I don’t know if Louise Beardwood would have liked to be the subject of a blog post, but I suspect not. She was not one to call attention to herself or her accomplishments. Nonetheless, I am writing this because I want everyone to know how much Library Company of Philadelphia volunteer Louise meant to the Graphic Arts Department, and in particular, to me.

I first met Louise in 1993 when I embarked on my career at the Library Company and Louise had just begun her volunteer work helping then Curator of Prints Ken Finkel produce the Philadelphia Almanac and Citizens’ Manual. Ken left in 1996 and the Almanac project ended, but Louise stayed on as a volunteer for more than 25 years. In many regards, Louise was the perfect volunteer. Like clockwork, year-round Louise put in her hours every Thursday morning at the Library Company. She was not fussy about the projects assigned to her and worked diligently regardless of the task at hand. As her supervisor, I tried to find projects that were reasonably interesting. I devised projects that needed to be done, but were not likely to be completed with our current staffing level, and ones that could be worked on largely independently. The only other guidelines I followed for selecting projects for Louise was to avoid her having to write anything by hand. She had appallingly large (dare I say, sloppy?) handwriting. Louise was not the person I turned to for writing tiny accession numbers on the backs of collection items.

With a computer at hand, Louise, however, could be counted on to do a great job inventorying collections, including the contents of large Library Company of Philadelphia institutional history scrapbooks filled with newspaper clippings and photographs; the John R. Wells Photograph Collection of early 1950s photographs of historical Philadelphia buildings; and the hundreds of early twentieth-century Frank H. Taylor views of Philadelphia. For years, she worked her way through the Library Company’s alphabetized portrait print collection, listing and describing each print and including a short biographical sketch of the sitter. It was while summarizing a collection for a research file or writing a description of a specific item that Louise’s witty personality came through. When describing the Frank H. Taylor Collection, for example, Louise wrote in part:

Most have a title on the paper or a separately attached legend of a sentence or two. These descriptive legends are sometimes filled with wonderful details of people or activities connected with the image. If true, these tales enhance the historic value of the collection. If not, well, they are entertaining.

Louise’s voice shines through this text.