‘They might be angels’
Volunteer effort makes local history accessible
The Barnes County Museum and the Barnes County Public Library have formed a rather unique alliance, possibly the only one like it in North Dakota, combining historical archives and catalog systems into one easy-to-search collection.
“This is actually addressing a long-standing issue with people searching for local history stuff in our community,” Barnes County Public Library Director Steve Hammel said. “There’s been a kind of informal agreement between the museum and our library for a number of years, even before I started as director here … that the museum would do a lot of the local history stuff, but the public library had some stuff too. So people would have to go both places to research local history … which was not necessarily convenient.” The idea was simple consolidation – the museum’s resources, Hammel said, made it the natural place to move the relatively small collection of historical documents and items that the library had held onto all these years. However, the library’s catalog and search system was far better suited for the task of historical research. So the museum would house the physical objects, and the library’s database would house the catalog.
“What we did was, we made a branch,” Hammel said. “So there is a ‘branch’ of the Valley City Public Library at the museum.”
Now all anyone needs to do to search for local Valley City and Barnes County history is search for it through the ‘research branch’ of the public library, from their website vclibrary.org or directly at https://valleycity.biblionix.com/catalog/.
The project is making excellent progress now, with over 1600 items cataloged. In the beginning, though, there was some doubt as to whether the time or manpower – or money – was going to be available to see the idea through.
“Original cataloging is very time consuming. The obvious stuff,
like title and author, is pretty easy,” Hammel said. “But then you get into questions like ‘what is it about?’ so you have subject, subject heading. There might need to be a short summary of what it is...it could take 15-to30 minutes just to do one item.”
It requires specialized knowledge, and knowledge that’s not at all common.
“Our big hurdle was getting somebody to do it,” Hammel added. “We don’t have extra staff...we could have had it professionally cataloged, but (it’s costly). So we were to the point where we were looking for grant money come summer … and, as chance would have it, a couple from Bismarck stopped at the museum.”
That couple was Dennis and Lorna Olson, and their unexpected arrival was like the answer to a prayer.
“They might be angels,” Wes Anderson, Barnes County Museum curator, said. “It’s a lost art, all of this original cataloging … they heard about our project here and they came to the rescue. This is something they’ve done before with schools, and they’ve donated a lot of time – and money.”
The Olsons had the expertise and the time to offer to the project, and since this past summer, diligently and steadily, they have been creating the catalog, studiously going through books and scrap books and old journals and providing the database specific details of what history lies within. Anderson said he’d offered to help them with expenses with some of the museum’s budgeted money, but the Olsons have insisted on doing everything out of their own pocket. Not simply the cataloging work – Dennis Olson constructed a wooden shelf for the cataloged books to live within.
“This has been a huge project … we’ve been dealing with lots and lots of data points,” Anderson said. “They’re delving deep, a lot of these scrapbooks they’re going into … it’s precise details, it makes my mind numb just thinking about it. They are the right people for it, I don’t know how we got to be so fortunate to have these people show up.”
This isn’t like creating a digital archive – this is simply a catalog, which is to say, anyone whose interested in getting their hands and eyes on the historical items and books featured in the catalog, will have only one way to do so – by visiting the Barnes County
Historical Museum, in Valley City.
This specialized work can’t be assisted with regular volunteers, but if any members of the community wish to support this project, they can do so by supporting their local public library or museum.
For more information contact Wes Anderson, Barnes County Museum curator at 701-845-0966 or Steve Hammel, Valley City/Barnes County Public Library Director at 701-845-3821.