The library for the Dennis Historical Society is currently located in the rear wing of the Josiah Dennis Manse. Additional volumes, primarily old school books, are located in the West Dennis Graded School House in the School Room Museum.

Until about five years ago, there was no one person taking responsibility for the library and its collections. The inventory was incomplete, and there was no organization to the library collections. Although the library is not large, undertaking a reorganization is a formidable task, particularly for one who has no trained library skills.

I undertook to reorganize the library. First, an inventory of the books was made, and they were rearranged in an order which made some sense – categorizing as Dennis History, Cape Cod History, Maritime History, Genealogy, Americana, Reference, etc. [During the inventory, several surprises were found – two copies of the original edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and a copy of the first American edition of Through the Looking Glass.] While the inventory revealed that the holdings on Dennis History were quite extensive, other collections are glaringly deficient – namely Genealogy and Cape Cod History. There was no organization of school materials or of the photographs, and many of these materials were improperly stored and maintained.

It was also necessary to change the philosophy of the collections. There was a general attitude that if it wasn’t “Dennis” it had no place in the library. But “Dennis” is not an island, and has been dependent on and intertwined with the surrounding towns from the earliest days. The changed philosophy is that we are still oriented toward Dennis materials, but heavily include other mid-Cape towns, with lesser dependence on more distant places. Another philosophical change involves what constitutes a “collection”. We have elected to include not only books, but manuscripts (new and old), old original documents (deeds, wills, diaries, ledgers, sermons), and photographs.

When organizing the photograph collection, I found that it was woefully deficient. We actually had very few photographs compared to the collections of surrounding towns. We then began an intensive effort to improve the photo collections. This was not an easy task. Most people who own historical photos do not wish to give them up. We then undertook to obtain copies of photos owned in private collections by making high-resolution digital copies. People have been pleased to loan us photos long enough to make digital scans of each, in return for which we provide high-quality photo prints of those photos. All of the photos are backed-up onto high-density media (CDs), and copies of those CDs are in permanent archives as well as available in the library for copies to be made by interested parties. This concentrated effort to obtain photographs has resulted in a collection of some 2850 photographs of Dennis and its people, contained in more than 8 2-inch albums, all within archive-quality sleeves.

A similar effort was made to organize the ancient documents and to store them in a more safe manner. The documents were all digitized with a scanner and stored on CDs. The originals were then unfolded and placed in archive-quality sleeves for proper storage. From printed copies of the documents, transcriptions of each were made. We now not only have images of each document, but full transcriptions of what the ancient handwriting reveals. This effort is on-going, but we now have completed papers of the Isaac Chapman Estate, the Obed Baker 2nd Collection, the Diaries of the Rev. Nathan Stone, and the Nathan Stone Esq. papers. Many more thousands of hours will be required to complete the work, and volunteers are welcome.

We have not yet truly dealt with the manuscript collection. This collection contains genealogical materials, transcriptions of historical documents from private collections, scrapbooks, and a wealth of other materials. The single task we have accomplished is to separate out all of the school materials, programs and photographs primarily, into one location. Much more work is needed in this area.

Our major problems with the library collection are a general lack of space, and its relative inaccessibility. We need more room to properly display and organize the collection. The collection continues to grow with our acquisitions, and we are forced by the limited space to be too selective on the additions. Any space we occupy must be humidity- and temperature-controlled for protection of the collection; and portions of the collection must be maintained under lock and key due to the fragility and rarity of some of holdings. Being confined to the Manse means that the collection is accessible by appointment only, which is a burden to the public, the membership and the volunteers. We truly need a home – hopefully within the confines of a public library in the town, to be staffed by DHS volunteers during regular hours.

My thanks to my wife Ruth, who has assisted me greatly in organizing the materials, and who continues to put up with me ignoring the “job jar” in favor of this fun historical stuff.

Burton N. Derick, DHS Librarian