BROOKINGS — “Our main goal is to collect history, preserve it and make it available.” For Michele Christian, archivist and special collections librarian for South Dakota State University, and her staff of two assistants that means under one huge and overarching umbrella the guardianship of thousands of material items “related to South Dakota history and life. These two general collections (Archives and Special Collections) include: manuscript and archival materials, books, serials, audiovisual materials and photographs.”

“I am here to stay,” Christian said. A native of Ashton, Iowa, she did her undergraduate work at University of Northern Iowa (Cedar Falls). She then earned a pair of masters degrees — in library sciences and in history— at University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee). She worked at Iowa State University (Ames) for 13 years as a records analyst and archivist before coming to SDSU in 2013.

The SDSU Archives and Special Collections now house the index of about 8,000 cards compiled by the late Bob Bartling.

Christian’s office spaces on the second floor of Briggs Library show a visitor right upfront that SDSU Archives and Special Collections is the repository of “Senator Thomas A. Daschle Papers: correspondence, records, photographs, audiotapes, videotapes and other materials covering Tom Daschle’s professional life.” Any researcher looking for material on one of the state’s most prominent native sons would see this as a most valuable go-to place.

Other prominent South Dakotans, some of them Brookings residents, who have papers and documents to be found here include: Ben Riefel; George and Evelyn Norby; Frank Denholm; and Bob Bartling.

Add to that roster alumni papers: “So if there’s an alum who has written journal entries, diaries, kept business records, whatever, we would take those in,” Christian explained. “Because it shows their life and what they did: how their lives progressed and their careers progressed.”

A rough rule of thumb: the material must be original and have been created by the alumus or alumna and not something they collected or used. No National Geographic magazines, please.

”We collect the university records, of course,” the archivist explained. “But we also collect local history of our region. Usually we work with the state archives so we don’t collect the same thing. I send people to them; they send people to me. It depends on what fits our collections better.”

Papers, papers everywhere

“We are running out of space,” Christian said. By and large the materials in the SDSU archives are paper. The storage space they occupy is measured in linear feet — 12 inches per foot.  The archives have 11,000 linear feet; 3,000 of them are taken up by the Daschle papers. There is no furniture, memorabilia or other physical-space occupying items. One exception: the chair used by Daschle on the U.S. Senate floor. It’s right there in Christian’s office area — and no one is allowed to sit in it. 

Archivist Michele Christian shows off a piece of Native American artwork received from former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and now on …

Pretty much everything — all those paper documents of every sort and size — is in storage.

But there are some materials available there on the upper floor in the library: for example the “South Dakota Collection,” books about South Dakota or written by South Dakota authors. A rare books collection is in a storage area.

Note that this is not a “lending library.” Material can be used onsite but not removed. “Anytime anybody comes in here, we have them fill out the appropriate forms,” Christian explained. “And then we go and pull the items that they wish to see.”

The biggest draw for researchers is the Daschle collection. The history of buildings on campus is also in demand and the Norby collection. And while many documents are being digitized, that doesn’t does not mean the demise of paper documents, which are kept for a just-in-case backup.

“We keep them,” Christian said, of the paper, hard copy back-up. “We make sure they’re properly stored and that they’re set aside; because something might happen to the digital item and we don’t want to take that chance. Or we may not have scanned it in at the appropriate size that people would want to see. Sometimes people want to blow up something very huge. So we scan it to fit that.” 

A real paper chase?

The most challenging part of the job? “Getting everything done,” Christian said, laughing heartily. She’s part of the staff trio — herself; archivist Crystal Gamradt; and digital-initiatives coordinator Anthony Sax — who give a different meaning to paper chase. “We bring in probably about a good 200, 300, 400 linear-feet boxes of materials a year.” 

“It’s a challenge to be able to go through and process all of those and get those available for researchers,” she explained. “It’s a challenge (because) we get over 1,000 questions a year, people from around the world asking questions. We get email and sometimes we get real mail, too.”

But are there in those hundreds of linear-feet boxes coming in each year material that for a variety of reasons can’t be accepted and must in Elvis Presley-fashion be returned to sender? Yes. 

“We do; we have to,” Christian said. “We follow whatever the donor wishes to happen to those. We pull out what we need. And return the rest, if they want them back.”

While visitors to the archives won’t be surprised by all the old stuff of South Dakota history, they are likely to be surprised by the oldest artifacts in the collection: Christian shows off a box of cuneiform tablets, dating back to about 500 B.C. However, there is nothing here approaching the size of a Moses-down-from-Mount Sinai stone tablet; each cuneiform is about the size of a petit-four dessert cake.

Also old in the collection is “just a page of a 13th Century (A.D.) Bible.”

The archivist offers a simple message to the public: “I want people to know that we are here. If they’re interested in local history, history about the university, or Senator Daschle, to reach out to us and we’ll see if we can help them; and if we can’t, we will find somebody out there who can. There are lots of depositories out there that can.”

 More cookbooks, please

Christian did note that the archives also “take in donations. I’m particularly interested in collecting materials related to former faculty, … faculty research, their papers, their teaching materials, so we can have a better sense of what was done at the university.”

While for the most part the archives are a depository for paper, they do hold just a bit of assorted memorabilia: “We do have some,” Christian explained. “It depends upon what it is: We have blankets and pennants and an old Hobo Day king’s crown. We have little odds and ends.”

The archivist noted that tours of the collection are welcomed and encouraged. Students can learn about “historical materials, how to do research in archives, in libraries and how to find materials that would help them in their projects.”

While Christian works in an arena where she is surrounded by a universal wealth of disciplines, knowledge and history that transcends time and place, is there for her some small niche that especially interests her: “My favorite things are the cookbooks,” she said, with a smile. “We have the South Dakota Cookbook Collection here. I am interested in growing that. We have a little over 500 cookbooks. One hundred of them are online. So we are working to digitize some of the older ones. But it would be nice to fill in, especially West River communities.”

For simplicity’s sake, all the materials in the archives are kept with their creators. As an example, she cited the late John Miller, noted SDSU history professor and writer of history. The archives hold a collection of his books and papers, including his research notes. Miller is especially known for his writings about Laura Ingalls Wilder. 

“We are open to anybody,” Christian explained. “So if people are traveling through town and want see their great-grandparents’ yearbook or they want to come and look at John Miller’s books and papers, they can.”

Contact John Kubal at jkubal@brookingsregister.com.