Think about a person on a mission, a quest for data that rivals Clark Griswold’s relentless pursuit of the proper nerd’s trip. I launched into a journey from the sun-soaked shores of Tampa to the hallowed halls of the Insurance coverage Library Affiliation of Boston with visions of countless cabinets brimming with insurance coverage maps and dusty Nineteenth-century insurance coverage treatises. I might hardly include my pleasure, however alas, destiny had different plans. As I approached the library’s entrance, my coronary heart sank. The doorways have been locked, and my goals of insurance-fueled enlightenment have been shattered. I knew what Clark Griswald should have felt when his hopes of a fun-filled journey to Walley World have been crushed. This was the signal on the door:
I left and got here again later, and the doorways have been nonetheless locked. However after a few calls, the library’s Govt Director, Michael Pezza, appeared. My world and perspective immediately modified as he took Donice and me for a tour. Donice mentioned she was snookered once I promised to take her on a date no one else would ever consider.
Here’s a image of Michael Pezza and me within the downstairs analysis space:
The library’s web site describes itself and its historical past:
The Insurance coverage Library Affiliation of Boston was based in 1887. It’s the nation’s first, and solely remaining, impartial library devoted solely to the topic of insurance coverage.
Our location at 156 State Avenue is within the coronary heart of Boston’s historic Monetary District, simply steps away from Quincy Market. The insurance coverage business in New England was began by marine insurance coverage underwriters in places of work on State Avenue, and different insurers, brokers, and brokers quickly adopted. By the late Nineteenth Century, insurance coverage had turn out to be such a big a part of the Boston enterprise group that insurance coverage companies spilled over into an online of close by streets.
The Library’s first residence was at 55 Kilby Avenue (now generally known as 10 Liberty Sq.). It then moved to 4 different close by places earlier than its 1981 transfer to the place it’s right this moment, only a fast stroll from our unique location.
The Library’s mission is to supply members of the insurance coverage, threat administration, and authorized communities, and the general public, with glorious analysis sources and companies, high-quality academic programming, and alternatives for networking and engagement.
The Insurance coverage Library is a nonprofit group acknowledged as tax-exempt below part 501(c)(3) of the Inner Income Code Service and as a public charity by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The Library doesn’t obtain any public funds: we’re supported solely by means of membership dues, income from our paid academic applications, occasion sponsorships and ticket gross sales, and thru the generosity of donors to our annual fund drive. All of this assist permits us to proceed to increase our companies, teaching programs, professional bono companies, and engagement occasions.
A Tough Notes article, Proud Custom, Noble Mission, famous the next in regards to the library:
The library’s mission assertion embodies a lofty objective: ‘The Insurance coverage Library enriches the insurance coverage and threat administration group by preserving the historical past of insurance coverage, by providing unsurpassed analysis companies, by offering and supporting training, and by facilitating engagement.’
Its areas of service are historic assortment, analysis companies, skilled training, and networking occasions. The historic assortment is residence to a variety of paperwork, supplies, and ephemera associated to threat administration and insurance coverage. It is usually a repository for vintage fireplace marks, Sanborn underwriting maps, historic insurance policies, and trendy coverage types.
The library has a public mission but receives no public funding. Income comes from membership dues, training, analysis charges, and donations.
The explanation why this library is necessary to me is as a result of it has info and historic proof about insurance coverage. Understanding how the insurance coverage product was made and the way these within the business supposed for the product to work is necessary when arguing how and why the present product and insurance coverage strategies have been derived. Fashionable types are barely revised revisions of earlier insurance coverage contracts, which have been modified for numerous causes and are generally defined in these older treatises. Discovering the outdated types, treatises, and different reference supplies merely gives me with a greater understanding of the insurance coverage product, which I can use in my observe, advocacy and instructing.
This should sound fairly boring to many. Donice was underwhelmed when she came upon about my plans for a novel date. Perhaps this button sums up the joy about what only some can recognize:
My present educational undertaking is in regards to the supply for the time period “proof of loss” and what it meant at its inception, lengthy previous to the time period being positioned in statutory commonplace fireplace insurance policies. You gained’t discover that info and data in insurance coverage case regulation, however solely in these necessary archival repositories.
Thought For The Day
Libraries permit youngsters to ask questions in regards to the world and discover the solutions. And the fantastic factor is that after a toddler learns to make use of a library, the doorways to studying are all the time open.
—Laura Bush