didn't account for the photos not included in the album that were hanging in the tylers room. I had to drag my scanner to the lodge and spend the weekend taking down each photo, removing it from the frame, scanning it, replacing it and hanging it back up. I can't imagine how painful it would be if I had to take each picture down of all of the PMs in the tyler room instead of taking a photo album home and scanning it on my home PC.
So the issue is probably mostly inertia. The mountain is so daunting that it's hard to muster up the will to start. Also finding someone willing and stupi....errr...brave enough to undertake the task is the hurdle.
MW: We have a similar situation in Scouting where I teach a post-grad course on leadership. The students are generating a tremendous amount of paper for their doctoral dissertations or senior projects. At one of my Lodges, I will walk into the Secretaries office and it's wall to wall stacks of paper and books. If the fire marshal sees this, we'd be closed down. One solution, which will cost money, is to have the GL purchase a scanner and scan all this stuff and make it available for research. In my writings for Lodge presentations, I've found a treasure trove of material that no one knows about unless they dig. If we do this, it will not only lessen the number of trees killed in service to the Craft, but also provide material for those of us interested in history and anthropology of our craft. Scanners are coming down in price. The only real cost after the scanner is having volunteers devote time to cataloging and cross-referencing material for the GL museum or wherever we house this stuff.
OK ... I will take a contrarian position here ... one I am pretty sure will brew a bit of controversy and perhaps ...sadly ... contention ...
Aside from preserving the actual charter ... and the legally required legal entity records (7 years normal corporate records) and a year by year membership list (simple easy database ... could even be a spreadsheet) ... do we need to actual maintain any records from the past at all ?
I mean ... who cares what we paid in 1844 for a new wagon wheel at the blacksmith ... or such stuff ?
Too often "masonic research" has come to mean "trivial and useless historical debris - junk from the past" instead of "practical tradecraft knowledge" or "useful philosophical and life insights" ...
We should as a craft ... be looking to what we can do to change and improve the future ... not worshipping the past ...
We need to stick to our "worthy mission" to make ourselves and our communities and future better ...
Build a new playground, do new science, build new technology, improve infrastructure, be the voice of reason and rationality in your community politics or management, make a better real world ...
IS our mission to be historians of the trivial paperwork from the past ... or is our mission to better ourselves and the future ?
Resources and time are always limited ... we need to choose wisely which we spend our respources on ...both as individuals and as lodges ..
Sure scan and database the critical records ... but be lean ...very lean ...about what you include ... and what time you spend invested in the process.
I would just like to take a moment to say Thank You to everyone for sharing all of these ideas. They are all extremely valuable.
Last night, at dinner prior to our Lodge meeting, a few of us discussed the ideas presented here, in relation to our Lodge and the other Masonic groups that meet in our building. I think that a more formal discussion will be happening in our Lodge soon.
What we talked about last night was throwing away all that which will never be of interest, old financial records and the like, and then seeking outside help to digitize what can be digitized. That would result in likely only tiny fraction of paper remaining from what we have now.
The idea we kicked around for assistance is our local college. We presume that it might well be a valuable resource for us in dealing with very old documents that hold importance not only to our Lodge but to the history of our area as well. We imagine that there would be financial cost for whatever assistance we were able to receive, but luckily we are in a position to manage that.
I don't doubt but that other Lodges can benefit from all of the advice offered here, so once again, a huge thank you to all of you who took the time to offer your expertise!