Below is a transcript of our conversation with Carrie Marsh:
David Nicholas:
I'm David Nicholas and this is Central Focus, a weekly look at research activity and innovative work from Central Michigan University students and faculty. Libraries are the trusted source of information, whether you're inside the building or searching online. CMU is home to the Park Library and also the vast archives of the widely respected Clarke Historical Library. Carrie Marsh is the director of the Clarke, and she joined me to discover the large collections housed there.
Carrie Marsh:
There's a program funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities called the National Digital Newspaper Program, that is, all funds from NIH but awarded through the Library of Congress. And they're building, LLC is building this large database called Chronicling America, which has historical newspapers from across the United States. And the Clarke is the Michigan, kind of contributor to that, but we have to put in a proposal and get the funding. So that amounts to, and then we create a theme and then try to find newspapers that would fit within that theme like agriculture, labor, things like that. And so that amounts to several hundred thousand newspaper, digital newspaper pages. So aside from Grant funded projects, we offer digitization, digitization and hosting to people like public libraries Historical Societies and other cultural heritage institutions which have an archive of their community newspaper, and they pay us to, if it's not already microfilm to microfilm first, because that's the preservation medium for newspapers nationally. And then we'll digitize if they want it online, we'll digitize it and then host it in DigMich News. Alternatively, they'll (they’ll) take some (some) of our customers take those digital files and put them on their own platform if they wish. That accounts for a lot of the (of the) newspaper content that we have online.
DN:
You find them, that, most of the requests come from Michigan? Or is there a (a) growing awareness of the archives and the holdings that you have that you're getting more regional or national or international visits and hits, if you will?
CM:
Absolutely. The DigMich News database, our database of digitized Michigan newspapers does have a national profile. Well, because of our connection to a chronicling America and the materials that we've (we've) digitized and contributed there, which is a national profile. It's googleable so it's open, the database is open, so if you go in through the web and you just type in a search into your web browser, you'll get hits from DigMich News, depending on what you're looking for in your topics, and so on. Predominantly our inquiries come from Michigan people. But not always, and you'd be surprised that the interest in abroad. And doing research about different communities, different groups of people that might have come in or settled or left Michigan.
DN:
Is there a common type of request that you receive?
CM:
Yes, the, probably the most readily kind of recognizable are people doing family research. They want to know more about their (their) relatives, generations back. The other kind of category of topic that is pretty common is someone's really interested in a topic. What was the impact of the railroad in Alpena from 1870 to 1920? When did tourism become really popular in Charlevoix? Like those kinds of questions. A third kind of category of question, people doing creative projects. As a way to kind of understand what people were concerned about because they're writing a novel or they're writing a story or they're (they're) doing something creatively and they want to capture the language, the lingo, how people spoke to each, (to each) other in a particular place in a particular time period.
DN:
For all the people then, that have the questions and want to either learn the story, or tell more of the stories that are held in those archives of the work of the Clarke Historical Library here at CMU, Director Carrie Marsh, thank you so much for sharing the background and the growing connection in Michigan, the nation and around the world for the history that is contained there at the Clarke Historical Library, thank you so much.
CM:
You're welcome. Happy to be here!
