Summer Assignment

Summer Assignment

It's been a long time since a provincial has given me a different assignment for the summer.  But I've been in New Rochelle since June 24, except one long weekend with Salesian Cooperators in Haverstraw and a one-nite trip back to College Park last week.

The Salesian research library that I've been curating for 30 years has sat in cartons (filling about 6 pallets) in the Salesian Missions building for the last 3 years, since I was obliged to move it from Our Lady of the Valley (Orange, N.J.) in the spring of 2016.  It took that long for the province powers-that-be to decide where to set it up again.  Finally, this spring they decided to use some of the space that used to be Bro. Andy LaCombe's work area and, in late spring, ordered new steel shelving for the books.

But the assignment involves not only the research library but 2 other libraries, to be merged and consolidated with the 1st one, viz., the province archives library and what Fr. Tim is weeding out of the big collection of books in the provincial's office.  The archives library is very disorganized, so just removing the books by topic is a challenge.  As a result of that hunt and absorbing all the additional materials, it's been slow going.  To date I've set up the sections for St. Francis de Sales, the writings of Don Bosco, biographies of DB, and biographies of other members of the Salesian Family, filling 8 sections of the shelves.

The 2d section of Don Bosco biography (left) and the start of the Salesian biographies section, with some unpacked cartons, probably of Salesian spirituality, in the foreground.

Earlier, I completed the set-up of the collection of Salesian Bulletins belonging to our communications office.

A section of the Salesian Bulletins collection

That, however, is temporary because I haven't yet touched the huge collection of Bulletins in the archives--in both Italian and English, going back to the 1870s.  The Italian collection, at least, will end up in Bro. Andy's bookcases, 12 good sized shelves in 3 sections, and if there's room, then the English edition that was published in Turin starting around 1900.