NMC Archives
A New Beginning, 1995-2000

During the late 1980's and early 1990's the basement room in the library that had served as an ad hoc repository for NMC's historical materials was largely untended because the library was not only understaffed but was in the process of putting its catalog on line and computerizing many of its functions. Harried librarians could do little more than put incoming materials wherever they could find space for them. The problem was aggravated by the piles of area newspapers that accumulated after the project of micro-filming them foundered.

By 1995, when Ruth Ragué was re-assigned to the library, with tending the archives as a small part of her job description, the room was in effect an institutional attic, crammed until there was hardly room to make one's way around in it with minimally organized materials: file cabinets, fat binders, obsolete equipment, the odd piece of furniture, miscellaneous memorabilia that no one at the college could afford to refuse-plus the stacks and stacks of newspapers already yellowing and generating dust.

Ruth, with the help of volunteer retirees (Carole Marlatt, Harry Oliver, and Al Shumsky), set about cleaning up the mess. First was to find a home for the newspapers, which she did: with the Michigan Newspaper Project. All it took was innumerable phone calls and a trip with a loaded van to Lansing. With those out of the way, there was room to start organizing the still considerable amount of material that was left. First was some prioritizing. It was decided that since this was the NMC archive, first priority would be for college-related material. Since the library also saw as one of its functions a Michigan collection, regional historical material for which a more appropriate venue could not be found would be kept at least for the time being. Other material would be disposed of however possible (though getting rid of things like old 78 rpm recordings of opera arias is mighty difficult short of simply junking them, which some stuff discreetly was.)

One of the first projects was rescuing the oldest scrapbooks, which were deteriorating badly. The first decade's worth were photocopied on archival paper and mounted in archival scrapbooks. The remainder are still in good enough shape to not need that treatment for a few years.

Another early task was sorting and roughly classifying the photographs and slides that had been stored there, identifying people and sites where possible-which it often wasn't. (If people would date the papers they generate and identify the subjects they photograph, life would be much easier for archivists.)

Concurrently the files were tackled. First were those that constituted what was termed "Internal Governance": from the earliest general faculty meetings through the various advisory and decision-making bodies up to 1990. Next came the Curriculum Committee files, of which very little had been preserved up to the1980's. Also organized were the various NCA self-studies and the preparatory material involved in them. A quickly established policy in dealing with files such as these was to purge them of duplicates, arrange them chronologically, and discard any supporting materials that were appended from sources outside the college. Also organized were the copies of presidential correspondence and the "project files" associated with their tenures.

Up to now, no attempt has been made to weed out inconsequential material from such files. There is surely a lot, but-as long as space is available-those decisions can be left to some future archivist who will have a better perspective on what may be significant.

Recently the task has been undertaken to inventory what is in the archives and get it cataloged for the use of library patrons.

And since it was obvious that there was no college policy on preservation or disposal of college records, it was undertaken to inventory the record-keeping practices of all college offices as preface to the recommendation for a special committee to develop a records management policy for the college-something badly needed at this point, with immense amounts of unorganized paper being storehoused and who knows what possibly important documents not being preserved.

The hope is that NMC will enter the new millennium with practices that will both insure the preservation of its history and relieve it of the burden of unnecessary record keeping.