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Although these statistical measures helped document the range of services being offered, the self-esteem of the institution continued to depend largely on the size and quality of its holdings. Moreover, members of the board of trustees con­sidered themselves collectors first and saw the role of the Society primarily as a repository of important material. Consequently, great emphasis was placed on acquisitions, and most of each annual report was devoted to descriptions of items purchased by or donated to the Society during the year.

Emphasis on acquisitions was not, in and of itself, a bad thing; quite the con­trary. The Society's collections were its chief asset. But an emphasis on acquisi­tions, particularly to the extent that quantity was regarded as important, could be dangerous. As mentioned earlier, the Society had a long history of accepting any­thing and everything that was given to it with little regard for the quality of the gift, the institution's capacity to absorb it, or the relevance of the gift to the Soci­ety's mission.

Donald Shelley, the art and museum curator during this period, called for a more focused acquisitions policy. As he put it, "The Society continually tried to make accessible to the public . . . accumulations which had nothing to do with American or New York history." Further, he called for "a detailed survey and analysis of our actual holdings" to "reveal the strengths and weaknesses which must henceforth determine the direction of our development." By 1947, Shelley believed that the Society had made some progress: "As the year closes, consider­ation is being given to the possibility of showing our European paintings elsewhere, thus. . . enabling us to devote ourselves entirely to early American art. Certainly such a solution will help us better to meet present-day competition from sister art institutions specializing in the same or related fields." In 1948, a list of 634 paintings was circulated among various cultural institutions in the city, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Christiansen (1994).
No museums took the Society up on its offer, however, and in 1949, Shelley's position was eliminated in the course of financial cutbacks. There were no further attempts to loan or donate the pictures for the duration of Vail's tenure.

The need for a focused acquisitions policy was not limited to the museum; the library still had not taken steps to refine its collections policy. The library's appetite for acquisitions of all kinds led to a situation in which, like the museum, it held materials that did not fall within its mission, even though that mission was defined very broadly. But the Society did not take steps to cull out-of-scope materials. The struggle to become current in the cataloging of its ever-increasing collection was deemed more important. However, just keeping pace with the massive inflows on a current basis proved difficult, and the Society did not even begin to deal with its huge backlog, which the 1945 annual report estimated at "a hundred years of uncatalogued books."

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Source:  OpenStax, The new-york historical society: lessons from one nonprofit's long struggle for survival. OpenStax CNX. Mar 28, 2008 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10518/1.1
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