Gypsy Lore Society Victor Weybright Archives of Gypsy Studies

Archives to Move to Michigan

At its meeting of September 13. 2016, the Gypsy Lore Society Board of Directors voted to move the Victor Weybright Archives of Gypsy Studies to the Michigan State University Libraries in East Lansing, Michigan.

Michigan State University Libraries intends to become an important center for the study of Gypsy/Romani groups. The William G. Lockwood Collection of Romani Ethnology and Gypsy Stereotypes is the first collection acquired towards that goal.

The Gypsy Lore Society Victor Weybright Archives of Gypsy Studies will be an important addition to the establishment of the Gypsy/Romani Research Collection within the MSU Libraries’ Special Collections.

Michigan State University invites further donations from Gypsy Lore Society members and others. To explore donating materials, contact. Seth Martin, Director of Development, MSU Libraries, 366 W. Circle Drive (DB 7), East Lansing, MI 48824; 517-884-6446; marti981@mail.lib.msu.edu.

Michigan State University agrees to take care of the materials and provide access to researchers around the world. Books will be noted in the online catalog as belonging to the Gypsy Lore Society Victor Weybright Archives of Gypsy Studies and as a gift of the Gypsy Lore Society. Unpublished archival materials will be described in a publicly viewable online finding aid, with a link to the Gypsy Lore Society website.

The Victor Weybright Archives of Gypsy Studies was established in 1978 by the Gypsy Lore Society, North American Chapter, now the Gypsy Lore Society, in accord with the Society’s Articles of Incorporation. Victor Weybright (1903-1978) was a publisher who helped found the North American Chapter and provided financial support for its incorporation.

The Archives is a collection of books, articles, manuscripts, and audio-visual materials useful to scholars in the field of Gypsy Studies. Carmen Hendershott, volunteer archivist from 1979 to 2012, oversaw the expansion of the Archives and detailed cataloging of the collection. As it grew, finding a home for the Archives and making it available to researchers became a perennial issue. In 2012 the Board of Directors decided that the Gypsy Lore Society was no longer able to maintain the archives in such a way as to be useful to researchers.

An opportunity to find that home came about through William G. Lockwood, who has donated his own Gypsy collection to the Michigan State University Libraries.

The committee charged with discussing the agreement with MSU and reporting to the Board of Directors were Sheila Salo, Carol Silverman, and William G. Lockwood.

The transfer of the materials will begin this winter. Once the Archives are cataloged by MSU, the catalog will be open to all on the web. The existing incomplete catalog will be available to those using the Archives on site.