Why go to Rowley? Salem’s PEM research library of course
In 1799, Salem ship captains created a research library that—over 200 years and numerous mergers later—became the world-renowned Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum. For many years, the collection had its home in the stately Plummer Hall on Essex Street in downtown Salem, in the architecturally rich, cultured atmosphere of the Saltonstall reading room, surrounded with bookshelves and ship models.
Over the last 20 years, the reading room closed for long stretches of time for building restoration and renovations, including climate control, modern archival storage, and digital cataloging of the collections. After numerous promises to return the Phillips Library Collections to its longtime home in the 1850s building, PEM abruptly announced in December 2017 that the 400,000 books and 5,500 linear feet of manuscripts were moving permanently to a recently purchased and retrofitted warehouse in Rowley.
In late June 2018, the PEM Collection Center opened at 306 Newburyport Turnpike in Rowley. Much of the warehouse’s 120,000 square feet is storage for 1.8 million museum pieces that are not on exhibit at the museum. Still under construction are the conservation lab, digitization space, a photography studio, and curatorial and research areas.
Hundreds of 12-foot-tall shelves in Room 156 hold the treasures from the Phillips Library, including a rare book section, with room to grow. The stacks are not open for researchers to browse through the book spines (something I truly enjoy doing because I often have aha! research moments that way). However, for the first time in years, the collection is accessible.
Like many special libraries and archives, PEM’s research library has rules to abide by. There are storage lockers for your bags, coats, and pens. Inside, though, you’re welcome to use your laptop computer, the guest Wi-Fi account, and your phone for taking pictures of documents. While the space lacks the beauty of the reading room in Salem, it’s functional and modern despite a shortage of electrical outlets.
What’s available
Let’s start with the mergers first. You’ll find collections from the East India Marine Society (founded 1799); the Essex Historical Society (1821) and Essex County Natural History Society (1833), which formed the revered Essex Institute in 1848; the Peabody Academy of Science (1868), which changed its name to the Peabody Museum of Salem in 1915; materials on art, culture, and exhibitions of the Peabody Essex Museum (1992); and collections from smaller institutions.
Much of the collections were donated by individuals, families, societies, businesses, and institutions with connections to Salem and surrounding towns, particularly Essex county. Since PEM was created by the 1992 merger of the Essex Institute and the Peabody Museum of Salem, subjects cover a broad swath of knowledge, from literary, historical, genealogical, and cultural interests to artistic, architectural, maritime, and scientific pursuits.
Among the books, manuscripts, diaries, photographs, account books, maps, ship logbooks, and printed ephemera, you find original Salem witch trial documents, Winthrop family papers, Nathaniel Hawthorne first editions, Essex county histories, business papers by Philip English and the Touzel family, vital records from Massachusetts towns, Puritan sermons, and shipping reports.
Visiting the collections onsite and online
Salem’s PEM research library at Rowley is free and open to the public. Check hours before you go. (And make sure your GPS sends you to Rowley. The entrance is about half a mile from the Agawam Diner.)
https://www.pem.org/visit/library-02/visiting-the-reading-room
PhilCat searchable catalog
http://pem-voyager.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/vwebv/searchBasic
Manuscript finding aids
Digital collections
https://www.pem.org/visit/library-02/online-collections
Salem witch trial records
See also:
Collection center for artifacts from Peabody Essex unveiled (Salem News)
Mission impossible: The great collection move of 2018 (PEM)
Peabody Essex Museum’s Phillips Library collections: a timeline from 1799 to 2018