Highlights Archives
Library and Archives Support Higher Education in Wisconsin
In Madison, and all across Wisconsin, college and university campuses are returning to life, and soon their new and returning students will begin mining the rich collections of the Wisconsin Historical Society to conduct historical research. The start of the fall semester has a major impact on the Society's library and archives as students begin or resume their studies. As one of the finest research libraries in the country, with holdings that comprise the nation's largest collection devoted solely to North American history, the Society's library and archives represent a treasure trove for undergraduates and graduate students alike. In the words of University of Wisconsin-Madison history professor Charles Cohen, "Trying to pinpoint a specific collection at the Wisconsin Historical Society that is especially valuable is like trying to identify which course at a Michelin three-star restaurant is the most satisfying. What makes the Society such a treasure is the breadth as well as the depth of its collections."
 The cavernous reading room of the Wisconsin Historical Society's library will provide a home away from home for many a UW-Madison American history student this fall. Students from virtually every college and university in the state visited the Society last year, and professors from Eau Claire, La Crosse and Oshkosh arranged field trips to the Society so their students could experience the research resources firsthand. Still, one of the major strengths of the Society's research collections is their availability outside of Madison. These collections served thousands of students through interlibrary loan, online research, and through the archives' unique network of thirteen area research centers. These centers make most materials held by the archives available for loan, allowing researchers to do their work close to home. In addition, records pertaining to each local area are housed permanently at the centers and also circulate within the network.
Examples of specific archival collections that see heavy use by college and university students include civil rights collections such as the papers of Little Rock, Arkansas, desegregation leader Daisy Bates, records of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the papers of Southern civil rights activists Carl and Anne Braden. Maps, federal survey field notes, and other land records support research assigned to undergraduates by Bill Cronon, Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History at UW-Madison. In an assignment known as the "place paper," Cronon asks students to select a location familiar to them and conduct research on its history, ownership and land uses. Last year one student wrote his senior honors thesis on the history of Horicon Marsh using records of the Department of Natural Resources, its predecessor the Conservation Commission, the Izaak Walton League, and the writings of prominent Wisconsin conservationists.
Students in history professor Charles Cohen's classes actively use the Society's collections for research in Colonial history, dispelling a notion that studying Colonial America means having to attend an East Coast university, says Cohen. "The Society's collections, especially for trans-Appalachian history, and its holdings of microforms, monographs, and nineteenth-century writings make it more than possible to study the Colonists in Madison," he says.
Even students of religious history will find more than ample resources at the Society, adds Cohen. "This fall I am teaching American religious history to the mid-nineteenth century, and, thanks to the Society, I am able to assign my students such hard-to-find but revealing materials as an account of eighteenth-century Scots Presbyterian sacramental seasons (the precursors of American camp meetings), the church records of a small Baptist church at the beginning of the nineteenth (which show how the congregation dealt disciplinarily with both blacks and whites), the Pastoral Letter the Catholic bishops sent in 1837 (at one height of anti-Catholic agitation), and Dr. William Alcott's prescriptions for a scientific, Christian diet. Engaging these documents will give my students a far better sense of our past than hearing about them secondhand or meeting them as the two-page, masticated samples many documentary readers provide."
:: Posted October 10, 2003
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