0.5 Chapter three: professionalization and postwar expansion, 192  (Page 4/13)

On November 18, 1937, the last general meeting of the membership was called to approve a change to the organization's by-laws establishing a board of trustees and placing complete control of the Society's affairs with that board. Also approved at the meeting was a change in the chief executive officer's title from librarian to director. Although the responsibilities of the position did not change (the librarian had always run the day-to-day affairs of the Society), the change in title finally gave recognition to the fact that the Society was more than just a library. As director, Wall was now clearly accountable for the success of the museum as well as the library. In contrast to organizations like the Massachu­setts Historical Society and the American Antiquarian Society, which had divested themselves of museum collections and were focused on their roles as research libraries, the Society chose to continue to pursue the challenging objective of sup­porting both endeavors.

The Society had never been thought of as having two distinct parts. Since its inception, it had been organized as a single entity. Although the original by-laws of the Society mentioned that the librarian was to be responsible for the museum (or "cabinet," as it was called), the cabinet was considered to be just another part of the library and had always been of secondary significance.

With the addition of prized museum collections in the late nineteenth cen­tury, however, the museum side of the Society grew in importance. That trend continued as more important paintings and museum artifacts were added to the collections, to the point that by the late 1930s, Wall believed that the library could not survive without the museum. Writing in the Quarterly, Wall asserted that the "scholarship part of the historical society's work would be likely to have a bare cupboard if not coupled with a popular museum and a program of public edu­cation."

Wall recognized the importance of the museum; he also knew that operating a popular museum required different management processes than running a schol­arly library. In 1937, Wall created a separate and distinct museum department, thus allowing the museum to pursue its mission free of entanglements with the library. In addition, the realignment gave Wall a structural mechanism for evalu­ating and making resource allocation decisions between the two entities. But balancing the two was a complex task that required the attention of a highly skilled manager. Wall was, for the most part, successful; but as is so often the case, the solution to one problem created another. The programs and operations of the Society could be compromised if it were ever without the forceful leadership required to balance the competing demands of the two departments.