It’s time to consider donating or selling your historical items and ephemera related to Nancy Drew, series books and Mildred Wirt Benson to archives where they can be properly preserved and properly archived – not only for their survival but also to preserve history. An important history that you clearly are interested in since you own these items. At the very least, make copies of what you have and donate those for now – it would be a very simple and easy and very inexpensive gesture to preserve the contents of these items if you’re on the fence about donating and sharing. At least then we’d have a record of the document(s) if you made copies. Donating the actual items themselves isn’t always easy but it’s very rewarding. After all, I donated an over 5000+ piece Nancy Drew collection that meant a lot to me to the Toledo Public Library, but now it means a lot to the world. There’s great value in donating and being altruistic. However, in the alternative, there are institutions who would pay to have items and people like me who will pay to get items to donate for the greater good to an archive. Because it is that important and does mean that much.
Recent fires in CA where so many historical papers of many and collectible items and art were lost should be a wake-up call. A natural disaster can hit at any time, without any warning, sadly. And there are a lot of collectors in and around where these fires have been happening.
I consider those fires a big wakeup call and then the dumpster happened! I have been percolating on doing something for a few years now and I’ve created The Mildred Wirt Benson Historical Artifacts Recovery Project to help get documents and artifacts to archives.
Today’s unfortunate bombshell, that that in recent weeks a collector’s passing led to wholescale dumping of items and historical items – Mildred Wirt Benson papers and documents – now lost to history – should also be a huge wake-up call. I can’t tell you how distressed, as a historian, I am over this wave of bitter news. I am being very serious here in my post in trying to help some of you understand why this is important to the series book community at large and the history of children’s publishing. You may love what you covet and hold dear, but most likely someday no one else will regardless of what they promise you now and I’ll note some examples of that.
For a moment, if you could picture your collection or historical documents in a dumpster or burned up in a fire or tossed in a recycle bin, is that an acceptable outcome to you? I hope it is not, and that you will begin to think about what you have and what you should be doing with it as a good steward of series book history in having originally purchased these items. If you can’t bear to part with anything now, please make copies and donate those and please consider a donation agreement taken care of and signed now this year in honor of the 95th anniversary of Nancy Drew, 120th anniversary of Mildred Wirt Benson, with an institution so that once you have an estate someday, these items can go to a good home – having a signed donation agreement is imperative. It’s your responsibility to deal with these important items, not your heirs. And if you don’t have a will, a liquidation company will come in as was done recently and just dump everything. They don’t care. But I do! And I hope that some of you care as well. If you can’t see yourself donating and must recoup some value having purchased these items, I’m working to establish a fund to help recover documents, so if there’s a will, there’s a way.
As to delaying donation or selling until later, however, keep in mind, that this collector that recently passed had planned – for quite some time – to sell or do something with that they had and that never happened. Time, nature and other disasters don’t care about our feelings nor history. Also, another collector who passed away in the 2000s had plans for their collection and donations and the admin/executor did what they wanted with the items instead, so there’s no 100% guarantee that anything you wish to happen once you’re not around to facilitate it, will actually happen. It’s much better to handle it while you are still with us in order for your wishes to be fulfilled. Another collector around a decade ago had plans among several collectors to have their collection given to them, but again, once they passed away, nothing happened as planned. This is rather typical of estates and executors unfortunately, especially when the state gets involved and there is no will. When Mildred’s daughter died – without a will – the state had to step in and deal with it and find heirs – quite a few people with little or no association got a “windfall” and some was sold in a public auction back in 2013 that some of us attended, but some historical items may not have fared well.
Here’s the important info to clue you all in – there are proper places to donate with existing archives including the University of Iowa: The Iowa Women’s Archive – which has a large collection of Mildred Wirt Benson’s papers and other historical items. Also, the Toledo Public Library – Rare Book Room at the downtown branch – has historical documents and items related to Mildred Wirt Benson housed in their Rare Book Room archive. These are the two big locations for MWB related materials. These archives are where my archive of original documents and papers are headed.
There are collectors from around the 1980s and 1990s when in a series of interesting transactions (made even more intriguing by reading behind the scenes letters in regard to this process) some of Mildred Wirt Benson’s papers and effects were sold to collectors through certain people and Yellowback Library. It’s time we start to get these documents (or copies of them) back to where they should go, to one of those archives. I know quite a few of you who purchased items and will be contacting you personally as well in due time. But there are some who are not known amongst us here or some people that some of you know who are not on Facebook and I’d ask you to reach out to these collectors and get them in touch with me if you know anyone with documents. That would be most appreciated not just by me, but the series book community at large.
I am currently helping several collectors get their historical items into these archives and it’s been very rewarding to help facilitate that. Not only for me but for the collectors who are relieved to be able to do something with what they have had for decades, sitting in bins or in file boxes, waiting to find a proper place and use.
I can be of help in getting you in touch with these archives and facilitating donations now or donations later. Or selling options. Please take what I’m posting to heart and consider the future of the items you have and what it would mean to the community and the preservation of the history behind all these books we love and hold dear to our hearts for future generations so that their legacy lives on. You can get in touch with me at jennatlaw@aol.com or send copies (or originals) for me to get to these archive institutions at my PO box – Jennifer Fisher, P.O. Box 511, Higley, AZ, 85236. If you wish to send something anonymously, feel free.
As Indiana Jones once said, it belongs in a museum! Or, archive, as Indiana "Drew" might say.
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