Researchers and history buffs, rejoice! An effort to digitize three vast collections of regional history at Vincennes University's Byron R. Lewis Historical Library has been completed.
“It's finally done,” said Richard King, reference librarian at VU's Shake Learning Resources Center, home to the Lewis Library. “It's just so exciting to see this happen.”
King targeted three specific collections when he applied for this grant because they each somehow tied in to Indiana's history — a popular topic of conversation in this bicentennial year — both during the territorial period and once it became a state in 1816.
The digitized collections include the papers of John Badollet and his family, one of the earliest French families in the area, which span from 1780 to 1878; the early years of the VU Board of Trustees minutes, starting in 1806; and Knox County Commissioner records from 1814 through 1823.
The Badollet papers are important because they speak to Vincennes' French origins and Badollet is an important historical figure in his own right: He was the first land registrar of Vincennes. His early family papers, which are written in French, aren't easy to come by.
The VU minutes reveal the foundation for higher education in Indiana and the county commissioner records might be unknown to a lot of people, King has said.
Cinda May, chair of special collections in Indiana State University's Cunningham Memorial Library and project director for Visions and Voices, said the project required not only just digitizing all of the materials but creating searchable and descriptive metadata and uploading all of that online for public access.
“The other little twist to it was we hired an ISU student, who actually is a science education major, who speaks fluent French. She's the one who read all of the French language letters and wrote the abstracts for all of them,” May said. “We were so lucky to find someone who was able to do that and enjoyed doing that, and who did it so very well.”
The documents can be explored by clicking on the “Contributors” link at the top of the homepage at https://digital.library.in.gov/. The contributors list is alphabetized, so the “Vincennes University archives” collection will be toward the bottom of the page.
After all the documents were uploaded to the Indiana Memory site, VU's role was essentially that of editor and quality control specialist. King said he and volunteers helped with proofreading, editing and checking all the information to scan for errors.
Taking the time and money to digitize historical records, May noted, is important because it expands access to collections like these so that people beyond Vincennes, who may not have known they even existed, can take advantage of them.
“The Badollet letters have a lot of information about what was going on in Switzerland, politically and economically, in the late 18th century,” May said. “So for any researcher around the world who's interested in that time period and those sorts of political and economic struggles, it's a gold mine because you've got eyewitness accounts. It gives researchers all over the world access to content they may not be otherwise able to visit and see.”
The other advantage to digitization, May added, is that it helps to promote the Lewis Library itself and all the resources it has to offer.
“It sort of raises you on everybody's radar that you have these wonderful items in your collection,” she said. “We started out digitizing things because we wanted to preserve the originals. But putting digital images of the original out on the internet just piques people's curiosity and then they come visit in person and want to see the original, and then they want to see what else you've got.
“It brings people to your door, and that's another really important thing.”
Now that these three collections have been made available for anyone in the world to use, King said they'll begin considering what to target next for digitization. There are a couple different options, depending on whether funding is available.
One cluster of records King has his eye on is a collection of miscellaneous Knox County documents dating back to the late 1700s.
“There are maybe a dozen or more boxes of these things, a lot of different kinds of records that I don't think are available anywhere,” he said. “One has to do with the names of people who received bounties for shooting wolves and turning in their hides. They'd get paid for that. And there also might be early education records of some sort.”
The boxes are well-archived, King said, because he believes they were a Works Progress Administration project during the Great Depression. When World War II started, the WPA committee that had been working on creating abstracts and descriptions for the records simply boxed them up and put them away.
“So I think those would be a good possibility to do right off the bat,” King said.
There are also assorted other types of historical family papers that are pretty extensive, he added, that show what was going on in Vincennes during a very different time.
“There are some family papers that include letters, legal documents, all kinds of stuff people saved that show what the world was like back in early 19th century Vincennes, when we're having this change from a frontier town to a more modern town with banks, factories, mills to grind grain, different businesses springing up,” King said.
Whatever VU sets its sights on next, the digitization efforts will continue to help boost the library's visibility as a valuable resource. Projects like this also help the library stay relevant and useful in an era where online research has become so prevalent.
“The way a small library like ours can benefit people is making a portion of our collections available online for researchers,” King said. “Now the world can see these not only for their own purposes, but it helps people know that this library is here and you can get help here.”
Like King, May also hopes that by continuing to digitize, people will recognize how valuable the Lewis Library truly is.
“The resources at the Lewis Library are really very significant and important and I think it's great that we had this opportunity to assist VU with this project,” May said. “It's just a win-win for everybody.”