Women's Studies Interest Group Tours the Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston
On Friday, February 21, 2003, thirteen Women's Studies Interest Group members visited the new Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston. The Library, which opened to the public in September of 2002, houses Mary Baker Eddy's published and previously unpublished writings, including thousands of pages of manuscripts and correspondence, her personal library, photographs, and artifacts. This is one of the largest library collections by and about an American woman. Mrs. Eddy lived from 1821 until 1910, founded a metaphysical college and a church, founded the Christian Science Monitor at the age of 87, and authored a book that has been a bestseller for more than 100 years.
The Reference Room, housed on the 3rd floor of 200 Massachusetts Avenue, is free and open to the public Tuesdays through Sundays. It is built to house 17,000 volumes, and currently holds over 10,000 books, and many periodical subscriptions. Eventually, it will also include multimedia materials. The Library's collections are organized by themes, including: the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, women in leadership, the quest for spirituality, spirituality and health, the power of ideas, and the publishing world. There are books on 19th century history, religion, and women's studies. Titles in the stacks include forgiveness, healing, U.S. history, and American literature. There is a growing young adult section as well. Back issues of the Christian Science Monitor, an exhibit of books from the library of Mary Baker Eddy, and some 300 editions of Science and Health: with Key to the Scriptures, are also located here. The library's collections are non-circulating at this time.
The library's computers provide access to the Internet, a concordance to Science and Health, the online catalog, and a search of digital images of original material in the Mary Baker Eddy Collections, as well as transcriptions of some 25,000 Mary Baker Eddy documents. There are no printers. The Reference Room also houses interactive kiosks with the My Quest program featured in the 2nd floor Quest Gallery).
The Reference Room has plugs for laptops (but no Internet connections), a conference room which may be rented out, a lounge currently housing a collection of James Gilman paintings, and a community bulletin board. The Reference Room employs a senior librarian, a librarian, 2 assistant librarians, 2 library assistants and an administrative assistant.
The 4th floor houses the Research Room. This area is also free to the public but access to the elevator and Research Room requires use of a badge. Mike Davis and staff in the Research Room demonstrated PC-Docs, the computer program that accesses some 30,000 Mary Baker Eddy documents, 9,000 photographs, and 9,000 images of artifacts. Searchable fields include accession number, recipient, author/creator (mostly Mary Baker Eddy), creation date, collection, item description (for artifact, photograph), and full text search (for manuscripts). Digital images of correspondence, as well as transcriptions of these documents, can be viewed. There is also a period reference collection.
The temperature and humidity controlled stacks house books, artifacts, photographs, and manuscripts. There are hundreds of editions of Science and Health, books annotated by Mrs. Eddy, subject files (e.g., nurses, publishing society, the Mother Church), historical files arranged by topic (e.g., early history of the Church), reminiscence files (from some 800 people who knew Mrs. Eddy), incoming correspondence to Mrs. Eddy, and church organization records. Additional church records and vital records are stored in a warehouse in Newton. The fourth floor also houses a conservation lab.
In addition to the library tour, we also went on the general tour, seeing the Hall of Ideas, the Mapparium, the Quest Gallery and [Christian Science] Monitor Gallery. There is an admission fee to the Galleries and Mapparium. The building also houses a café and gift shop. The Mary Baker Eddy Library offers a book club, a Friends of the Library program, and a variety of special activities and events. The Library's Website is: http://www.marybakereddylibrary.org