Chicago Open Archives 2016

Research room in the Chicago History Museum

October is American Archives Month and in celebration I attended Chicago Open Archives: Yours to Explore last week. Over thirty local archives, research centers, and cultural institutions in the Chicago area offered special events open to members of the public. I visited three archives, each with different missions and goals for their collections.

First up, the Chicago History Museum. “The Chicago History Museum is a research center and exhibition space focused on collecting and telling Chicago's stories. In addition to exhibitions on Chicago’s history, the Chicago History Museum houses a Research Center which serves the research collections of the museum—archives and manuscripts, prints and photographs, published material, and architectural drawings.”

With such vast holdings the archivists focused on their sports-related collections. The two-hour tour began in the museum with the typical cases the public can easily view. The next stop was the research room where materials were laid out for viewing. The librarians and archivists reminded us that all this material is available to the public for research and we should not be afraid to investigate. Finally, we were taken to the back offices where the processing, preservation, and hands-on work occurs. The archivists pulled some of their favorite pieces, including materials from the failed 2016 Chicago Olympics bid.

Exhibit programs from Museum of Contemporary Arts

My second stop was the Museum of Contemporary Art. “Since 1967, the MCA has been in the vanguard of contemporary art, making history with provocative and engaging programming. The archival collections tell the story of the MCA's exhibitions and programming through a rich variety of materials, including publications, photographs, exhibition records, ephemera, videos, and audio tapes.”

The archives and library are in the basement of the museum. This is an institutional repository with papers and materials from the organization. Again, records were displayed for us and the grouping was of exhibit programs through the years. As a contemporary art museum, artists take greater risks with how information about their pieces is shared, including creating Russian-doll-type boxes.

Chinese passport at NARA

Finally I went to the open-house at the National Archives at Chicago, where I first learned about archives. There is “over 120,000 cubic feet of historical records created or received by U.S. Government offices and federal courts in six Midwestern states dating from 1800 to the 1990s. Among subjects of local interest are: the Great Lakes and inland waterways, Native Americans, immigration and naturalization, inventions and technology, railroads, the automotive industry, and domestic conditions during World Wars I and II.”

Unprocessed materials at NARA

This was my first time back to NARA as an archivist, so I appreciated all the work which goes into maintaining the nation’s records much more. We were taken through the climate controlled stacks and into the processing room, where a variety of records were displayed. One of my personal favorites was a Chinese passport which was involved in a legal case of some kind. There was also a box with unprocessed dispositions covered in coal dust, showing how the condition of materials varies depending on where they were located before the archives.

I just want to thank the Chicago Area Archivists for putting this all together, and for the Chicago History Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, and NARA at Chicago for participating.