We're always focusing on underdocumented parts of the community-- so women's history, LGBTQ+ history, Ozarks Jewish archives-- so so much about the community.

[music playing] As our society evolves in its breadth and complexity, the preservation of history and its artifacts become increasingly important.

For the past 25 years, the special collections and archives at Missouri State University's Meyer Library has been collecting and preserving rare books, manuscripts, photographs, recordings, and other historical items.

My guests today are archivist, Tracie Gieselman-France, and digital archivist, Shannon Mawhiney, who work together in the special collections and archives to help preserve Ozarks history and provide access to its vast collection in both physical and digital formats.

[music playing] JIM BAKER (VOICEOVER): Ozarks Public Television and Missouri State University are proud to present "OzarksWatch Video Magazine," a locally produced program committed to increasing the understanding of the richness and complexity of Ozarks culture.

Visit our website for more information.

Well, thank you guys for joining me today.

You came all the way from the library just to be here.

That's it's quite a trek for you to get here, so I appreciate that.

But before we get started talking about digital archives and all the things that you guys do, why don't you talk a little bit about yourself and kind of tell our viewers where you're from and how you ended up being an archivist?

OK, all right.

Hi.

My name's Shannon Mawhiney.

I'm a 2005 MSU graduate of the Anthropology program.

I started as a student worker in the Archives department.

They were just advertising for student help, and I thought, that sounds interesting.

I thought it was a really cool area to keep working, so I got my degree from MU in Library Science in 2010.

And I've been there ever since.

They got a grant for digitization, and I got hired for that position.

And I just kept going.

And I'm from Nixa, and my family's in Nixa.

And I live in Springfield now.

JIM BAKER: Very good.

I'm Tracie Gieselman-France, and I'm the archivist here.

I've been here, gosh, since 2005.

I'm a MSU graduate.

I was in a Classical Antiquities major and an Art minor.

And then I have my History degree from here as well.

So I finished that in 2016.

So you have good backgrounds to be-- so really, the term is not archivist anymore.

It's digital archivist, as I always hear it, right?

Or at least it's mostly?

is it interchangeable?

Yeah, she's a little more specialized than what I [inaudible].

Is that the way the field is heading, though?

SHANNON MAWHINEY: I'd say, both.

There's a big push-- and libraries has a big push right now for digital first is the policy that we want to get everything digitally available, especially during the pandemic.

That became a big way that a lot of students were able to still access research and things that we have available.

Yeah, and we'll talk a little bit about some of the collections, which are very fascinating.

But I remember a long time ago, I was talking to some people with the small historical societies.

And everybody is talking about, well, if we could digitize this material instead of being open on Saturday from 4:00 and to 6:00, and only 32 people could come, it would be really nice to have these digitized collections.

And I think a lot of that's going on now, right?

There's a lot more stuff available.

Yeah, and with us as well.

We've got a lot more available and more available every day online and available digitally.

We do want to make sure everybody realizes, though, that the archives are a lot bigger than what's available online.

So we're never going to be able to get everything.

But a lot of people think that.

I'm smart enough not to shortchange in archivist.

[laughter] No, I won't do that.

It's very important.

TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: It is.

And we'd love to have everything digitized, but yeah.

But I also love just touching the physical items.

There's something about holding a document in your hands too, so yeah.

I used to go into the Archive Room, and you always get the sense, like, oh, my gosh.

I don't know if I want to touch anything.

And there's a person at the desk just looking at you, like, watch what you're touching.

So that was you.

I had nightmares.

[laughter] So how long is the archives-- like for Missouri State, how long have they been a major part of the library?

I imagine, quite a while.

We have.

We've been a formal unit since 1997.

So before that, there was the Labor Union archives.

And I think-- did you know Neil Moore?

JIM BAKER: Yes, very well.

Yes, he started that.

I think it's the history-- 1982, probably, is the formal beginning of the Ozarks Labor Union archives.

And so that was in the library by 1996, but we didn't formally have a department until '97.

JIM BAKER: Yeah, and I think-- was that the first big collection that the library had?

SHANNON MAWHINEY: It was, yeah.

JIM BAKER: Yeah, so it's a relatively recent development at the University, and it's been growing quite rapidly with collections.

I want to get back to that, and we'll talk about those collections.

But when you-- OK, so you have a lot of the collections that are digitized-- some.

And then a lot that's not.

And so for a person that really wants to access online, we'll talk about that first.

So they can get online, go to the website for the Missouri State University Library.

And then what do they do at that point?

You can navigate to our department page, the Special Collections and Archives.

And then, you can get to the digital collections also.

And we're also available in a lot of different ways.

We're connected through the Digital Public Library of America.

So our records are there too if you're wanting to search a much broader batch of material, you can narrow it to the state, and you can narrow it to our University.

And then it'll come.

You'll get our records.

And then, if they wanted to come in and actually touch, and see, and all that stuff for the more traditional archives, what's the approach to that?

Is it an open access for people to come in?

We have hours from Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

We encourage appointments, but it's not necessary.

Students generally come in and tell us their research topic, and we know what to pull.

We can talk to them.

SHANNON MAWHINEY: We get excited.

[laughs] TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: Yeah, yeah, we get overly excited.

We love research.

We're pretty informal, so there's one of us there all the time.

So if someone just came in, we're happy to pull whatever materials they're looking for.

So what's a typical user?

Is it just a person doing research or trying to-- TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: It varies.

Yesterday, we had students come in.

But we also have a lot of off-campus visitors too.

We've worked with authors.

We've worked with-- oh, gosh, it just depends on what they're looking for.

But we have a good mix of both on-campus and off-campus.

So for the archives, though, even though some of your materials are not digitized, I imagine they're cataloged online, so people can sort of say, OK, if I'm doing research, I can go into this topic and find out if the Missouri State Library happens to have materials.

We do have a lot of lists online, but we also encourage our researchers to just talk to us about their topics because some of our collections are unprocessed.

So we haven't organized them.

They don't have a presence online.

SHANNON MAWHINEY: And may have come in really recently.

We've had that happen before, where a researcher comes in, and a collection that just came in the week before is really relevant to their topic.

JIM BAKER: And that's what they want.

And so then you just have to have access to get that material to them, even before it's processed, I guess.

TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: Yeah, yeah.

Well, I just tell people it's going to take a little bit more time because we haven't organized things.

But there's always great collections that we have available.

I was always fascinated with the process of-- in a different life, I used to work with a lot of people that would say, hey, I've got a collection, and it's really important.

And I think the University really needs to have this.

And then, you say, well, I'm not so sure that it's that important, other than your family, and it's important for that reason.

How do you go about making decisions on what you want to accept into the archives?

Because you have a finite amount of space and a finite amount of resources.

It seems to me, that would be a very difficult-- I know it's difficult to look a person in the eye and say, well, maybe it's not quite as important as you think.

Mm-hmm, yeah.

A lot of times, we will try to connect-- if it's not appropriate for our archive, like, it isn't related to Ozarks history necessarily, maybe more statewide, we'll direct them to the State Historical Society, maybe another organization where that would tie in better.

That happens more often than I think just a straight out no.

TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: Yes, yeah.

Yeah, it's hard to say no to someone if they say the materials are very important.

TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: And there's research value that maybe we don't see immediately, but the State Historical Society has a broader audience, and maybe they will have more researchers who would access that more easily.

So yeah, it's not usually a no.

It's oh, it may be better suited here.

JIM BAKER: Sort of like a referral to check and see where it would be best suited.

Yes, yeah.

We're always considering research value.

JIM BAKER: Because I know one of the strong sales points, obviously, for the archives is if it's material that's very important, it gets really good, loving care, taken care of.

It's treated better than some people, I guess.

There's no humidity.

There's [inaudible].

It's a great environment to be.

It's a nice, stable environment.

Yeah, so if you have pictures and things like that.

So what kind of-- so you get all kinds of collections, I imagine, from photographs, to written documents, to books, and so on.

What's the process?

So once you receive a collection, and you've decided that it's important, it fits because it has-- it's not so much importance.

It sounds to me like it's, does it fit with what we're trying to do in the archive?

So you have kind of a general view of what you want to accept, right, to begin with?

We do, yes.

So once you get that material, and it comes in, and it's in boxes-- and I found stuff.

And well, a lot of experience finding stuff in barns.

And barns are a great storage place-- the lofts of barns.

There's treasures to be found in barns all over the country, I suspect.

Yes, yeah.

But they bring it in.

So do you have to determine the condition, number one, to say, hey, we can't do much with it because it's just not-- it's not together very good.

I mean, it's damaged or whatever.

Well, we do have an appraisal process.

And so ultimately, we'll look at the research value first.

Preservation-wise, we don't do conservation.

We basically say, we don't do anything we can't undo.

So if it was something that needed conservation, we'd have to outsource that for the most part.

But usually, we're just rehousing things, keeping the temperature stable, the humidity stable, and using the acid-free boxes and folders.

So condition is a consideration but not always a deal breaker.

SHANNON MAWHINEY: We'll do some cleaning too.

But as far as something that the State Archives Conservation Lab can do, that's the important part.

Do you have a kind of formal process on what you will accept so that, like-- are you the grand marshal of that?

Or is there a collective group that says, well, this looks like it's got some value, and we probably should do it?

We do have a collection policy, and our whole staff has worked together for years.

So it's more likely that we'll sit down very informally at this point.

But it's not just us.

We would kind of consider-- talk to our department head and just consider any kind of-- Do you ever consult with outside groups and say, hey, could you take a look at this and tell us what you think?

SHANNON MAWHINEY: We have, yes, yeah.

JIM BAKER: It seems to me, that would make sense too.

So once you've decided-- OK, so you decide that it's something that you would like to keep.

What's the next steps that you go through?

The next step is paperwork.

We'll have donor information.

We'll make everyone sign a form, turn everything over to MSU Foundation and the libraries.

And then we do what we call an accession.

So we're just listing everything just so the donor knows what they gave us, and future family members know what they've given us too.

And then, it goes into processing as soon as possible.

Some collections get a very detailed accession list because we know they're going to immediately have use.

So I've done some very detailed ones.

Oh, I can imagine so.

So for a person that gives you a collection, is there ever-- is there a monetary kind of a tax advantage to them?

Or does it vary depending on what they're doing and what their purpose is?

It's all through the foundation.

We technically cannot appraise anything, so we don't put monetary value on any of our donations.

OK, so the foundation would be responsible for that?

TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: Yes.

And so while they're figuring out the value, you're busy doing the accessing and the-- TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: [laughs] Yeah.

You figured out all the-- TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: Cleaning.

And all the other things that have to be done.

And then once you catalog it, and you have-- do you use keywords?

Or how do you go about doing the-- so like, if I'm doing a search, and I know you got a collection of something, is there a list of keywords that I can get access to?

Is that the way that operates?

Mm-hmm, it does.

That's funny.

Because now, when I tell students when they're processing things, I think, think of the words that you would use to Google this if you were trying to see who had this.

And that's not a term we necessarily would have used when we first started doing this.

But so you can find things that way.

Shannon, especially, uses keywords and metadata for the digital collections too.

And then, of course, if they come to see you, you would say, this is the-- and you would do the research for them to find?

Well, I would definitely talk to them and kind of see what connections they're wanting to make, what they're looking for, and then we'd start going through our collections and start pulling potential collections.

The materials in the archives are not to be checked out.

They can't be taken off premises, and it's in this controlled environment in the room that-- so if I wanted to go and look at a book or something, I could do that, but I would have to do it in this room.

Can you-- why don't we talk a little bit about it?

And I think the rest of the show, I'd like to kind of talk a little bit about the different collections that you have because it's really fascinating.

There are so many collections.

And they really vary.

TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: They do.

And so why don't we just talk about some of the collections that are the most accessed, I guess, some that are what you consider to be maybe the most important?

I mean, there are some in there that are just incredibly important.

I focus on the Ozarks, and so I'm really interested in all the collections.

And then we'll conclude by getting into what your favorite collections are.

And I know you'll say, well, I like them all.

But I'll force you into saying something.

So let's go through some of the more prominent collections that you have and talk about those, what each one does.

We'll just take turns.

SHANNON MAWHINEY: Sure, sure, yeah, one of the-- TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: I feel like I'm talking too much.

SHANNON MAWHINEY: Oh, you're fine.

One of the collections that we get a lot of digital use is the Gordon McCann collection of Ozarks folk music that we have available on YouTube and then also catalogued through our digital collections to connect them there too.

We love Gordon McCann.

Yeah, Gordon is very important to this show.

TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: Yes.

SHANNON MAWHINEY: Yes, and his collection is incredible.

And he did an incredible job of cataloging it, essentially, before giving it to us.

He had lists of the songs and the players and all of his notes so that we've been able to share those online.

And a lot of people, we've had contact us and say, oh, hey, that's me when I was playing as a kid in this contest in Arkansas.

TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: I've never heard my grandpa's voice before, things like that.

Yeah, when I was at-- just as a side note-- I was Gordon's house, and in his basement was just full.

And a lot of times, you'll get-- I assume, you'll get collections, and there's not a whole bunch of documentation with it.

TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: Sometimes.

That would have been a nightmare because he had so much stuff.

But he had everything just about.

It was really pretty amazing.

That was a major gift to the University.

SHANNON MAWHINEY: Absolutely.

And that, to me, is also the classic case of something.

He absolutely loved that collection, and it was really hard for him to part with it to the University.

But he figured out that, hey, this is the safest place to keep it.

And it's a very important collection.

SHANNON MAWHINEY: Yes.

TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: It is, yeah, yeah.

We're honored to be able to share it with as many people as we have too.

What other important collections?

I know there's a lot.

Yeah, they're all important.

But there's a lot of music catalogs.

There's a lot of-- there's the stuff with Max Hunter.

And there's a lot of different ones that are out there if you want to learn more about the Ozarks.

TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: Oh, definitely, yeah-- so much about the Ozarks, so much about the University as well.

We have so many.

I think I counted up to 60 process collections about the University.

So anything from the building of Juanita K. Hammons performing-- Hall for Performing Arts-- sorry, messed up that name-- to residence life and services.

We have that kind of materials.

But we also have a lot about just the immediate community.

So we have the Katherine Lederer collection, which I'm sure a lot of people have heard that name.

JIM BAKER: Right.

TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: And she was an English Professor here on campus, wanted to document the African-American community through her collections.

So we have her display pictures.

We have her research files.

And we also have the Ora Logan collection, which is a very recent donation.

And that one is one of the very detailed succession records that I've done.

She was friends with Katherine, so they kind of have some overlap on the same materials.

But Ora's grandma was Alberta Ellis, who owned the green-- or Alberta's Hotel, which is in the "Green Book," so we have that material.

So we're always focusing on underdocumented parts of the community-- so women's history, LGBTQ+ history, Ozarks Jewish archives-- so so much about the community.

So there's-- do you have a lot of photographs and things like that in the collection?

Do you tend to-- are those ones you kind of digitize as early as you can because of the life span of the photographs?

SHANNON MAWHINEY: Sometimes.

We have had some donations of especially negatives and glass-plate negatives that are the format we want to get those copied, in a sense, and available online before something may happen to the negatives.

We've had some negatives that are breaking down.

So we get those, yeah, digitized as quick as we can so that we have a representation of what it looked like when we got it.

Yeah, when I was in another university, the archivist said, every once in a while, we get these plates.

And he said, I'm afraid they're going to blow up, so we try to process them as fast as we can and get them out because they're kind of dangerous because of the materials they were made of.

SHANNON MAWHINEY: Yeah, the [inaudible].. Yeah, yes.

So do you catalog each photograph?

How do you assign-- like, there's a picture of a person at a train.

Do you say, man at train?

Sometimes.

If we don't have words.

I would think just kind of describing those would be for the-- for people to access it and stuff would be-- so what's your-- do you work with other archives?

Like, I know the Max Hunter collection originally was in Springfield, and we somehow got a hold of that because it was sitting there not being used.

And we ended up getting that one.

But there's a whole lot of those collections that a lot of people just don't know about.

What are some of the more esoteric or the least known collections that you have?

Oh, gosh.

Some of them are recent donations, and that's why maybe people don't know a lot about them.

There's the Fern Nance Shumate collection, and she's recognized as one of the earliest female journalists in Springfield.

So she came to Springfield in 1924.

And after she graduated from Springfield High School, she started writing for The Springfield Press.

She met Vance Randolph.

They were writing things together.

And he was encouraging her to publish her own works.

And a lot of people don't know about her.

JIM BAKER: No, that's interesting, yeah.

Yeah.

I'm going to have to get online and look at these.

There's just the finding aid, but I'm happy to show you everything in the collection.

I need all the help I can get when I come.

And actually, Gordon McCann interviewed her, I think, in 2001.

It's actually on our digital collections, so you can go see that one.

Do you do you have the-- I know there was a lot of oral histories that were collected as well.

Do you have those as well?

Do you keep those?

We have some in their original files.

And there's different ways we handle oral histories.

Some end up on YouTube, and you can access them that way.

And you've worked with some oral histories that have different formats or different-- Yeah, I mean, we have some that go back to reel-to-reel tape.

So they've started out that way, and we've been able to digitize some.

Some of them came to us already digitized also.

But yeah, the more recent ones just come to us digitally.

JIM BAKER: So like the Ozarks Jubilee, that's really well-known, I guess.

And it's out on YouTube.

SHANNON MAWHINEY: Yes.

TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: Yes.

It's fascinating to go to YouTube and watch some of these shows.

We love the shows.

SHANNON MAWHINEY: Oh, yeah.

[laughs] So we've only got a couple of minutes left, so I'm going to get you with the what's your favorite.

So I'll start with you because you're struggling, I can see it.

I can see it in your face.

TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: I think I've already said all my favorites.

[laughter] I think one of my favorites is-- not because of my name being Shannon-- the Shannon County film collection that we have, yes.

JIM BAKER: Oh, I love those, by the way.

SHANNON MAWHINEY: The films themselves, as well as the camera rolls that we have that were digitized with a grant from Bob Moore that he was able to work on getting those, and we have those available.

And you can see the original camera rolls and showing them matching up to the audio because it wasn't already paired and being able to educate people about it.

JIM BAKER: Yeah, I actually have some have some-- I was looking on my computer the other day because I was just looking at some files.

And there was one, it said Shannon County.

No, I said SCC-- some kind of-- I didn't even know what it meant.

And so I popped it up, and it was a guy using mules to pull logs.

And I thought, oh, this is-- but the Shannon County thing is a-- it's going to be hard to top that one.

TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: It is, yeah.

SHANNON MAWHINEY: Sorry.

No, that's OK. Well, it ties into that, actually, the Center for Ozark Studies original program that was here in the '80s, we have so much great material from that.

And luckily, Lynn Morrow still talks to us, so we can call up Lynn and ask him questions.

But there's so many details about counties that maybe people don't know.

There's historic sites, program-- or sorry-- reports that they've done on buildings.

So it's just really interesting.

If you really want to dive down into the history of Missouri, that's a good place to start.

Do you have materials that-- I know Bob Gilmore was pretty prolific and did a lot of stuff, so you have some of his?

TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: We do.

Did he do a radio show?

Or there was something that he did that was-- I remember of some audio tracks that I heard with him.

TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: I think so.

Was that-- I didn't process that one, though.

Yeah, I didn't process that either.

JIM BAKER: Yeah, I was just thinking back.

It seemed to me, I saw that.

And I was thinking, well, that's kind of an interesting deal.

Well, this 25 minutes has gone by pretty fast.

TRACIE GIESELMAN-FRANCE: It really has.

So we'll get the website up and show people.

And I think it's really important for everybody to understand that there's a major resource in all the libraries-- Missouri State University, [inaudible],, Evangel, the Springfield Library, and all that.

So it's important to know that there's a lot of information if you're curious and want to know about it.

Yeah, and the good thing is is we all work together.

So if we don't have something, we can send you the right place to find it.

Thank you for joining me today.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

We'll be back in a moment.

[music playing] JIM BAKER (VOICEOVER): Ozarks Public television and Missouri State University are proud to present "OzarksWatch Video Magazine," a locally-produced program committed to increasing the understanding of the richness and complexity of Ozarks culture.

Visit our website for more information.

I'd like to thank our special guests, Tracie Gieselman-France and Shannon Mawhiney, for joining us today.

And we'll see you again next time on "OzarksWatch Video Magazine."

[music playing]