To listen to me today. Again, my name is Elizabeth Reardon and I'm the lead outreach and instruction librarian at the University of Iowa Libraries, Special Collections and Archives, which is a mouthful to say.
But basically, my big part of my job is of course doing events, but also instruction here in our department, which we do about 200 or so classes.
Every year, which is pretty remarkable for the staff size that we have here. So. Today I'm going to talk a little bit about special collections, what we are and what we do.
And I'm going to focus on some of the collections that we have that have really helped people with their own genealogy research here at U Iowa, as well as some stories.
That I just like to tell. Because well. I like to talk and you guys are my captive audience at this point.
So. I will say as some of you heard when you were waiting for this presentation to start that I did spend a lot of my time coming to IGS when my mom worked there back in the 19 nineties.
So it feels good to be talking with all of you today about. You know, what we have and what I know, get to be in charge of here.
. And I want to give a quick shout out to my mom who's in the audience today in celebrating her birthday, who's in the audience today, in celebrating her birthday.
Yeah.
So happy birthday, Moody. And who knows, Mom, maybe all those visits? To IGS is what primed me to become a librarian.
So this is all your fault.
But let's start, shall we? What a special collections anyway? What's so special about us?
So the simple answer is or just a unique collecting part of the University of Iowa Libraries.
We're located on the third floor of the main library and anyone that includes all of you can come and visit us Monday through Friday when we are open, which is 9 a. M. To 4 p.
M. Tuesdays were open to 6 PM. Now, special collections.
The term is actually an umbrella term for several rare special repositories and archives found at the main library.
And that includes rare books, manuscripts, and maps. This is probably the largest part of our collection.
It includes our oldest book, which is a cuneiform tablet from 4,000 years ago, that's pictured here at the top left.
Anyone want to guess what it says? Anyone have an idea? It's actually just a receipt for a goat.
So, 4,000 years ago, someone bought a goat and we can have documentation of it today. So, but it also includes our miniature book collection, which we have over 4,000 miniature books.
You can see a little one in a nutshell here at the bottom. Medieval manuscripts, early printed books.
We have a huge science fiction collection, probably one of the largest in the United States, and we have thousands of artist books.
So we have a fantastic collection for anyone interested in the history of the book. We also have hundreds of manuscript collections including the popular Zachary Culinary Manuscript collection.
We're also have the papers of notable names like journalist Tom Brokaw, author Iris Murdoch, filmmaker Richard Mybaum, US Vice President Henry A.
Wallace, etc. But we also have countless collections of diaries, letters, scrapbooks, field notes, pictures, and more just from regular folks who have lived in the state or been part of the state in some way, right?
We also have thousands of maps, including an impressive collection of Iowa maps and atlases dating to the mid 18 hundreds.
We're also home to the University of Iowa Archives. This archives has everything to do with the university and campus life.
Thousands of pictures of students, faculty and events here in the bottom right hand corner. You can actually see some students.
Whoever casket for Kentucky Whiskey and this is during prohibition during our Mecha Day Parade.
So lots of history in these photos as well. In this part of our collection, there's even presidential letters, blueprints of buildings, and information on student organizations.
So if you have any family connection to the university, there's a good chance they might be somewhere in the archives.
We're also fortunate to have the Iowa Women's Archives, which collects the stories of women who have lived and impacted Iowa in some way.
This collection has grown to include collection areas such as women in politics, African-american women in Iowa, women's health issues, the suffragette movement, oral histories from the Latinx community and Jewish women in Iowa.
And I can't stress enough. How rare it is to have a whole archive dedicated to women.
So we really are lucky to have this resource for students and community members. And I highly recommend coming to check them out.
They've actually got their own reading room located also on the third floor of the main road library and I think they are just so much fun to go exploring.
So. That's my 2 cents on that.
Then we're also home to the International Data Archive. And this is curated by Timothy Scheipe.
This archive follows the historic data movement that emerged in Europe after the horrors of World War One.
It's often satirical and nonsensical material. This anti-art art movement. And yes, you heard me correctly.
Was a reaction to the sl, senselessness of war. And while the movement didn't last very long, it heavily influenced later art movements of the twentieth century.
So as surrealism, neo-futurism, and the avant-garde.
Now I have a student once asked me, why did Iowa? Get this collection like why does some state in the middle of the United States have this very important year.
But the real reason is we had a professor here in the 19 seventys who was a data expert and his who really helped build this collection up.
And so we're very fortunate to have this collection here.
And to go along with the data collection, we are now home to the Marvin and Ruth Sackner archive of concrete and visual poetry.
This is the largest collection of its kind in the world, roughly 75,000 pieces. Of and the SECOND or archive includes 3D art artist books and papers from some of the leading concrete poetry artists of the twentieth century like Tom Phillips.
So it's hard to tell in these photos a little bit, but if you don't know what concrete and visual poetry is, it really explores how words and letters can become and form their own interpretations of art.
So a lot of blackout poetry, movements like that, typing, to form an image on a page.
Those are all forms of concrete poetry. And we now have 75,000 pieces.
So Sackner's archive is really a good example of how archives and special collections are changing and evolving.
And while a lot of our collection is still the traditional books and paper, we also hold a lot more artifacts and artwork.
That the archives used to not hold in the past. So our collections include items like ceremonial swords.
We've got flapper dresses and kilts, we've got dolls and Emmy awards and lots of hair clippings and even toenail clippings.
Oh.
Which is as gross as you can imagine. We even have fast food toys and Spock's ears from season one of Star Trek as part of our popular culture collection.
So archives are dealing with a lot more also born digital material, meaning the papers of an individual are actually not papers, but on hard drives and flash drives.
We're seeing more and more of this from our recent acquisitions. And this poses his own difficulties for sure.
And the archives are having to change and adapt to accommodate for these new items in during the collection.
So how do we preserve things like plastic? How do we make sure we capture all of this data on hard drives from outdated technology before it becomes completely unreadable for patrons.
And we can't even get it off the hard drive anymore. And the answer for all of these questions is We don't fully know yet.
We're still exploring a lot and technology is changing so quickly that we're having to kind of roll with the punches on a lot of things.
But before a lot of people thought if I put it on a DVD or a CD, it's sound.
But now we're finding that CDs only last about 50 years. They're not as secure as we once thought.
So, We're kind of trying to figure this out as we as we move along but I think we've got a lot of the top minds working on some of these issues.
To navigate these quick changes. And I will come back and talk to you more when we have answers.
And this seems like a really good segue to kind of talk about our digital resources. So the internet, you know, has completely changed the research.
Game for a lot of historians. There is so much out there and it's easy to think that everything you need is online already, but it's important to remember that for everything that is found on a libraries digital platform, there's so much more underneath that hasn't been digitized.
I'd say about 3% of our archives here at UIOA has been digitized and put up on Iowa Digital Library.
Some of the issues with digitization might be copyright or finding a vendor who works with outdated technologies, finding enough storage to store these digital files.
I mean, I know they're digital, but you still have to have a server to store them on, which can take up a lot of space and is also really expensive.
And the main issue with a lot of digitization is the expense. So getting them digitized and up online is very time-consuming and it's incredibly expensive no matter what format you're dealing with.
So a lot of our projects actually require grants to make it happen. Recently to kind of give you an idea we got a $30,000 grant.
Yep, $30,000 grant. To help digitize 500 audio tapes that we had. So not everything is on the cloud honestly because it's too expensive and I don't think and everything will always be on the cloud.
I think you'll always have to go to somewhere in person because it's just impossible to store everything online.
But besides, if you're like me though, you really like the thrill of diving into archival boxes and getting your hands on a piece of history.
So I want to now kind of shift a little bit about I talked about who we are, but let's talk about some of the collections that might be worth exploring here at UI.
I would say that the majority of what we have is more contextual research for genealogists. We don't have a lot of census records or immigration lists.
Or other governmental documents that are often key parts of your research. But we do have a few exceptions that are scattered through our archives and I'll talk about that here in a little bit.
Okay.
But through our hundreds, if not thousands of letters, diaries, and photographs, we can offer context or a larger picture of specific times and places.
In history that your ancestors lived through. For those of you wanting to better understand your grandpa's experience fighting in World War II, We have collections that can help you fill in some of those holes.
For those of you curious about what your ancestors cooked for the family. Or what movies they might have watched and rural Iowa, we have things that can help you connect you to that part of your past.
So essentially, we hold stories that can help you tell your own story. And what I'm going to tell you is a few of my favorites.
So by far the most genealogy questions we get have to do with folks who had family who attended the university.
Questions vary from. I think my great grandma came here, but I'm not quite sure.
My dad was involved in basketball during the fiftys. Do you have anything on him or the team?
Questions like my relative taught at the university from 1929 to 1,938. What do you have on him and his classes?
And so there are a lot of different avenues to explore when trying to trace family who came to the university.
So I'm going to cheat a little bit and I'm going to start with the yearbooks and I'm cheating here because the yearbooks are actually online.
It's because it's one of the greatest. For folks and they were getting so heavily used that we had to put them online because it was patron driven.
But you can go to Iowa Digital Library. You can look up the your books or you can come to the reading room and they're in our in our reading room and you can just pull them off.
The shelf right there. But I feel like this is one of the greatest resources for people who are just curious whether great grandma in fact was.
A student here at the university.
But something that is not digitized though is our commencement programs. And this is a really great resource as well.
Not only does it include a full list of graduates. But you'll also get information about the music play that graduation speech is given orations.
The guests of honor that were at each each ceremony. And so there are boxes and boxes and boxes of these commencement programs.
And there's ones for different colleges too. So like the law has one, the dental program has one, liberal arts has them as well.
I do want to take a moment. To really appreciate this. Commencement program because I just love it so much.
It's from 1895. And I love the font choice. I pulled this out the other day and all the programs before, 1,895 I'm going to be honest are really dull to look at they're just plain printed there's nothing really fancy about them and then I don't know what happens in 1,895 but all of us when they're like we're
gonna We're gonna try a different font. We're gonna add some pictures. We're gonna make it embossed.
It's beautiful and it's creepy font. And so I'm just taking a moment to really appreciate.
This is a side note of me appreciating the font and this program.
And so when I talk also about context that we can provide, one of the best resources are the student scrapbooks that we have at the University Archives.
So I love the various scrapbooks from our collection that cover a wide span of time. And they are wonderful caps.
Time capsules of the university. And I think they offer a rich resource for folks looking at a specific time period for their family.
Because they often include programs of events happening, there's newspaper clippings of the big stories, there's club information in these books.
And I tried taking a couple pictures and I was not really satisfied so I'm gonna actually use the document camera.
This is a This is a time when I'm going to use the document camera now. To kind of show you a couple of my favorites.
Can everyone see that? Okay?
We got this. Okay. So this is Emma Blights scrapbook. She was a student here from 1,912 to about 1,91619 17.
And what I really love about Emma Blythe here. Is that she scraped books like I do?
Where she just literally throws everything in anything right into this book. Including whole flowers, Stemenol.
There's a bag of chocolates, or at least we think it's chocolate. It's disintegrated so much that you can't really tell.
But here you've got Look, we've even got a hat PIN that you saved here.
Information from the Halloween events that she's done and this little teacup. Is a letter that you can unravel.
If we keep going here. What I love about her scrapbook is there's also tons and tons of dance cards.
So dances were really, really popular. Here on campus and we have whole collections actually dedicated to dance cards.
Or you can come and see them here. In the scrap book. So this is a Halloween dance that happened on campus with her sorority that she was part of.
She was part of a literary society too, which I don't know if you can see, but there's newspaper clippings about the literary society that she was part of.
Here you have a flower should just kind of.
So again, here's these dance cards and these dance cards are really fantastic. See if you can see that a little bit better.
Because they'll also talk about where it was held. So this was at Majestic Hall. Sometimes they'll mention the band that came in, who the chaperones were.
You see she danced with a Mr. Bailey at 1 point. Yeah, Duncan's orchestras who came in.
And so they're again really great. Captures of life on campus. And here.
I'm gonna move, you've got a whole program. From the engineers Mecha Day.
So you get a sense from 1913. Everything the different companies that were in Iowa City advertising for Mecha Day.
And then here in the corner is my very favorite part here. Can everyone see that okay? You probably can't read it, but there's this really weird goopy thing.
Underneath it says February, the seventh, 1,913. Skating with the Delta Chi bunch.
Mr. Stocum, choose gum while skating with and then the name is actually ripped off.
But she saved the chewing gum of this gentleman, and it's disgusting and wonderful all at the same time.
But this is kind of the stuff that you you can experience in some of these scrapbooks and I.
I absolutely adore it. The other one that I really love here.
Excuse me, I hope no one's getting motion sickness as I move the camera. So this is Janet Pieces scrapbook.
She says, to Grandma from Janet Christmas, 1962.
And it says life at SUI. So this is when we were at the State University of Iowa.
And what she does for her grandma She's got pictures, but then. Here's her roommates, Tina, Jan, and Anne.
Looking, I don't know. They're pointing to their dimples. But she maps out her whole entire day starting at 7 30 all the way till I think like 1030.
For her grandma. So you see the whole day in the life of this college student in 1962.
So off to the first class by 9 15. And it is literally like checking out the mailbox. It's all these mundane things, but to me, I think it's the sweetest gift you could get your grandma.
We have at night. She's typing a letter to her mom and dad on a typewriter.
That's 5 PM. Let me get to washing her dirty clothes. Followed by ironing her clean clothes, you know, at 9 PM.
So again, If you had someone who was here in the sixtys but you don't have a lot about their life here in the sixties.
I mean stuff like this is such a great resource. To come and check out. Because you get at the end there's also newspaper clippings that I think her grandma saved.
That mentioned Janet, cause here she is honored at Iowa. So there's other extra information in there as well.
So I'm going to re-share my screen.
Okay.
So one area that is really growing in popularity is also for family research is our letters and diaries from various wars in US history.
So particularly World War 2. And now we're actually seeing more interest in people looking up, the Vietnam War.
Which I'm gonna be very honest. We don't have a ton of collections yet that cover the Vietnam War.
We have more on the protests. So we are looking to try to expand that part of our collection because we're seeing such an increase of.
Attentive attention to that. So. Some of these war collections are digitized, but there is so much more that's not online.
I would say letters by far make up the bulk of our civil war and World War II collections.
In fact, pictured here, you can see some air mail letters. To a Miss Evelyn Burton.
And again, this is me going to tell you a story. So I got to. Taken these letters.
These letters are from Carol Steinbeck. Who wrote the letters to Miss Evelyn Burton.
And I had the pleasure of interviewing Carol and he donated these letters because he wanted his time remembered in the war.
Him and Evelyn went on one date. Before he shipped out. To go fight.
And she went off to go become a nurse. And their whole courtship then is over these letters, this this mail.
And he proposed to her in a letter from France when he realized he'd make it home safe, which when he told me that, you know.
Just hit you right in the chest. And then he complained to me when I was interviewing him.
He was so mad at Evelyn when he got back because she made him wait 11 whole days before they got married.
So he was so mad he had to wait.
But you know other things that we have are posters and propaganda. There's peace protest items.
And the other opposition pieces to the war. We have telegrams and we have lots of photos of the men and women who served.
Or were active in their community. There's even artwork from soldiers including original artwork from screenwriter Stuart Stern.
He's famous most for his script Rebel Without a Cause. If there's any James Dean's fans out there.
Stern was a student actually here at U Iowa and he served at the in the war fighting at the Battle of the Bulge and his collection capers captures his time on the European front through various photos that he was taking and sketches.
He was making at the time. And as we know now, you know, a lot of soldiers didn't talk about the war when they came home, or any of their experiences.
Tom Brokaw writes about it in great is generation where, you know, No one felt comfortable sharing these stories.
They didn't feel like it was important or it was too painful. And so I think a lot of people who like to come and dig through these collections.
They're just trying to find out more and trying to get a better understanding about their family members who may have fought.
In these wars, trying to better understand what the holes that are missing in their own narration because no one wanted to talk about this experience.
At least that was what I heard a lot from people. I did an exhibit on World War 2 in the greatest generation and a lot of people came up to me and talked to me and said, I, you know, my.
Dad fought, but he never talked about it. So it's so great to see these items because I finally get a better understanding of what he went through.
So very similar to our war collections, we have several letters, pictures, and diaries. And even company papers from when Iowa became a state and shortly after, right?
So like late our mid to late 18 hundreds. These items are a bit more scattered across various collections.
And sometimes they're even talked away into someone else's genealogical work that they donated to the libraries.
So, but you know, we can help you track them down if this is something you're interested in looking into.
So we have things like this booklet here. It's called Iowa the Home for Immigrants.
Which was sent out in the, in 1,870 and it was printed in many different languages to various European countries.
To attract immigrants to settle in Iowa. Now the German edition was partially popular, selling out of its 15,000 copies so quickly they had to print more.
So the book contains history of the state, geological features, government policies, education opportunities, railroad information.
They even have a section on Sunday rights. So like, can you take Sunday off? What do you get on a Sunday?
There's a whole section on how to make how much a team of horses and oxen cost so you know just how much a team of horses and oxen cost so you know just how much it's going to cost to run a farm.
And it's chock full of statistics at the time. So, you know, how many people from Ireland are here?
How many people from Germany and Sweden and France to kind of entice other immigrants to come like, look, there's already a settlement of German folks here, why don't you come and join them?
I really think this is a rich document for anyone whose ancestors were coming from Europe. You know, why did they pick Iowa?
Did they read something like this? Did the low prices and descriptions of rich prairie soil really draw them in.
Being able to see this literature. That was directly marketed towards immigrants is a really fascinating thing to study when doing your own genealogical research, I think.
Because I often want to know. What drew my ancestors to Iowa?
Now, as part of this pioneer era as well, I'm going to sneak in the Zachary Culinary manuscripts, which I mentioned earlier.
We have cooking manuscripts that range from the 16 hundreds all the way up until the twentieth century.
From around the world and that includes some wonderful manuscripts from the nineteenth century US. One manuscript in particular that we received actually not that long ago is the Mrs. Garcia's cookbook, which is pictured here.
And I know you're a little bit confused because it's says Connecticut on here, so why on earth am I talking about it?
And I'm going to show you a little bit and talk a little bit more about this.
I'm going to stop share real quick. We're gonna focus. So like I said, We've only had this book for a little while and it needs a lot of research still.
But what we know is that Miss Mary Hebert from Connecticut. Oh, I'm sorry it is still.
Owned this. Book. I hope that's a little bit better for you guys. Owned this and then she got married.
And became Mrs. Garside, I know it's really hard to read Long Creek Cottage.
Des Moines County, Iowa. So she reloaded to Des Moines County, Iowa sometime in the 18 fortys probably.
Early 1840 s And what I love about this book. Gonna lift it up a little bit so you can see it a little bit better.
Is you know the first part we've got in she even attempts to do an index and she gets down to page 2 and then she gives up.
Reading the index, but we have, you know, putting recipes. You even see things for boiled Indian pudding.
So she's thinking about ingredients here in Iowa. There's a lot of really great recipes that you can try to make yourself.
Washington cake is really popular. I'm in a lot of early manuscripts. And then you get things along with the manuscripts like poems or notes from friends back in Connecticut.
So this is from a friend. Dr. Kun, it looks like. And he's writing to Miss Mary Hubbard.
And he has got a whole section whole like pro's poem. That he's written her. And then it goes back to recipes, right?
But what makes this book really fascinating.
As we're still working on recipes, she's even pasted in pictures.
Gonna go through a little bit here. All of a sudden, as we get further into the book, You notice that different hands start adding to the cookbook.
And we've got a prepared glue. Recipe. So you get or cake, which I have no idea what port cake is, followed by a glue recipe.
And then how to make your own soap. And then you keep going down. And here's how you treat.
Colic in a horse. You keep going and again you go back to some poetry and things like that.
But then the next page is full of how to deworm your horse.
And then what I really love is that as we get even further into it, this is definitely not her hand.
This is somebody else's and they've got a recipe if you will for potato. So how much phosphate do you want when this manure that you're trying to make?
And then how much should you put on fields? So we have a book. That starts off as like, here's some really pretty cakes and some puddings and even current wine and then you She moves out to Iowa.
And all of a sudden turns into, alright, how do you make your own glue? How are, I mean, there's a wine recipe in there too.
How do you like? Deal with worms and the dog and the horse. And then potato manure.
And so you really see the shift of this book and how it's used on the farm itself. As she moves out and so it really tells you what does someone who's running a farm in Iowa in the early 18 fortys.
What do they need to know in this book can tell you about life as a as a farmer in Iowa in the early or mid to 8,008, hundreds, right?
So it's stuff like this that I really find fascinating and that I I think are such a great resource for folks.
Sherry, how am I doing on time? Okay.
So another collection I want to talk to you about. Our Fort Madison, Iowa State Penitentiary Papers.
So this collection was literally a rescue mission of sorts, as a bunch of it was being stored in the basement of the old prison.
Which I think you can all imagine the conditions of an 18 hundreds prison basement. And parts of it were also stored in a hay loft in a barn nearby.
And so we got the call that the stuff was there and we quickly sent out a bunch of cars to go grab as much of it as we could.
And a lot of it needs cleaning and conservation work. And it's technically owned by the State Historical Society of Iowa, but they have graciously made an agreement with us that we're holding on to it for a couple years because I do use it frequently in classes.
And so a little history about the prison. So Fort Madison is on the very eastern part of the state by the Mississippi River down south there.
The prison was established in 1,839, so 7 years before Iowa even became a state.
And it continued to run all the way till the 2 thousands when a new state of the art facility was built right next door.
So it that made it the oldest operating penitentiary actually west of the Mississippi. And what's remarkable about this collection As you get to see nearly 2 centuries of evolving ideologies and procedures regarding imprisonment and treatment of incarcerated people in Iowa.
As well as practices in the US as a whole. Like. Trends of a punishment essentially. Now there are mug shots, there's log books and time records of prison work, there's chaplain records, so interviews with the chaplain and if he thinks this person can be rehabilitated or not.
There's some really amazing things also called. Per 1 million cards. So before fingerprints really helped identify a person, you had these cards.
And they were created by a The idea was created by a Paris police clerk, Alphonse Bertillon, who was tired of seeing repeat offenders get away because police couldn't find them in the records, right?
They had no good record system. So, you would give a fake name if you got a rest and no one could trace you again and see if you had actually committed several crimes beforehand.
And so these cards were meant to help identify people held in police custody. It used 14 physical measurements like length and breadth of head, length of forearm to middle finger, length of left foot, etc.
There was a photographic portrait that was included with a front view as well as a profile view.
And then they also marked any facial or bodily characteristics like moles, embalding, and a notation of any scars or tattoos.
So on the screen here, you have a gentleman who was arrested for keeping a house of ill fame.
So a brothel. And then what you can see on the back is that he's got 2 tattoos of a red and blue star.
He's also got a tattoo of a red and blue cross. The He's got a deformed hand.
They don't give any more information about what that means, but we do know that there's something with his hand and then he's got a few scars that are marked as well.
And so you would be able to cross reference, especially the tattoos, to see if he had been a repeat offender.
And there are hundreds if not over a thousand of these cards in the collection most of them ordered by prisoner number and as of right now you can't search these cards and find them online and you can't search by last name right now, which is something I'm working on fixing so it's easier to see if your family member is actually documented in these cards.
But as of right now, you have to contact us and we'll help you. Will help you look.
So I find that this collection has received more and more attention from folks looking for their family. You know, I recently helped a woman find her great-grandpa who served time in the late 1,008 hundreds.
In this in this prison and he had actually been arrested because he abandoned his family and she knew nothing about this part of her story.
And so while it wasn't a really happy story to help her find, but it was still part of her family history and she was very grateful to actually be able to put this piece of the puzzle.
And to her own story. You know, we had another man reach out. For information about his own father.
And when we provided him with a scan of actually one of these bartillion cards. He said he cried.
He had never seen a picture of his dad. His mother who was dying at the time. He actually was able to show her the picture of this card and have this very frank conversation about the man she had married.
But never spoke of. And so he said it brought a lot of closure to her, but also a huge closure to this part of his life too.
And that also strikes you right in the chest, I think. So this collection is still very much in flux.
Much of it is unprocessed and in need of conservation. But I hope these couple stories I shared show you just how much it's needed.
Not only do we get information about the person, but about the state of Iowa, I think.
Who is moving through the state? Where are these people coming from? Sometimes you can see where they're born, right?
What is happening in cities versus the country? You'll notice that there are actually a lot of arrests.
For something called poultry larson, so stealing chickens essentially. And a lot of those crimes were happening when our economy was hardest hit.
So you get a lot of them during the depression or during the recession of 8, 1918.
And so these items, these cards and these log books, they really provide a literal snapshot of our society at the time.
And I think they are fascinating. I think they're a rich resource for anyone who would like to do more research about that part of Iowa or if you have family.
Who might have served there.
Now the final collection I really want to talk about. Have several folks that visit for genealogical work is the women's Christian Temperance Union of Iowa Records or some I'm gonna abbreviate and call it the WCTU, right?
So the first WCTU of Iowa held a conference in 1,874 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
And what this did is it united 19 different groups across Iowa under the leadership of a woman named EA Wheeler.
Now that same year actually, the national WCTU held its first convention as well. And they made any Whitmer.
Who was from Kia Cook, Iowa, their first president. So Iowa is very active in the women's Christian Temperance Union, both state level and national level.
So the WCTU members were active socially and politically. They did a lot to change politics in whatever state they were part of, including leading a charge for women's right to vote.
So a lot of the suffragette movement is tied to the women's Christian Temperance Union.
You know I don't want to stereotype here but because this is a women's group They were great record keepers and very thorough.
And so I really appreciate this group because this collection is huge, super detailed, lots of lists of members.
But I would say that while the Collection contains copious amounts of newspapers and scrapbooks. A lot of the records from meetings and things like that.
The reason a lot of folks come to look at this collection is actually because of this one book. So in 1882.
The WCTU of Iowa founded the Benedict home in Des Moines, and maybe some of you have heard of this.
It was a reformatory for quote, fallen women. Unquote. So over 1,900 single pregnant women or former sex workers lived at the home between 1,882 and 1,943.
In nearly 1,600 babies were born in the home. Many of them put up for adoption.
And so while, and while their young women had to go through one year of Christian training and relatives were not allowed to visit at all.
These women could get up to maybe 2 letters a week, but they would have to know that these letters would be inspected by the supervisors of the Benedict Home before being delivered.
So they were completely isolated basically for a whole year. But then after, 1,943, the Benedict home served as a retirement home for WCTU members and later as a shelter for recovering addicts.
The records that we have only provide information on the babies born and given up for adoption. For a very narrow time frame.
So from 1889 to 1905, that's what we have. So a lot of people who come to look at this book Don't find what they're looking for, which is unfortunate, but We do have at least that little timeframe to offer.
A lot of the records actually about the children in this house. Are in a private collection. That isn't as easily accessible.
We do know the person who owns it so we could give you their name and information if you are looking into more into this.
So you just got to give us a call and we'll try to help you as best we can.
So I would say that. This is a really important research for a lot of people who are trying to again fill in some holes about their own family history.
And then I do wanna say that a lot of collections that we have also contain their own genealogy work.
So there's lots of people who donate family papers or anything like that. That include their own research.
And so sometimes I think this is a really great for people who maybe are just starting out on their own journey and don't quite know how to do research or are still learning.
And want to see how other people do it. Or maybe you've got all the information you're just trying to find how to present it to your friends and family like how do you want to write the book?
So you can come and check out books that other people have written. About their own genealogy to kind of get a feel of what people have done in the past to help inspire how you want to present it to your own family.
And so, you know, I highly recommend just coming to check out other people's genealogy work in our collection.
You never know. You might be connected to one of these families and discover a whole other family line you didn't know about.
When coming in to do your own research. So. With that.
Thank you again for coming. There are several ways to get in touch with us. Like I said, we're here on the main library on campus.
We're open Monday through Friday, 9 to 4, Tuesday still 6 PMI get it that a lot of folks work during that time and so that can be a very difficult way to get a hold of us if you can't visit in person, but you can always email us questions.
I'm happy to meet with people over Zoom if they have questions that they want to talk to me about.
We can even get you connected with independent researchers. Who can help you in your research if you're unable to get here in person.
And I'm also always very happy to pull things for a group visit. So if you in a group visit.
So if you in a group want to come and visit us, I'm more than happy to pull some things that I talked about today You can always reach us at lib.
Spec at you. Or you can call me and email me. Elizabeth Ruden, U.
Iowa.edu. So thanks so much folks.
Okay, now we're gonna take some questions. I have some in chat and the first one it says.
Is there a special collection? Of you of I students who went to World War 2 and were killed in action or D and C.
I'm not sure what DNC, Janet means. So do we have, do you have a response for that, Liz?
So, there are records of soldiers who died in World War 2. At the Iowa Memorial Union actually has really good records because the Iowa Memorial Union, it was actually built to honor World War One vets and they keep records also of everyone, all the students who have unfortunately, pass them more.
So we can get you a list, definitely.
Okay, all right, and Gail, you ask a question, how do you cotillion? Card in the penitentiary.
Yeah, I'm gonna. The Britillion cards, so I'm gonna spell it. Yep.
Go ahead. Oh, Bertillion.
I'm going to spell it in the chat. It's BERT. ILON.
So. And French you would say, Bertillon, but I call it Bertillian cause I'm here in Iowa.
But, so I'm not quite sure how you pronounce it if you do the Bertillon or Bertillion.
I've heard it both ways.
She has spelled it in chat. So that's good to know. Okay. I'm gonna ask a question of my own.
Is there anything on line that actually describes record groups. I know you don't have the records online, but do you have?
The equivalent of, yeah.
Okay.
Hmm. Like. Yeah, so we have online finding aids and actually If you guys don't mind, I'm going to maybe pull up.
And kind of show you how that works just because that's the librarian in me, right?
Second. Alright, I wanna make sure that you guys can see.
Yeah. Yes. Okay.
Can everyone see my my screen? Or it's the special collections website. So info hawk plus is for all of our books and bound material.
Archive spaces for our manuscript collections, right? So let's say you're interested in World War 2.
You search World War 2. What comes up is all of our collections that have to do with World War 2.
I would also say World War II can be a little bit tricky. Because you can also type it out.
World War 2 and sometimes get different collections that come up because of how it's worded and how whoever was doing the metadata for this decided to put WW 2 but not world war so I highly recommend sometimes playing around with language to get different results sometimes.
But like here we have a World War II collection, for example. And this is one that I mentioned.
This is what we call our online finding aid. So nothing is on here necessarily. But it tells you everything that we have in the collection.
So here on the right hand side, you're going to see a dropdown menu of different people.
So we've got Raymond's memoirs here. We've got correspondence from Harry O and Connie Sanders.
So again, a couple that are writing back and forth. This includes negatives, things like that. You're going to notice British propaganda is here.
And this propaganda was actually dropped from planes. I do know that. So this gives you an information of all all of the material that's actually in the collection.
Yes. Okay.
Is that what you kind of asking, Teresa? Okay. And so this is kind of fun just to.
To kind of look around and you know here on the filters on the right hand side you can search just Iowa women's archives.
So if you just want to look at collections. That so War Brides and World War II papers.
This is a really fascinating collection too. So lots of different ways that you can kind of narrow your searches a little bit.
But of course, if you ever hit a roadblock. And your research. I will say archive space is a little bit clunky.
I'm not going to lie. And it can be a little hard to navigate sometimes. But there's this really great button on our main page.
Let's ask a library and our archivist. And I really have to drive this point home to students.
You guys get it. You know how helpful archivists and librarians are. But if you ever run into a roadblock because archive space isn't playing nice.
Go ahead and hit this button, shoot us an email. We get back to you in a couple days at the most.
We try to get back to you in 24 h unless you write us Friday night. Then you'll hear from us next week on Monday, but.
This is an easy way to get a hold of us. Is just going to our website and pressing that button.
We are happy. Happy to, talk to you. I really love getting I'm gonna switch my video so you can actually see my face.
I really love getting questions from folks because You know, I get stuck in my routine sometimes and getting reference questions from you guys.
Gets me out to explore more via our collection. I don't even know half of what we have yet.
I've been here about 5 years, 7 years. And I, I don't know everything, obviously that's in our collection and I find something new every day and I love it and I find something new because I often get a question from somebody and they're like, do you have something like this?
So. Know that it it's been 5 years and I don't even know everything that we have so there's lots for you to explore is what I'm saying.
Okay, all right, let's open this up. Do you have anybody else has question unmute yourself and ask a question for from Liz.
Oh, come on now. I know you guys got questions. It's gonna be quite either that or she did a wonderful job and covered everything that you could possibly want to know.
I'm gonna go with that.
So that's it. Okay, okay. Here's Pat. Pat wants to know what your phone number is.
Yeah, I can never remember my actual office phone number, so let me get my phone number for you.
It is and I'll type it in the chat as well. It's 3 1 9. 3 8 4.
2802.
Thank you. Okay. So.
Jeanette says talk a bit about how to donate items for consideration.
Yeah, so we have a collection policy that we try to stick with and so if you have something you think we might find interesting there's a curator that you would contact.
So if you have books, Eric Ensley is our curator for at books if you have something that is more family papers and things like that.
Margaret Gam is the person to contact. She is the head of the department and she's taking in manuscript collections.
Sometimes I will say right now we are officially out of room. When we're working on getting things onto our offsite storage.
So right now we might tell you hold off just a little bit and then we'll take in collections again once we get more moved out to the annex or off-site storage.
So, but we, love to hear what people have. We're interested. We want to keep collecting papers.
Iowa Women's Archives, if you would like to donate to them, it's Janet Weaver who you talk to.
And again, you can shoot us an email. What we would like to know is like what you have and and we would think about how it fits into the rest of our collections and if it fills any holes that we might have.
You mentioned an annex. So if we were to come visit you. There's a possibility that what we wanna look at is not on site.
Do we need make arrangements in advance?
Yeah, so typically if you come and visit. Excuse me. You can make requests. Ahead of time so they're waiting for you.
And that's really good if the item is at the annexe. Now if you're looking on our catalog it will say if it's on site or not so you know. And then you can put a.
A request in and it usually takes us about 2 days to get material. Usually less but. We like to say 2 days just in case.
You can also shoot us an email and be like, this is a collection I'm really interested in.
Is it on site? Is it not? And we can let you know as well if you can't find it on the finding aid or anything like that.
So A lot of our collections are still on on site, but. We do have more and more moving out to the annex to make room for more collections.
So it is always worth exploring. Now, I will say like if you're interested in the state penitentiary collection.
That is one you should probably email me about because it is in such flux right now. It's kind of scattered all over as we're cleaning and moving and I'm working on a project like I said to get the last name entered so you don't have to just search by prisoner number.
So if that's something you're interested in seeing, I'm more than happy to help get that arranged for you.
Just shoot me an email.
Logistics, I'm gonna ask a question. How's parking if we want to come see you?
Yeah.
Because I know I remember my graduate work in Iowa. Parking was an issue.
Parking is always in it, especially here's here's my hot tip. If you want good parking, you wait until the students are gone during winter break or summer.
Okay.
But. There's also, we got really fortunate. So we're located. On Burlington and Madison Street, right?
And I'm Burlington and Clinton, there's a parking ramp. I realize you can't see my hand.
There's a parking ramp. So you could park in the parking ramp and walk down a hill. Now if walking and it's not a huge distance but it is up a hill game back and I understand that can be uncomfortable for some folks.
So the Stanley Museum of Art was just built and opened last year. They do have parking underneath their facility.
That you can use it's only for 2 h at a time though. That is the one downside to the parking underneath Stanley.
But so if that's right next door to us, all you would have to do is cross one little street and you're at the library.
Alright. All right. Diane asked, you have any animosa prison records?
I wish we do not because Animosa is referenced on a lot of those prisoner portalian cars that I showed like they were transferred there are coming from Anamosa and I showed like they were transferred there or are coming from Animosa and I wish we did but we do not.
You don't know where they are, do you? By any chance?
I, so I tried to look into something and I was told there was a fire and a bunch of stuff was destroyed.
I don't know if that's true or not. I would check with the state Historical Society of Iowa to see if they might have more information about where the animosa prison records are.
I don't know off the top of my head.
And I'm assuming you could actually get a hold of the Iowa prison. Authorities and ask as well.
Oh sure.
You could probably, yeah. Now a lot of stuff might be under lock and key. I think Animosa might be under more lock and key than Fort Madison, but yeah.
Alright, any other questions?
Speak up if you don't want to type, you can do that. Yeah, what do we got here?
What years do you have for Fort Madison? They were early, weren't they? Yeah.
So a huge bulk, especially with the battalion cards and and things like that, a huge bulk I would say are the 19 twenties and thirties.
But we have records that go as far back as when they opened. So, I would say there are some clear records from the 1870.
It's, little spotty before then I will say. And then up until, but the bulk of it I would say is the teens, 19 teens, twenties and thirties.
Okay. Anybody else got a question here? I've got a lot of people talking about how great it was. You know, thank you so much for your time.
It was great information because this is always very interesting to see what's going on.
Oh, and I, yeah, and I love to talk about our collections. You know, I try to think of ones that would be helpful for all of you, but if you just want to hear stories, I could also do that.
Yeah.
Yeah. On letters, do you want the original letters or would you take scan copies of letters? What what would you prefer?
Okay.
We would like the originals, but I understand that We do work with families sometimes who would like to keep the originals and we do make scans if we feel like the letters are of significance and would be helpful for researchers as a whole.
Okay.
We are very much here at the University of Iowa. We are very much. Hard copy group though because we are also home to center for the book here on campus.
Which is all about the history of the book and making books. That's one of like. One of the world's best facilities of 4 making books, right?
And so that's why our collection about the history of the book is so rich and. We have paper experts here as well.
Some of the world's best paper experts actually teach at University of Iowa, which I think is fantastic.
And so people love having the physical here because they want to study the paper. They want to know what was being used, what kind of things we're doing like that.
In fact, I always laugh when we have people paper experts here. I have to tell them not to lick the pages because apparently you can tell a lot about paper by licking it.
Okay.
I'm almost like, please don't look her. Like our collections. So we would prefer the the originals, but I understand that that can have sentimental reasons.
So we can talk to you about doing scans too and we do have scans of letters in our collection.
Are there other questions from anybody? Actually, we, We've hit the hour. It said, you talked about the immigration guide.
Was there something similar for people from moving other states from other states like Indiana in the 18 nineties?
I am sure Indiana had their own, I think a lot of states especially here in the Midwest. And out West were making something similar to what we were producing to try to entice people to come.
So I'm sure Iowa is not the only state that was doing that. And Diane, I see.
Okay.
Your email and I'm just writing it down real quick so I can follow up with you, okay?
I think that a lady named Janet was offering her help since she lives in the county where Animosa is.
And
Oh, okay.
Okay, all right. Okay. Oh, I'm wanting here so we're looking for Janet yeah, it says here.
Janet Hogue. Yeah.
Okay.
Okay. And she and so I we can contact. Yes.
Back and forth. Good. And you got her email address, Diane, it's in the chat.
Janet's emails there. Okay, good. Okay. Yeah.
Yes. Thank you, Janet.
Okay. Yes.
Okay. Alright, well, we've done our lunch and learned for an hour if nobody else has any other questions.
Okay.
You've got Liz's contact information. So just be prepared. You're gonna start getting a bunch of questions.
I would love it. I love it. Yep.
Maybe you go through there. That's what you're here for. Oh, we will go ahead and end this solution.
Is this session? And we'll see you all. Again, I hope one of these days we'll help see you the next time you're in Des Moines.
Thanks so much. Thanks everyone for coming.
All right. Thank you. Alright, bye bye. Okay, I have to get out of here.
And I have to