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The Thompson bequest, equivalent to $54 million in 1993 dollars,

Present value was calculated using an official GDP price deflator (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, 1994, pp. 104-107). Financial data were compiled from the Society’s annual reports. Appendix C presents these data in tabular format, and Appendix D summarizes key assumptions made to keep the data comparable over time.
gave the Society financial breathing room for the first time in its history. More than one-third of the bequest—$1.7 million—was used to renovate the central building, build two new wings, and construct a fifteen-tier bookstack at the rear of the build­ing. The remainder of the funds was placed in permanent endowment. Moreover, the completion of the building, which was closed for nearly two years, from May 1, 1937, to March 29, 1939, gave the Society's leadership time to reflect on its mission and policies. What resulted were several steps taken to professionalize the management of the institution.

One area that was badly in need of improvement was the cataloging, shelv­ing, and classification of library collections. As was mentioned previously, the Society's cataloging and shelving had been inadequate even in the Second Avenue building. There had been little improvement since that time. When the library moved to the new building in 1908, books were shelved using the same system. In fact, "the card catalog, primarily accessible by author, was the same one instituted ... in 1859."

Richards (1984, p. 87).
The renovation of the central building and the reinstallation of the collections provided an opportunity for modernization.

In 1940, the Society adopted the Library of Congress classification system for new acquisitions and started a new card catalog that followed American Library Association rules. Though this step was an improvement, it created another prob­lem: there were now two card catalogs, one for acquisitions made prior to 1940 and one for acquisitions made after that year. This dual system, along with the Society's backlog of uncataloged items, made it very difficult for users (and librarians) to access, much less comprehend, what items were in the collection. The fact that during the reshelving process, library management "discovered" a number of rare books for which there had been no records at the Society exem­plifies this problem and makes one wonder whether similar discoveries might still be made at the Society.

Reorganization took place at a higher level as well. For its entire 122-year his­tory, the Society had been a membership organization with an executive com­mittee responsible for conducting its affairs. Participation by the membership had dwindled over the years, to the point that few members attended the meetings, and election of the Society's officers was effectively done by proxy. Given these circumstances, and the substantial endowment generated by the Thompson bequest, it was decided that the Society ought to update its governance structure to put it on par with its peer organizations.

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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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