Advertisement
You can check that out and a lot more at the Archives and Local History program at the La Crosse Public Library.
The library is celebrating 25 years of its archives program with an open house from 1:30 to 4 p.m. Sunday.
Archivist Anita Doering credits the creation of the archives to former Library Director Jim White, who wanted a place for cataloging genealogy and other historical documents.
In La Crosse in 1973, librarian Emma Diekroger was involved in the local genealogy society and by 1975 the library was recognized as the spot to organize that information.
"And then referencethought it would be good to have genealogy material in one spot," Doering said.
The Archives and Local History program began to serve the public in 1980 and was made possible in conjunction with a building expansion project.
The area had strong public support from the La Crosse Area Genealogical Society and private donations from Charles Gelatt, Doering said.
At first, the collections consisted of local history and genealogy books pulled from the general stacks along with a few manuscript collections stored in the basement. A strong relationship with the local historical society developed, so that they transferred manuscript materials to the Archives for processing and public access. In 1981, a professional archivist, Allan Kovan, was hired to begin processing collections and establish policy and procedures. After two years, Amy Grosskopf took over from Kovan until 1988.
Doering was hired in 1989 and has continued to expand and catalog the collection. Her latest quest is to reprint and digitize local phone books which are deteriorating.
"We were trying to look at our collections and figure out what we really would like to do. Phone books are printed on cheaper paper because they weren't meant to be kept. We identified the most crumbly," she said, and had a group of nine from 1930 preserved. That cost $900.
"We joke that all of the pages are yellow pages," she said, but it's no joke how fragile these phone books are.
She's hoping the Archives Room can raise $4,000 in donations and start preserving the phone books which are in the worst condition.
The Archives and Local History Area consists not only of archival and book materials, but includes newspaper clipping files, microfilm and microfiche, local and genealogical publications, maps, local annual reports, ephemera, and photographs. While the archival collections in 1988 totaled 25 cubic feet of material, today they cover 722 cubic feet and include 121 reels of microfilm.
In 1980, public access was limited to 54 hours for the year. Now, the archives are open to the public 68 hours a week. The Archives are open the same hours as the La Crosse Public Library — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 1 to 5 p.m. on Sunday.
With expanded hours, came expanded usage. In 1983, the Archives room had 3,255 requests for information. In 2004, they had more than 14,000 requests.
Besides aiding researchers in finding documents, the Archives staff publishes articles in the La Crosse County Historical Society's publication and runs a weekly "Hometown History" column and "The Way it Was" historical photograph in the La Crosse Tribune. The staff is also the primary contributor to the paper's "Ask the Trib" column on Mondays.
In 1998 they added their genealogy databases to the website http://lacrosselibrary.org/genealogy/.
They recently launched a web site in conjunction with Murphy Library at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse to direct students, researchers and the public to a digitized history of La Crosse. It's called "La Crosse History Unbound" to symbolize the freedom to access historical material from outside of the physical library. This also helps to save wear and tear on photocopying and handling of the items. The web address for that is http://lacrossehistory.org.
