Hi everyone! Thanks for visiting my new Substack. For the text-oriented academics in the group, I’ll be posting full transcripts of my podcast conversations here, as well as some other treats along the way. And of course the audiophiles in the group can listen to the conversations on any podcast app, or here. I hope you enjoy!
-Jay
~~~
Conversation Recorded: January 6, 2024.
Episode published: February 5, 2024.
Chapters:
New Year, new name, same show
The archives
Introducing Today’s guest
Tracie’s education and background
Archives and libraries
Patrons of the special collections
Arsenic and old books
Enumerating the collections
Ozarkiana
The dark archives
Creating family archives
Visiting the archives
The hero question
Signing off
~~~
[transcript]
New Year, new name, same show
Jay Howard:
Hello and welcome to the Humanities District, a podcast about creativity and community engagement in higher ed. I'm Jay Howard, a senior instructor at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri. I like to talk to faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community members about their work. And this is the first episode under the banner of the new name, the Humanities District. However, this is also episode 45 in total.
From the very beginning of the show, back in January 2021, I have been talking to people at universities and colleges who are doing cool, creative work and who use their work to contribute to the community. The podcast has gone through three or four names since then, and I'm excited about this new one because I feel like it's reflective of the specific focus this show has had all along, while still giving us plenty of room to move around. So anyway, thank you for joining me on this journey. I'm looking forward to the year ahead.
The archives
All right, so one of my favorite things to do in my free time is to wander around in libraries. I have spent a lot of time in Missouri State's Meyer Library over the years. I used to work there as an undergraduate, wheeling a cart of books around. It was a great job. But there was one part of the library I never explored, the archives.
When I think of archives, several images come to mind. I think of Gandalf in the archives of Gondor, where he's surrounded by scrolls and old parchment looking for information about the ring of power. I think about Hermione in the restricted section of the Hogwarts library. Maybe Indiana Jones, the Da Vinci Code, National Treasure.
Well, I recently took a tour of the Meyer Library Archives, and I can now say all those images are real. It is such a cool place. And today on the show, we're going to be talking about all things archives.
Today’s guest: Tracie Gieselman France
My guest today is Tracy Gieselman-France, an archivist at Meyer Library Special Collections and University Archives. Tracy, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Tracie Gieselman France:
Thank you so much. I'm honored to be here.
“You know, not everyone finds themselves in university archives. So there's probably a story there of how you found your way into the center of the labyrinth.”
Jay Howard:
So one of the questions I like to start off with is the origin story question. You know, not everyone finds themselves in university archives. So there's probably a story there of how you found your way into the center of the labyrinth. Now I understand that your educational background is at Missouri State University's, as mine is as well. Is that right?
Tracie Gieselman France:
That's correct, yes. Yes, undergrad and graduate.
Jay Howard:
Nice, so what did you study at undergrad and graduate?
Tracie Gieselman France:
I was a Classical Antiquities major and I had an art minor and for those who don't know, that used to be a major, Classical Antiquities. That's been gone for a while now, but I really enjoyed it.
Jay Howard:
Very cool. What led you to choose that major, if anything?
Tracie’s education and background
Tracie Gieselman France (13:28.387)
Well, I actually started out as an art major and... didn't think I could constantly be creative, so I started looking at other opportunities. I always loved the child craft books, which most people won't remember those at all, but there were subjects and there was a whole book on mythology, and that was my favorite. And I think I started looking at majors and realized I could really focus on that and, you know, learn Latin in the process.
Jay Howard (14:03.578)
Okay. And then the rest is, well, no pun intended, history. Because you found your way into history as a graduate student. In that program, was there a sort of a culminating project, thesis, seminar paper type of thing? And if so, what was your subject? And if so, what was your subject?
Tracie Gieselman France (14:09.681)
Yes. I did do the seminar and I was in the African American Studies seminar program. So I focused on leisure and segregation. And that kind of tied into a collection that we had just started receiving. It was 2016, the Aura Logan collection started coming in. And Aura's mother was Alberta Ellis, who owned Alberta's hotel off of 66. And I really started being interested in that and kind of talking to our archivist at the time who's now our department head and she said, why don't you start looking at, you know, venues for African Americans during segregation? And she kind of thought more statistic-wise. […] looked at the community, how diverse they were, how just the ingenuity of the whole community during times of deprivation.
Jay Howard (15:51.981)
Okay. And was it your research during that time that led you to the archives here at Missouri State for the first time or?
Tracie Gieselman France (16:04.468)
No, actually I was working here by that time. I was in graduate school numerous times actually. Third time was a charm. Just because life happens, you know. I think the first time I was doing an internship at the History Museum for Springfield Green County, which is now Springfield History Museum on the Square, or sorry, the History Museum on the Square.
Jay Howard (16:07.203)
Oh, okay. Very cool.
Tracie Gieselman France (16:34.402)
I believe because you asked, I had quoted something or said something about my experience with archives versus what I was doing at the history museum. And at that time I was focusing more on exhibits, which I still love to do and we still do a lot of, but I think it was a history class that required a look at Missouri history. And my focus was the Great Depression. And I found a book that was in the archives on the Civil Works Project for the Great Depression and ended up coming up here and just loved the environment, loved the whole staff, everybody was really helpful, and the book was letters, photographs, correspondence about the works project and I just really enjoyed that. The History Museum had more of a photograph archive at that time that I was working with, which is fantastic, but there's just something about the correspondence too that everybody enjoyed.
Jay Howard (17:33.198)
Hmm. Yeah. It's cool that you have experience at the museum, the history museum on the square. It seems like all of the cultural heritage institutions in our region are networked together with one another.
Tracie Gieselman France (17:35.901)
Yeah. We really are. Yeah, it's, it's a special thing. We kind of take for granted occasionally, but we all work really well together. We all know each other, so it's nice.
Jay Howard (18:02.858)
And isn't it the case that you share space with one such organization in the special collections area?
Tracie Gieselman France (18:09.748)
Yes, we share the reading room space with State Historical Society of Missouri, and so we have their Springfield, or they have their Springfield branch office here. And so we can joke and say you have two archives in one because you have the entire state available and then what we focus on, which is primarily Southwest Missouri State. So, or Southwest Missouri, sorry. I'm old. Yes.
Jay Howard (18:18.306)
Very cool. SMS you. Yeah, I have one of those pennants in my office in Craig Hall. But yeah, anyway.
Tracie Gieselman France (18:47.897)
Uh huh. Yeah. It's an archive.
Jay Howard (18:52.158)
It is, that's right. You know, isn't everyone just a walking archive?
Tracie Gieselman France (18:58.74)
They really are, yeah.
Jay Howard (19:00.362)
I remember, this is off topic, but someone said, in fact, when I was working at the library, some of the people I worked with were international students from China. And they once, something they said once that stayed with me was that there's a saying that when an elder dies, it's like a library is burning. And that, I don't know, that always stuck with me.
Tracie Gieselman France (19:12.277)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, I, we refer to people as history keepers, I guess. So I know during COVID, I felt like we lost a lot of our history keepers. That just seemed like a lot of people we had been working with had passed away at that time. So.
Jay Howard (19:37.634)
Hmm, yeah. Yeah, I know that you do a lot of work with, yeah, with, you know, oral historians and people who maybe they aren't writing it down, but, you know, especially in the Ozarks, people love to spin a yarn.
And we talked about some people we knew in common, like Alex Prem and others who have worked with the archives in different, or special collections in different capacities. He came and was a guest speaker in one of my classes one time on the topic of listening and oral history and stuff, so.
Tracie Gieselman France (20:17.44)
Great. Yeah, it's really special. It's, I had Dr. Nelson's history and memory class. And it really helped me appreciate oral histories more. It's just kind of looking at how our perception of a historical event changes through time or based on who you talk to. And it's, I think we were talking whenever you, one on the tour talking about breadcrumbs and it's just another breadcrumb in the trail to me. You know, you have your oral history and then everyone has a different perception of an event. So.
Archives and libraries
Jay Howard (20:44.213)
Absolutely. Well, so we can paint a picture for potential listeners about the archives themselves. And because you just mentioned the tour. And so I can kind of recount my journey to coming to learn more about the archives. And it started for me, of course, I mentioned, you know, I used to work at the library, and I've explored every inch of the library when I was an undergrad, except for the archives and special collections. I had never sort of made my way in there. Spent a lot of time in the basement. Back then, they were like shelves that move and stuff. You could push a button and they would all shift. But I think one question that a lot of people will have is like who used the archives. And
Tracie Gieselman France (21:43.288)
Uh-huh. Back shelving.
Jay Howard (21:54.63)
Last year I had an interview with Greta Cross, a reporter at the news leader and an alumni of the journalism department, and she mentioned that she made use of the archives in her work as a reporter and in her work on some other projects that she's doing. And so that sort of planted the seed of like, okay, so a reporter uses the archives. And so there's all these questions that a listener might have.
What’s in the archives, how do you get there, how did the archives get their materials, who uses them? And so I think the place that we can start is, you know, when you go up to the third floor, the very first point of contact that the patron sees is this really cool like exhibit area. And it's open, you don't have to make an appointment, you can just go up there and look at the cool exhibits.
Tracie Gieselman France (22:26.999)
Yeah.
Jay Howard (22:53.874)
But if you go around the corner, then there is a reading room, right? So it's not necessarily that people are going to be browsing around the shelves like they would in the regular library, but if they find an article that they need to read or use for research, someone like you can go pull it and bring it to the reading room and they can examine it there, right?
Tracie Gieselman France (23:16.584)
Yes, exactly. Yes, none of the materials in our area circulate. So if someone comes up and requests an item or tells us a topic that they're looking for, we'll have them fill out a researcher form just to kind of keep track of what people are looking for. And then we also will have their email address. So if we find something after they leave, we can send them an email. A lot of our patrons will be students, but, you know, we'll see what they're looking for. We'll pull it from our back stacks and then bring it out to them so they can take pictures with their phone, we can make photocopies, we can do scans for them, whatever kind of format they need.
…one of the differences is that the materials in archives and special collections are unique and irreplaceable…
Jay Howard (23:53.966)
When I was researching the difference between the job of the librarian and the job of the archivist, one thing I found was that, you know, they're very similar in lots of ways, but one of the differences is that the materials in archives and special collections are unique and irreplaceable, whereas a book, there might be multiple copies of a book, you know. And so is that the explanation for why the materials don't circulate like the regular collection would?
Tracie Gieselman France (24:16.332)
Mm-hmm.
Tracie Gieselman France (24:24.092)
It is, yes, because we want to keep all of those materials for as long as, around as long as we can. You know, we'll say several hundred years. That's why they're not circulating. They're not going home with somebody, potentially, not that anyone purposely damaged them, but just because of the wear and tear of circulating. But yeah, that's...
Jay Howard (24:42.783)
Oh my goodness, yeah.
I mean, don't even, the librarians probably remember like when my dog was little, she ate so many books. And most of them were my personal books, but every once in a while they did get ahold of a library book, and I had to like pay to replace it. My dog has a fine taste in literature.
Tracie Gieselman France (25:02.224)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's great. Yeah, that's primarily the difference is that we're dealing with one-of-a-kind materials or things that we know we want to preserve for the future.
Patrons of the special collections
Jay Howard (25:18.486)
Yeah. So I'd love to hear from you a little bit about just the different categories of patrons. We talked about reporters, Greta among others. I mean, I saw also, was it Steve Pocan made use of the notorious Springfield reporter at the Daily Citizen currently.
Tracie Gieselman France (25:35.592)
Mm-hmm.
Jay Howard (25:41.506)
And you also had several stories I ran across of just different professors who will partner with the archives and use it in their pedagogy and stuff. So, so much to unpack there. Ha ha ha.
Tracie Gieselman France (25:50.601)
Yes. Well, we love it when professors bring their classes in because we have a reading room that seats… we can get 30 people in there fairly well. But bring in their classes, we can talk to them about primary sources. Generally it's a, you know, later in the week they may meet with a reference librarian downstairs who will tell them more about the databases, make everyone a little more comfortable with the library.
But it's great when we have a class come in, like History 210 comes in for a lot of or a lot of classes just to learn about primary sources. I like to make everyone touch the items, not be afraid. We're fortunate where we have some really nice things, but we're not national archives level, so we're not going to prohibit touching of things. If someone's afraid to turn a page, we can turn pages for them. But we really want you to have the experience and the hands touching things and use our digital collections as well.
But we love it when classes come in. We've worked with history department, English department. Some of the more interesting ones are mathematics department. We were able to pull our facsimiles of papyrus, cuneiform, some of our oldest books, the great facsimile of Euclid's, oh gosh, geometry basically, not a math person. But we've had their classes in, they enjoyed it so much that some of the calculus club came in.
Tracie Gieselman France (27:27.014)
So that was really fun because it's this cross, you know, reaching across different disciplines. So yeah, we can reach across disciplines and have math students enjoy classic literature. You know, the fact that there's cuneiform tablets available to hold and touch because they are made of resin. So it's, yeah, we have, I think, four of those. And they're just really fun.
Jay Howard (27:51.733)
Oh wow. Very cool. And then of course, Dr. Follensby with Art and Design and Museum Studies program. We've been working with her for about 20 years and her students can look at items that she's borrowed from other cultural heritage organizations and they study them. Some students do reproductions, some do conservation work, and it's actually a service learning class because the items are borrowed from other organizations.
Jay Howard (28:42.338)
Nice.
Tracie Gieselman France (28:44.13)
do goes back to that organization. So that's been really neat.
Jay Howard (28:46.894)
Do you know what the names of the classes are that she brings over? Or the general subject matter?
Tracie Gieselman France (28:55.688)
Um, I think it's Art 485. It's kind of in the Art 480s, but some of them are also museum studies program classes too. Um, that may be more.
Jay Howard (29:06.489)
Okay, so these students are training for a career in this area perhaps.
Tracie Gieselman France (29:13.589)
Yes, some of them are definitely. Yeah, yeah. And it gives them the chance to say that they've had hands-on experience with artifacts and researched items. So it's been really great.
Jay Howard (29:21.451)
Absolutely.
Jay Howard (29:26.314)
On the tour you mentioned there was a place called Billy Land back there. So that's cool. It's been, it's an ongoing relationship, you know, with a faculty member partnering with the archives.
Tracie Gieselman France (29:30.281)
Yes.
Arsenic and old books
Tracie Gieselman France (29:41.652)
Mm-hmm. Can I tell you about one other thing? Okay, I mentioned the green books whenever we were in the back stacks.
Jay Howard (29:45.534)
Yes please.
Tracie Gieselman France (29:52.568)
and it's actually the Poison Book Project that was started by Delaware's Winterthur Library, Garden, and Museum. And there's a certain time period from the 1800s, sorry, late 1900s to 20th century where there was a color of books called Paris Green, and they used arsenic to make that coloring. And...
Jay Howard (30:01.14)
Okay.
Tracie Gieselman France (30:18.705)
So they printed out these bookmarks that showed the different colors of green that might be of concern. And one of my previous colleagues who's moved on reached out to the College of Natura.
National Natural and Applied Sciences, sorry, the College of Natural and Applied Sciences and asked if you know a student wanted to study these you could use an x-ray fluorescence to actually look at the model or the books and see if the levels it's more science that I want to get into here, but see if the levels are elevated and so we had it they had a student from what is now Earth Environment and Sustainability School and
Jay Howard (30:51.33)
Hehehehe, sure.
Tracie Gieselman France (31:01.682)
she created a poster presentation for her undergraduate degree and looked at all of our books that are green and didn't find any arsenic luckily, so But that was another cross-discipline example. That's I think was really neat that we were able we were able to be involved in that
Jay Howard (31:10.11)
Nice.
Jay Howard (31:18.122)
I remember you said that you encourage people to touch the books and stuff, and you mentioned that you don't use the traditional white gloves. But in that case, it might be good to use white gloves.
Tracie Gieselman France (31:23.296)
Yeah.
Tracie Gieselman France (31:32.388)
It is, and actually those, they would put them in a polyethylene package and you can still touch them. I was just reading an article looking back, it said basically you're okay unless you eat them. So usually that doesn't help. Yeah, because we do have a different system, so our air is a little more controlled in this environment and we just kind of wanted to make sure we didn't have anything. But it was a fun project to be involved in.
Jay Howard (31:44.738)
Okay. Or like, incinerate him and breathe him in or something.
Jay Howard (31:58.059)
Yeah. Humidity controlled, temperature controlled, all kinds of cool stuff, special paper that stuff is printed on, acid-free and something else free, lignin-free. Yeah.
Tracie Gieselman France (32:04.128)
Yes.
Tracie Gieselman France (32:09.498)
Mm-hmm.
Yes, lignin-free, yes. Yes. And that's the wood pulp that basically yellows. Like newspapers, you know, if you leave a newspaper laying around, it starts to yellow because it's so acidic. And that's the lignin.
Jay Howard (32:23.758)
Mm-hmm.
Enumerating the collections
Jay Howard (32:28.802)
So we've touched on who uses the archives. And I'd like to move to just a general description of the collection itself. And one of the things I wanna emphasize as I reflect on it is like, every individual item is amazing and has its own history and there's tons of stories behind it. And at the same time, I feel like somehow, as interesting as every individual item is, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I'm interested in the forest as well as the trees. Just the whole sense of, like, oh my goodness, there are huge old books everywhere.
And so, I mean, it's exactly what a listener may be imagining: big, cavernous rooms full of shelves and shelves and shelves. Some of them have boxes on them, some of them have books. Items of mystery are in the boxes sometimes.
And so, I mean, it's exactly what a listener may be imagining: big, cavernous rooms full of shelves and shelves and shelves. Some of them have boxes on them, some of them have books. Items of mystery are in the boxes sometimes. And so it really is just a cool place. And I think one of the reasons it fascinates me is that I'm kind of a collector, you know, from a family of collectors. I talked about this in a previous episode with a guest who was a film collector. He had like a whole bunch of DVDs, and we talked about like what motivates us. Sometimes we don't even know why.
Tracie Gieselman France (33:52.662)
Yeah.
Jay Howard (33:54.506)
But I thought maybe we could talk about some of the things that the archives collects, and then from that we can segue in to where the items come from. And so I imagine there are all these different archives scattered across the country, and some of them have reputations for being repositories for materials of a particular type. And then once that reputation gets established, then it snowballs and you receive donations of materials that add to that same category of thing. So can you tell me just a little bit about the Meyer Library archives and special collections and what we're kind of known for?
Tracie Gieselman France (34:37.548)
Definitely, yeah. So we actually started out as a labor union archive. That existed before the unit did as a physical unit. There was an economics professor here on campus and a member of the labor unions who were collecting labor union archives just across the Midwest basically. So when the library was pre-expansion, so in 1997 our Dean Emeritus, established the archives. And the labor union collection stayed where it was, but then when the building expanded we received this area on the third floor. And so then all of those labor union collections came over. That was, oh gosh, 2002, so a little bit before the centennial. And I know a lot of university collections started coming in during the centennial, but we also had a
Tracie Gieselman France (35:37.928)
So that really expanded all of the memorabilia, the materials that we have, just the document in every part of the university. We also have things on the Ozarks. I know it's kind of an interesting timeline because there were some collections that existed. There was the Center for Ozark Studies that started in, oh gosh, probably 1985, whenever Bob Dr. Flanders from the history department retired,
Jay Howard (35:42.718)
Mm.
Tracie Gieselman France (36:07.902)
have closed in 1992 I believe. So some of those collections came here but they were going to different counties in the state looking at historic sites, just all kinds of things related to public history and so we have that collection but there were precursors like the Robert Wallace collection that...
I guess I should back up and say Robert Wallace was born in Springfield as a poet, had his own small press at Case Western and taught there, and donated all of his publications, documents, the process of everything to MSU. So we had that collection and when the building came together, everything came over here to the library. So it's hard to say a single timeline.
Jay Howard (36:56.258)
Gotcha. Yeah, and it kind of just snowballs, like I said. The archive or the collection that Greta used was Olga Ozarks, Gay and Lesbian Archive, I think is what that stands for. And you mentioned labor union. I saw everything from banners and signs to meeting minutes. And, you know.
Tracie Gieselman France (37:07.277)
It's it, yeah.
Jay Howard (37:31.702)
people keep those meeting minutes for some reason, presumably someone will wanna know what happened with some of these meetings where the sausage gets made or something. So, you know, make sense to preserve those. Ha ha ha.
Ozarkiana
Tracie Gieselman France (37:40.844)
Uh huh. Exactly. So when we talk about the Ozarks, we have a term called Ozarkiana, which can be anything from lumber companies to LGBTQ plus community, to the Jewish community, to African-American community. So some of these are umbrella terms by this point, because all of the collections have grown so much. Like even Ozarkiana, yes. So.
Jay Howard (38:07.318)
Ozarkiana. Ozarkiana, say that five times fast. That's a cool word.
Tracie Gieselman France (38:15.032)
It is, our previous department had created that. I think he had it from a previous job too. They had a similar term.
Jay Howard (38:24.61)
I mean, yeah, it's definitely in the tradition of like Americana in that sort of suffix. Yeah, suffix, I guess.
So the materials come in and they get processed sometimes, although sometimes it's just so much material. What does processing mean?
Tracie Gieselman France (38:52.364)
Processing is, well it's a multi-step process. First, we appraise a collection to see if it has an enduring value. We are always looking at the research possibilities. So not everything fits into our collection policy or has a historical significance. So that's our initial step. If a donor is ready to donate materials and it fits within our parameters, inventory list basically. So even our collections that are unprocessed are totally usable.
It may just take the researcher a little bit longer. When we process we're actually arranging things, we're rehousing things, and describing. So making it usable by writing up a brief description, historical sketch, basically enough to let you know if you need to come in and look at these boxes for what your research topic might be.
Jay Howard (40:11.402)
What was the word that starts with a P that sort of describes the chain of custody of where the stuff came from?
Tracie Gieselman France (40:17.781)
The provenance. Yes.
Jay Howard (40:18.83)
provenance. And so that goes with sort of the abstractive of the materials that it tells like the originating, yeah, the source of it, who donated it, where and when.
Tracie Gieselman France (40:26.217)
It's part of our descriptive.
Tracie Gieselman France (40:32.26)
Mm-hmm. Exactly. Yeah, timeline.
Jay Howard (40:36.547)
Very cool.
Tracie Gieselman France (40:38.28)
And ideally we try to keep things in original order because it gives you a look at what the creator was thinking. Even if it's just a family collection, there's a certain timeline to how things are collected, for lack of better way to put it.
Jay Howard (40:56.266)
Yeah. So would you say the collection, or all of the collections as it stands currently, is all as processed as it needs to be, or is that an ongoing job?
Tracie Gieselman France (41:11.508)
That is an ongoing job, yes. And sometimes things are processed and we can maybe process a little bit more. If a collection is really heavily used, maybe we are able to dive in a little deeper. But it's, and you can always do a little bit more. But it's just part of the process.
Jay Howard (41:27.17)
That makes sense.
Jay Howard (41:36.398)
That makes sense, you gotta prioritize the collections that are used most often.
Tracie Gieselman France (41:41.404)
Exactly.
The dark archives
Jay Howard (42:09.582)
A topic that you mentioned at the end of the tour the other day was the term the dark archives, which I understand is maybe a part of the digital repositories that you use. I was interested in that topic, that term. It sticks out to me as a potential title for the episode, even though it's not maybe central to what the archives do, just because it's clickbaity.
Tracie Gieselman France (42:32.556)
Oh. Yes. They are actually a repository that's not accessible to the public. So the custodians of the Dark Archive can add things to it, but it's essentially a non-public repository. So not as exciting as it sounds, unfortunately.
Jay Howard (42:54.646)
But so it's non-public because it just hasn't been processed yet, not because the materials are, you know, scandalous in some way.
Tracie Gieselman France (43:08.724)
Not that they're unprocessed. Basically, it's part of our process collections go in there too. Our finding guides will go in there as well. But no, nothing scandalous.
Jay Howard (43:22.307)
That's cool.
So it's sort of like just the in-house server that you use to organize things and keep things straight. Well, very cool. Okay, so now I can go to this. Materials come in, if they're associated with historical significance or otherwise in alignment with your collection policy.
Tracie Gieselman France (43:31.112)
Essentially, yeah.
Creating family archives
Jay Howard (43:53.458)
Like I said, I'm from a family of collectors. And so I am sort of fascinated by a book that I saw on the tour that I mentioned. It was called, Creating Family Archives. And even though a body of materials might not have historical significance, they are still significant to, you know, the group of people in that family. I'm thinking about like, documents that come to my mind when I think about this for me is my mom's cookbook, which is like, you know, oil splattered and everything, but it's basically a sacred text because it contains how to make peanut butter fudge, and Kentucky butter cake and stuff. No one makes it like mom does.
Tracie Gieselman France (44:43.748)
Uh-huh.
Jay Howard (44:50.43)
That's just one example though, and there's all these different materials I can think of. Journals, scrapbooks, cookbooks, yeah, family Bibles and stuff like that. And so what would you say to someone who is interested, kind of like in the genealogy type of vein, you know what I mean? Like people just want to preserve their...
Tracie Gieselman France (44:58.24)
Mhm. Marriage certificates. Yeah.
Jay Howard (45:17.782)
…family history for future generations or something like that. So not necessarily to prepare these materials for an actual archive, but if people wanted to make an archive on their own, maybe it's like a big chest full of stuff or a banker box full of stuff. I'm just fascinated by that. I think I wanna do it myself, but I'm not sure where to start. Help, help me.
Tracie Gieselman France (45:46.581)
Uh huh.
Jay Howard (45:47.982)
What would you recommend?
I think the allure of archives is focusing on everyday people, because that's the history that doesn't make it into the textbooks. That's showing social change. That's showing cultural change and helping us all understand each other a little bit better.
Tracie Gieselman France (45:49.748)
Well, and I will say that we're not necessarily just focusing on famous people. We, I think the allure of archives is focusing on everyday people, because that's the history that doesn't make it into the textbooks. That's showing social change. That's showing cultural change and helping us all understand each other a little bit better. So not to say that we wouldn't accept anything, you know, not from a famous person.
Jay Howard (45:59.741)
Oh, interesting.
Jay Howard (46:03.926)
Yeah.
Tracie Gieselman France (46:19.682)
correspondence between a couple during World War II. So, every day working people, women, people of color were definitely wanting to document that history. But I love the family archives, especially that book. Margot Note is part of, actually, sorry, Society of American Archivists published that book. She has been in the archive field for about 20 years to this because she's essentially following what an archivist would do, but making it so everyday people feel comfortable doing it as well. So she is, you know, talking about taking what's most important because it's so overwhelming. You, I know what my family has kept. And no one knows where to start. And generally there's one person in the family where like they say, everything's coming to you, you're gonna take care of it.
Jay Howard (47:14.403)
Hehehe. Yeah, yeah.
Tracie Gieselman France (47:20.925)
So she kind of talks about...
You know, picking out what's really important, I know you asked about the digitization facet of family archives, and that's a struggle that anyone will go through because technology's always changing. But her approach to it, and I think that applies to the physical objects as well, is you have to prioritize, maybe the photographs of you and Junior High aren't as important as Grandma's 100th birthday party. So that's one way to...
Jay Howard (47:32.258)
Yeah. Hmm.
Tracie Gieselman France (47:56.294)
…kind of maybe narrow it down. She likes to talk about making a plan, going through and organizing things, kind of how we talk about the original order. Maybe you have your mom's recipes, and then maybe your grandma had very German-based recipes. You don't wanna combine the two because then you lose the context and the whole cultural background of your grandma's recipes versus your mom's.
So you would sort out all of your mother's recipes and have them in one section and have your grandmother's recipes in another section So so you're kind of What we call series you're creating categories that make things a little easier to organize So that's a good way to approach it And then she talks about of course Environmental changes which is a major thing of what we do. We're reboxing things We need that acid lignin free papers and boxes…
Jay Howard (48:34.018)
Okay. That's great.
Tracie Gieselman France (48:56.534)
…because you're minimizing the acidity as much as you can. And then you mentioned humidity, temperature controls. You want lower temperature, lower humidity versus the higher temperatures and higher humidity, which creates more moisture, leads to mold, photographs stick together. So that's a major part of what she's focusing on. And then just...
Jay Howard (49:16.396)
Yeah.
Tracie Gieselman France (49:25.172)
really making it manageable the way you approach it. And we can always help. We can share supply lists.
The book is great. I don't want anyone to feel like I'm promoting just her book, but it is a very, very nice book. She lists organizations that we may suggest people reach out to, Society of American Archivists, even supplies. So it's very helpful. But I feel like you had more questions about how to go about it than I'm kind of hitting on there. So.
Jay Howard (49:40.162)
Hehehehe. No, I mean, this helps a lot. So if you have access to the original book, is it necessary to make a copy of the book? Does that make sense? What would you say to that?
Tracie Gieselman France (50:12.808)
Mm-hmm. It's because the original book is you don't want to damage it further.
Jay Howard (50:20.042)
It's like, I don't know, falling apart, or it may just be...
You know, I don't know, it sort of removes the physical object part of it and makes it a digital file or a series of Xeroxes, you know, that may be thinner, take up less space. But still, you don't have that sense of authenticity of holding the original book.
Tracie Gieselman France (50:31.989)
Mm-hmm. And we do that with some of our material scrapbooks you mentioned are always very fragile. So sometimes we'll make a user copy. So you're always going to keep that original. You may have it packaged with acid-free tissue paper surrounding it in an acid-free box, in the dark somewhere that's, you know, steady stable temperatures and humidity. And then you use that access copy that you photocopied or scanned to show people.
Jay Howard (50:49.826)
Mm-hmm.
Tracie Gieselman France (51:14.83)
If you want to display pictures of your family, a lot of times it's better to make a really good copy and display that. We've worked with people who have gigantic maps who wanted to display them, and we've been able to help them digitize those. So the sunlight's not hitting that original, the air, the impurities in the air can help break down originals. So we do make user copies.
Jay Howard (51:22.351)
Oh cool.
Tracie Gieselman France (51:44.75)
that's always something that's good to do.
Jay Howard (51:46.742)
Well, yeah, this is inspiring me a lot. I mean, any sort of effort at preserving is better than just throwing something in a shed that's probably full of mice and mold and stuff. And I like --
Tracie Gieselman France (51:59.437)
Yes. It's my worst nightmare.
Jay Howard (52:09.954)
Oh my, yeah, worst nightmare of an archivist.
And you mentioned having a plan. And I assume if someone's gonna do this on the family level, they have something in mind that they want. And if you go into it with a plan, it's easier than if you just dive in and get overwhelmed by the directionless minutiae with which you find yourself confronted. So.
Tracie Gieselman France (52:30.18)
Mm-hmm. And that's something we have to do, too. You start sorting things out by types. And maybe you have one branch of the family that you focus on, and you set all those photographs aside. You just find a way to manage it, because otherwise, you'll get overwhelmed. And even in the book, Margo mentions, sometimes you just have to walk away. You work on it for 20 minutes, and that's enough.
Jay Howard (52:55.434)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And there's all kinds of emotions and other barriers and stuff that could get in there too. But, hmm. And the comment about in sorting it, preserve the context as much as possible. Don't collapse things together artificially or in some abstract way. Which I'm sure would be my instinct. I'm sure I would do that if I wasn't thinking about it.
Tracie Gieselman France (53:27.177)
It's, I think, harder to do if it's your immediate family. But when we're processing a collection...
Jay Howard (53:31.459)
Hmm. Oh, yeah.
Tracie Gieselman France (53:36.384)
the people become family basically. We all kind of joke about that. And that's if you came in as a researcher and you wanted to see, say theater and dance, the person who had processed that is going to have more knowledge about it than I would. So we're invested, but maybe not so much as personal. There's a little more investment in a personal collection too.
Jay Howard (53:38.987)
Yeah. That's really cool. Yeah, it's hard to do with your own family. That brings to mind, I'm not conversant with details, but I'm sure someone who does museum studies would know all the examples of absurdities of early museum exhibits that would take artifacts from totally different cultures, different time periods, and lump them together due to some artificial category imposed by the curator.
Tracie Gieselman France (54:23.391)
Mm-hmm.
Jay Howard (54:29.686)
rather than being sensitive to the, like you said, the context in which the item actually came from. Fascinating stuff.
Tracie Gieselman France (54:29.802)
Yes. Yeah, and thankfully things have evolved, continue to evolve in that aspect.
Visiting the archives
Well, so what would you what would you want a member of the general public, maybe the university community to know if they've never been to the archives don't know much about them? Is it open to the general public? I'd love to hear maybe In terms of what they could expect like I know that you mentioned you're really interested in get some joy out of the exhibits and stuff in the reading room. And I know those are always changing. So yeah, let's talk about the archives and their relationship with just the general public.
Tracie Gieselman France (56:10.76)
Okay, yeah. Well, we are open to the general public beyond the campus community. We're open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and closed over any university holidays. Let's see, we love to show everything that we have. If we give you a tour of the backstacks, we'll ask you how long you have because we can keep you back there for hours.
Jay Howard (56:33.418)
Yes.
Tracie Gieselman France (56:37.324)
I think I made Jay late for lunch, so I'm apologizing. Um. Ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Um.
Jay Howard (56:40.927)
They're about to just inter me as an item in the collection.
Tracie Gieselman France (56:50.572)
I think all of us really enjoy the research process, so I know I tend to get really excited when somebody tells me something they're working on. I'm like, oh you need to look at this and this and this, and I overwhelm people. So and that's another thing I've noticed or I've read comparisons about librarians versus archivists. Archivists get really excited about things.
So definitely come in and see us. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Sometimes that's the only way we can really narrow down what you're looking for because we have some, we have lots of really big collections that might cover broad topics, but if you are looking for one specific little thing, we can maybe narrow it down or send you to another organization locally or regionally that might have those things. So it's also always really important to
Jay Howard (57:21.43)
Nice.
Tracie Gieselman France (57:50.226)
to any of your reference librarians, archivists, anyone in your local history department. That's something I always encourage students, like you just you have to talk to us. Don't be shy.
Jay Howard (58:01.919)
Just have a conversation, yes.
Tracie Gieselman France (58:04.376)
Yes, and hopefully the exhibits kind of pull people in. I'm afraid sometimes people don't think they're supposed to come into our area, but we definitely want you to. So we try to put things on the wall that draw you in. And that's an advantage we have not everyone has the exhibit space. So that's why we really concentrate on that. That's our outreach. But we, you know, it's not just students. It's people who are working on documentaries, authors.
Jay Howard (58:14.947)
Hmm.
Tracie Gieselman France (58:34.31)
journalists, just anyone. We don't have a lot of genealogical collections, but we can send you to the Ozarks Genealogical Society. State Historical has some genealogical materials, so it never hurts to just give us a call or pop in. Make an appointment even if you want.
Jay Howard (58:50.914)
Nice. Well, the exhibits do kind of draw one in. I remember the example of, there used to be pictures of drawings of animals on the walls around the library. And I was like, wait a minute, those aren't real animals. That looks kind of like a hippopotamus, but it's not. And turns out those drawings came from a book that is in the collection, special collections, a very old book.
Tracie Gieselman France (59:18.824)
Yes, yes, yeah, that is Edward Topsell's History of the Four-Footed Beasts, and it was published in 1607, and that is one of our favorites.
Jay Howard (59:30.746)
And that's back when they thought some of the four-footed beasts were unicorns.
Tracie Gieselman France (59:34.728)
Yes, yeah we have gorgons, unicorns, oh gosh, just antelopes with serrated horns, all kinds of unusual things. And we have the original but we also have a facsimile, so people can feel free to look through the facsimile and then say I'd like to see the original of that and we can show that to them. So that's an added benefit as well.
Jay Howard (59:45.748)
Very cool.
Tracie Gieselman France (01:00:11.371)
It's hard to focus on just a certain aspect of what we do.
Jay Howard (01:00:15.834)
Yeah, yeah, it's a kaleidoscopic. You turn it and you see a new facet. Ha ha. What about things on the horizon, the future in the upcoming, I mean, we're recording this early in the spring semester. But.
Tracie Gieselman France (01:00:21.488)
I like that, yes.
Mm-hmm. Well, let's see. So we're what, second week into classes. So we've already had Dr. Fallensby's class come in. Right now she's working on Mesoamerican artifacts with her students. So they have been in to pick out their projects. We'll have History 210 come in later this week, or next week, sorry. And then the next exhibit will focus on Watershed of the Ozarks and
Jay Howard (01:01:03.456)
Oh cool.
Tracie Gieselman France (01:01:06.742)
little bit of tourism connected to waterways. So I'm excited about that watershed is celebrating their 40th anniversary. So yeah.
Jay Howard (01:01:14.014)
Oh, this here. Cool, all right.
Tracie Gieselman France (01:01:18.028)
So we have both of those collections. They're great, great connections to campus. So we'll focus on that. And then I know in May, it's a panel with the Springfield Green County Public Libraries will be talking about music on Route 66.
Jay Howard (01:01:35.65)
Oh, excellent.
You know, classes come in for presentations. Do you or other archivists or librarians make field trips to other classrooms, whether on campus or I'm thinking maybe even elementary schools or grade schools?
Tracie Gieselman France (01:01:58.476)
That's a great question. That actually, everything seems like it was pre-COVID. We had been going, we went over to Greenwood a few times and took some items with us. Our digital archivist and I were invited to Hoosark to talk about local history at one point. So that was really fun. And then Timmons Hall over in Silver Springs Park, a lot of times I take collections over there because we're focusing on the black community, focusing on Alberta Ellis.
Jay Howard (01:02:03.185)
Ah, sure.
Tracie Gieselman France (01:02:28.53)
work together to create kits that you can check out. And that's kind of why we have that Creating Family Archives because the director there was focusing on teaching children that their history matters. So how do you take the initial steps to create your own family archives? So we focused on one family member, actually Alberta Ellis, and just talk about her life, how her life ties in to
Jay Howard (01:02:46.581)
Okay.
Tracie Gieselman France (01:02:59.27)
and how the family fits in, and then you can do the same kind of thing with your family. So it's this nice intro without the pressure of, you know, you have to do this, but it's like, no, your history matters, you're part of this. So I love that. So I love taking artifacts over there. Yeah.
Jay Howard (01:03:18.554)
That's so cool. Well, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me today. It's always a joy to talk to someone who has found their calling. So thanks a lot.
Tracie Gieselman France (01:03:35.968)
Thank you.
Jay Howard (01:03:37.91)
If any listener has heard their own work mentioned in the course of this conversation, please reach out and if you'd like to talk about it further and we, or if you have any corrections, and we could definitely do that.
The hero question
One question I try to ask every guest is the hero question. And so the way I phrase it is this.
Who is one person in your personal pantheon of heroes and why? And I'm looking for a public figure rather than a family member. And everyone I pose a question to, they're like, well, Jay, I'm glad that you sent me this in writing ahead of time and didn't just like ambush me with this question. But I'm just always fascinated by the people who inspire people, you know? And I think we all have.
Tracie Gieselman France (01:04:42.24)
Yes.
Tracie Gieselman France (01:04:47.936)
Gosh, this is really hard. So, public figures I was torn because LeVar Burton, of course, from Reading Rainbow. Everyone loves him.
Jay Howard (01:04:58.746)
Oh, yes.
Tracie Gieselman France (01:05:03.392)
Because I'm in the archives and I'm so invested in the collections, I have to use someone from the archive field, or archival collections actually, and that's Alberta Ellis, who I've mentioned numerous times today. Yes, she... Yeah, she was an amazing woman who...
Jay Howard (01:05:17.298)
Yes. Well, can you, yeah, tell me more about her.
Tracie Gieselman France (01:05:25.748)
…had at least three businesses at one point. She understood the need in the community. So she opened Alberta's Hotel during the segregation times because she could have anyone coming through town if they needed a place to stay. They were welcome at Alberta's. But she also had soldiers coming from Fort Leonard Wood, entire units would stay together. So it wasn't a segregated hotel at all. She had the hotel that also could kind of serve as overflow from what I understand of hotel, you know, people who need to stay in the hotel. Excuse me. And then she had a music club out that way too called the Crystal Lounge. And she was also working full-time at Southwestern Bell at that time too. So she's just this amazing woman who served a need in the community and just expressed this resilience and she's just amazing and just the entire family, but she is special.
Jay Howard (01:06:28.386)
That's beautiful. Nice. Well, that's cool. Thank you for sharing that.
Tracie Gieselman France (01:06:35.968)
Yeah, thank you.
Signing off
Jay Howard (01:08:51.07)
And then I mentioned, and I'll put in the show notes, the website and those few other items I found online, the Ozarks Watch Video Magazine, stuff like that. Was there anything else you would like me to link to or any other shout outs?
Tracie Gieselman France (01:09:03.133)
I haven't watched that one since it aired.
Thank you for including the website, because I think that'll send everyone to us and then State Historical as well. I think there's still a link. So I think that covers everything, if people will still use a website.
Jay Howard (01:09:16.917)
Absolutely.
Jay Howard (01:09:25.89)
Good. Oh, they do. Well, when I was researching, I like really focused on the website and went through, there's like 10 pages of collections, alphabetically or by subject and stuff. And I went through each one of them just to get a sense of the variety. Yeah. Cause that's my researcher brain. I don't wanna leave any stone unturned, you know? What if there's something cool under that stone?
Tracie Gieselman France (01:10:19.388)
No, yeah, I appreciate it. I actually commented to Jeffrey. I'm like, wow, he did his research!