The Kentucky Archivist

Newsletter of the Kentucky Council on Archives

Page Four

The "Over Here, Over There Collection", that was developed for recording remembrances of World War II on the home front as well as the battle front, is presently being processed. It is comprised of oral interviews that were done in 1996 and 1997. Transcriptions of these cassette tapes are available. In addition the large Oral History Project, done by Western's history students during 1992-1997, is a recent acquisition. The student interviews focus on topics such as World War II participation, as well as the Great Depression, and much local history. There are few transcriptions, but a short summary accompanies most cassette tapes.

Manuscripts and the Kentucky Library are also pleased to add the Melton Family Papers to the collection. The manuscripts help document the Poole, Melton, Lively, and Strum families of Henderson and Webster Counties. The collection includes several Civil War letters, family correspondence, legal and financial papers, beautiful penmanship samples, and some poetry. The Library added several scrapbooks, books, some Henderson newspapers, advertising ephemera, broadsides, and a wonderful collection of post cards.

A family member, Cynthia I. "Sibbie" Melton, collected nearly 1400 post cards in her lifetime. Confined to a wheelchair, Sibbie relied on family, friends, and neighbors to send her cards which allowed her to see the world. Some of the cards were kept in decorative post card albums and carefully numbered. One friend who traveled throughout western Kentucky on business sent many cards of local interest. The collection also includes a scrapbook of the articles Sibbie submitted to the Henderson Gleaner describing life in the southern Henderson County hamlet of Cairo.

This collection's acquisition is interesting in that it came via an e-mail query from the donor Stella [Bradley] Pool, a 1972 WKU alum living in Charlottesville, Virginia. We hope this new communication tool will result in many more fine additions to the Kentucky Building.
Submitted by Pat Hodges

Another catalog available online. The Catalog of Kentucky Archival and Manuscript Repositories recently became available on the KDLA web site. The Catalog, produced through the Kentucky Guide Program, includes holdings from nearly 300 Kentucky repositories including libraries, universities and colleges, historical societies, museums, historical sites, religious institutions, and others. The catalog includes over 5,000 descriptions of collections, such as personal and family papers, diaries, records of private organizations and institutions, business records, local history and genealogy files, oral history recordings, government records, photographs, and maps.

As many of you know, much of the information in this catalog was gathered during an NHPRC funded project that started in 1979. At that time, the collection descriptions had to be sent to Washington, D.C. to be entered in a fledgling "national database". Then the database was managed at KDLA, using SPINDEX software. In 1989, the descriptions were converted to the MARC Format and entered in the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN) through the NHPRC-funded Government Records Project. We also converted descriptions of holdings from non-government repositories and made them available in RLIN. Several publications based on the Kentucky Guide data were issued, including The Guide to Kentucky Archival and Manuscript Repositories and Guide to Kentucky Archival and Manuscript Collections, volume one and two. The Kentucky Guide will no longer issue paper publications, but will continue to publish and update the catalog on the web. We are very pleased that evolving technology allows us to make this catalog available on the KDLA website.

The KDLA website also provides access to other catalogs. The Catalog of Kentucky State Archives Holdings is a separate catalog with descriptions of government records collections at the Kentucky State Archives only. The web address is: http://cuadra.kdla.state.ky.us/Marcat.html

The RLIN AMC file via Library of Congress Gateway, an extensive catalog containing over 400,000 descriptions of archival and manuscript collections from institutions worldwide is also available. The Web address is: http://www.kdla.state.ky.us/arch/RLINKDLA.html

Interns at KDLA. The Friends of Kentucky Public Archives are supporting two graduate interns at KDLA through the Thomas D. Clark Internships in Archival Administration. Both James Cundy and Charles Pratt are MLS candidates at the University of Kentucky. Melissa Rabey, another MLS candidate from UK, is also working as an intern, with funding support from another program. Each is working in the Archives Research Room, in addition to a specific assignment with another archival services unit.

Annual Kentucky Archives Institute Held. KDLA and the Friends of Kentucky Public Archives hosted the fifteenth annual institute, with the theme "Introduction to Genealogical Research Using Public Records" on July 9th. Several members of our staff spoke on using state, local, and judicial records. Kandie Atkinson from the Secretary of State's Land Office gave her popular presentation on land records. The highlight of the day was the luncheon speaker, Dr. Thomas D. Clark, who spoke about his involvement with archives throughout the state and the importance of public records in researching the history of the state.

GSU volunteers process records. Four volunteers from the Genealogical Society of Utah completed their one year mission with the Public Records Division in April. The volunteers flattened, foldered, labeled, and indexed over 68,000 Circuit Court case files from Madison, Lincoln, Mason and Bourbon counties, in preparation for the microfilming of those records. Two new GSU volunteers, Archie and Marjorie Meecham, began in April and have continued working with the Bourbon Circuit case files. They have prepared an additional 7500 records for filming to date.

Government records meetings of interest. Several KDLA staff attended the annual meetings of the Southeastern Archives and Records Conference (SARC), and the National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators (NAGARA). SARC was held in May in Columbia, South Carolina, and NAGARA met in July in Columbus, Ohio. Both groups are committed to making information from meeting sessions available on the Internet. To see a summary of the discussions at the SARC meeting, see: http://www.state.sc.us/scdah/sarcinfo.html

For a copy of the NAGARA program, with links to abstracts of papers and presentation slides, see: http://www.nagara.org/1999_Meeting/1999_program.html

Midwest Micrographics Conference held in Frankfort. The annual meeting of the Midwest Micrographics Conference was held in Frankfort, Kentucky, on September 15 and 16 and hosted by KDLA. It was attended by more than 120 participants from twelve states. Some of the topics covered were microfilm or scanning, vinegar syndrome in acetate base films, and image to film for long term storage.

Citing the Sites. The following website, funded by the Getty Institute, is now available for public use. It is called "The Archvist's Primer" and it has a great deal of information about archival theory and processing, in particular. It also includes a thorough tutorial. There are also links to many other web resources for archivists, such as other training sites and cataloging resources. Take a look, it is really a good site. http://www.schisotry.org/getty/

This next site, sponsored by the Council on State Historical Records Coordinators, is quite good. There is a good links page to other archival and records management sites, and to other resources in state archives: http://www.coshrc.org/
Submitted by Barbara Teague