Letter from the President: On Our Society's Impending Move

Beste Leden en Vrienden van de Holland Society, At the time of the Annual Meeting, we had been hopeful that an affordable option to share our office with other entities would allow us to remain at 20 W. 44th St. Sadly, that is not the case, and we will be moving to a temporary office between now and the end of July. The space we have occupied for the past ten years is ideal for what it was conceived to be, but with the relocation of the bulk of our library to the New Netherland Research Center, we no longer need to rent such a large space. Nor can we afford it in Midtown Manhattan, one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world. Preparing for the move has been a lot of effort, but is has also been a voyage of discovery. We have a wealth of information in our records and archives. Most of this has been relatively inaccessible and much of it uncatalogued. Among our missions in the coming year will be to properly catalog what we have and to begin the process of making our records more easily available to both members and scholars. As we continue our search for an alternative to our former location, we need to have all options on the table including the possibility of having a “virtual” office rather than a physical office. Whichever route we go, we will be more financially sound. Our hope is that we can use our strengthened finances to resume funding research in cooperation with other societies whose interests overlap with ours. I believe this may in hindsight be seen as a blessing. When we are no longer weighed down with the burden of high rent and office costs, we will have options that we simply do not have today. There is a lot of work to do, and we haven’t had the resources to tackle things that we’ve needed to do for a long time. Hartelijk groeten, Andrew Andrew Terhune President The Holland Society of New York

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