The October 2014 meeting of the Madison County Genealogical Society was held at the Edwardsville Public Library on Thursday, October 9, at 7:00 pm.
President, Robert Ridenour, called the meeting to order.
The following is the Treasurer's report for the month of September:
Do you have a family member that
is interested in (or even obsessed with) genealogy? A membership
in the Madison County Genealogical Society would be a very thoughtful
gift. A gift card will be sent to the recipient of any gift membership.
The following memberships are available:
Individual/Family Annual Membership $20.00
Patron Annual Membership $30.00
Life Membership $250.00
Contact our Secretary, Petie Hunter, at [email protected],
about a gift membership.
On October 9, 2014, Dr. Steve Kerber, University Archivist & Special Collections Librarian at SIU-Edwardsville's Lovejoy Library, presented a program titled, A Look at the Archives at SIU-E.
The Lovejoy Library at SIUE has
had a University Archive and Special Collections unit since 1980.
It began with a gentleman who was a faculty member in history.
In anticipation of his retirement, he was asked to come work in
the library. We are mostly about collecting the historical records
of the university, but we also collect other materials relating
to the history of the region comprised of the counties that make
up the Metro-East Area and the St. Louis Metropolitan area. Most
of the materials that we have are stored in the building that
houses Supporting Services, e.g., the Campus Police Department.
Therefore, we do not do a lot of "just drop in visits"
these days because 90% of our material is not in the library.
If any of you wish to do any research, it would be to your advantage
if you would give the library a couple days' notice in case the
material you want to see has to be retrieved from another building.
The library does not aggressively collect materials in the area
of family history and genealogy. That is because there are no
academic programs that teach genealogy and family history. We
do have a few things that might be of interest to the family historian/genealogist.
What the library and archive is doing now is to reach out on the
Internet and deliver our material in that fashion. Partly due
to finances, but mostly to try and serve a broader audience. In
the past two to three years, the library has established a program
for scanning and publishing on-line collections held by archives
and special collections. Several of the collections relate to
the history of the University. We have scanned the yearbooks -
The Muse - from the 1960s; we have scanned the alumnus magazine
- the magazine put out by the alumni association in print - for
about 30 years. We have scanned the official campus newspaper
(as opposed to the Alestle, the student newspaper) up until the
time it was created digitally. We have scanned other collections
as well. We have a couple collections that document the history
of the sport of soccer in the U.S., especially in the St. Louis
area. These may be some of the most complete collections of soccer
history in the world.
We are doing more and more in the way of trying to make it less
necessary for people to visit us in person. In addition to what
we refer to as our digital library collections, there is also
similar activity going on. The library has established what is
called a digital institutional repository. Basically, what this
is supposed to be is the equivalent of a university archive in
the 21st century. That will include university generated documents
and publications that are born digitally, i.e., created using
digital technology. Recently, we have gone back and scanned all
of the annual reports of the SIU System Board of Trustees from
1949 to the time the records began to be created digitally. Also
scanned were a number of transcripts of oral history interviews
that were done in the early 1990s. More of this is planned in
the future. Some of it does relate to genealogical resources.
Around 1982, the Clerk of the Madison County Circuit Court, Willard
Portell, came to the President of SIUE, Earl Lazerson, and asked
if some of the naturalization records that were stored in downtown
Edwardsville could be kept at the University because they were
strapped for space. President Lazerson agreed to that and a significant
portion of the overall number of naturalization records of Madison
County were sent to SIUE. Since these were court records, they
are public records and could not belong to the university. They
belong to the circuit court and are under the jurisdiction of
the Illinois Supreme Court, The majority of these records were
in very old-fashioned metal filing cabinets with very tall narrow
drawers and they were folded in thirds. In addition, there were
63 ledger book indexes to the actual file drawers. However, there
were other things than naturalization records in what was sent.
The documents were primarily proceedings of law cases regarding
people suing for monetary damages and proceeding in chancery people
suing to force an action plus the naturalization records.
The university library was supposed to be about helping people
to use the material in the library, and at the same time, it was
a liability for the library since they were now responsible for
the safekeeping of the records. A solution was worked out after
a few years by negotiations between the Illinois State Archives
and the Circuit Court Clerk. It was decided that the case records
would go to SIU Carbondale to the branch of the Illinois Regional
Archives Depository located there, and the naturalization records
would stay at SIUE.
Recently, on very short notice, the Illinois State Library in
Springfield announced a grant competition to create digital collections.
SIUE has submitted an application to get funding to digitize the
naturalization records for Madison County that are in the custody
of Lovejoy Library. Over the years, probably over a thousand people
from all over the United States have been looking for ancestors
who may have been naturalized in Madison County. The demand for
the information is out there. What will be accomplished if the
grant is received is the records will be digitized, put on-line,
and be easily searchable. Hopefully, the data will be searchable
as a whole for groups that immigrated together, came from the
same town, etc.
This presentation, which was co-sponsored by the Edwardsville Public Library, was very well attended, very well received, and produced several questions and comments from the audience.