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Volunteers in the Billie Jane Baguley Library and Archives
Mario Nick Klimiades, who recognized Billie Jane’s impressive monetary donations, but said, “It’s how much she gives of herself in terms of the time and quality of her work that is in my mind what really matters.” At 83 years of age, Billie Jane said, “I am capable of doing something, of being interested in other people and not concentrating on myself.”
Billie Jane’s impressive gifts to the Heard were not confined to the library and archives. She also donated artworks to the museum’s collection, including some California baskets that had been in the family and may well have been acquired during her father’s work in the Sierra Nevadas. One gift of a sterling silver butterfly pin made by the Navajo Guild is on display in the Small Wonders exhibition. She was honored by the Phoenix Museum of History with the Spirit of Philanthropy Award in 2001, and in 2002 she was named a Phoenix College History Maker and inducted into their Hall of Fame. Other organizations also received support from Billie Jane, including the Desert Botanical Garden, the Pioneer Museum, the Camp Fire Association and the Arizona 4H Youth Foundation. Her ties to many deserving organizations are reminiscent of the Heard Museum’s founder, Maie Bartlett Heard. That little girl who came to tea with her mother at the Heard Museum grew up to be someone that Mrs. Heard would have understood and appreciated for her love of her community and the Heard Museum.
BY DEE DOWERS | GUILD SECRETARY
Working with just one permanent staff member, director Mario Nick Klimiades, the Billie Jane Baguley Library and Archives relies on Heard Museum Guild volunteers, who play a vital role in maintaining this renowned research facility. There are generally about 20 volunteers working on an enormous variety of tasks. Due to safety measures during the coronavirus pandemic, this has been reduced to a core volunteer staff of about 10.
It is safe to say that the Library and Archives would not exist in the same form today without the many years of dedicated support from Guild volunteers, starting with Carol Ruppé in the 1960s, and later Billie Jane Baguley, in whose honor the library is now named.
There is something for everyone in the Library and Archives, whether a researcher, staff member, Guild member or volunteer. If it’s books, volunteers order, catalog and shelve them; if it’s periodicals, volunteers review subscriptions, place orders and catch up with missing copies; and if it’s archives, volunteers process and handle valuable documents, photographs and everything else from vintage postcards to contemporary ephemera. Unique to the Billie Jane Baguley Library and Archives is the Native American Artists Resource Collection (NAARC). This collection contains information on almost 30,000 Native artists working in all media and is accessible both online and in the museum, with items housed in special filing cabinets that are readily available for researchers. This valuable resource would not exist without Guild volunteers who perform a variety of tasks to keep the information updated: reviewing magazine clippings, gallery cards and other ephemera; checking the artist’s name against our database; reviewing lists of prize winners at American Indian art shows around the country; and entering all the data into the artist’s online file and placing the documentation into their physical file.
Guild volunteers who work in the Library and Archives come from many different careers and backgrounds, but they all have one thing in common: a dedication to the library and the spirit of the Heard Museum.
