The Baker Street Irregulars Trust is part of the BSI and is the repository of the Irregulars’ collective memory. Its purpose is to collect, preserve, and provide access to historical documents, correspondence, papers, photos, recordings, and memorabilia relating to the BSI and its members and friends. The Lilly Library at Indiana University holds the BSI Archive, which is open for public use.
Our Board of Trustees manages the Trust, and our website volunteers develop and run our website. Many other volunteers assist the Trust in collecting material, pre-cataloging it, and leading other Trust activities, such as the Oral History Project, the Trust Newsletter, and educational programs. If you would like to volunteer to help the Trust, please email the Trust Chair.
Donations Needed
Your support helps us to expand our holdings and make this site more useful. Please see our gifts of materials page for details on what the Trust collects. Everyone can help the Trust through monetary donations to our 501 (c)(3) organization, which may be tax deductible.For more information about the Trust and this website, see our Getting Started page and our Frequently Asked Questions page.
Our History
The BSI first began meeting in the 1930s. For more information, see a Brief History of the BSI. The BSI Trust came into being in 2003, at the impetus of Michael Whelan, then the head of The Baker Street Irregulars. Mr. Whelan took over curatorship of a large body of papers belonging to previous heads of the BSI. He determined to make these papers the beginning of the BSI Archive and to make them accessible to scholars. The BSI Archive was formally opened at the Houghton Library at Harvard University in November 2005. It moved to the Lilly Library at Indiana University in September 2018.Our motto, For the Sake of the Trust, comes from the Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual."
