First books in the vault

January 2017 has been an eventful month at the Northwest Railway Museum. Not only has staff moved into the new Railway Education Center, but the first books were cataloged and placed in the new archival vault.


Meet Tom and Teena Kracht, long-time members and volunteers at the Northwest Railway Museum.  This month, just shy of the Museum’s 60th anniversary, Tom and Teena symbolically placed three volumes of Kirkman’s Science of Railways on the new library shelving. 


Readers of this Blog will probably be surprised to learn that it was Teena Kracht who first shaped the image of the new library and archives.  “A few short years ago” as a library science student at a local community college, Teena brought fellow students to the Museum to help catalog books.  As the needs of the collection were discussed, the idea of a vault took shape.  Later, a formal needs assessment funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and written by Randy Silverman articulated the details of exactly what would be required to “do it right.”  And then Tom and Teena were the first donors to support the new vault.  Thank you Teena, and thank you to Tom, too, for the many publications you have helped catalog, and for your support in creating today’s archival vault!