Art DeMuro, chairman of the City of Portland Historic Landmarks Commission, sent this letter to John Herman, President of the Board of Trustees of the Oregon Historical Society on March 17th.

Dear Mr. Herman,

The members of the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission have discuss the recent closure of the Research Library of the Oregon Historical Society. We have considered the dismissal of the entire professional staff of the library, the likelihood of future reduced hours, the proposed us of untrained staff and the likely long-term deterioration of accessibility to and care for the Society’s irreplaceable research materials.

The OHS Research Library functions as the chief repository of historical information about Portland’s built environment, and it is used by homeowners, property developers, real estate agents, architects, landscape architects, neighborhood and community historians, genealogists, archaeologists, and many other people who have occasion to come before the Landmarks Commission, or to deal in some way with historic properties. The closure or restriction of access to these unique and invaluable materials will have a dramatic and deleterious effect on our work. Historic preservation is a major component of the city’s efforts to reduce waste, conserve materials, reduce our carbon footprints, and reuse and recycle the craftsmanship and the natural resources hat we have in our hands.

The Commission has gone on record as encouraging the Oregon Historical Society to expend every effort either to retain and enhance the collections and professional staffing f its library, or if necessary to work with its stakeholders to place the collections with anther organization that can and will provide the necessary support. the commission endorses the resolutions of the Northwest History Network of March 1, 2009, which is included with this letter.