Looking back on 2023

Julgran bulb

Dear Vasa Sisters and Brothers,

As the Vasa National Archive Board and I look back on this past year, I see a bunch of improvements to the building and promotions of our collections. We invite you to look back with us at many of our  accomplishments where we found more space to safely store our collections.

Early in the year, we set a goal of having 5 sets of regalia for LLs and DL’s that may have misplaced an item. We had lots of regalia fron unknown lodges that we used to make the replacement regalia. We have that accomplished and the necklace regalia is hanging on the wall waiting for a lodge or district to contact us needing a piece. This project freed up a bunch of space in our collections and will help our lodges and districts in the future. If you are missing a piece of regalia, please let us know.

We converted the apartment bedroom and upstairs office into storage space and installed new shelving in these rooms. The extra office furniture, bedroom furniture, equipment, etc were sold on Facebook Marketplace, in a yard sale, or given away. It is surprising to us how much we have disposed of this past year.

We noticed there was a bit of over crowding in our Library. Fortunately, we had matching shelves in the office that we moved upstairs after finding someone to take the sleeper sofa. Adding three shelving units to the library eliminated the crowding and gave us more space to continue growing our library collection.

The biggest thing we did to help with improved storage was adding the moveable shelves to the basement. This was the most costly project we undertook and it easily more than doubled our available storage areas. We now have our unprocessed collections loaded up on many of the shelves in a way that makes it easy to find items.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact us at VasaArchivist@gmail.com, 309-927-3898.