Course:ARST575K/LIBR539H/Danish American Archive and Library

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The Danish American Archive and Library
Type Community Archives
Location 1738 Washington St.

Blair, Nebraska, USA

Website https://danishamericanarchive.com
Contact Email: info@danishamericanarchive.com

Phone: (402) 426-7910

The Danish American Archive and Library is a community archives located in Blair, Nebraska, USA.

Organization and History

The Danish American Archive and Library, located in Blair, Nebraska, USA, is a community archives devoted to the Danish American community. Today it serves the Danish American community throughout the United States with a mission “to collect, catalog, preserve ,and make available to the public, documents, photos, and other media that show the rich history and contributions to American life of Danish Americans from immigration to the present day.”[1] The Danish American Archive operates as a registered non-profit organization[2] and has a mixture of permanent and part-time positions (such as internships) and relies primarily on volunteers for archival work.[3]

The Danish American Archive and Library has its roots in the institutional archives of both the United Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church and Dana College—both based in Blair, Nebraska. The Danish American Archive and Library opened as an independent archives in 1986 located on the campus of Dana College in Blair, Nebraska with its focus on the Danish American community rather than institutional records.[1] The archives remained on Dana College campus from 1986 until 2010 when Dana College closed.

No longer having an institutional home, the archives had to reorganize as a corporation and move to new, temporary home in a storefront in downtown Blair.[4] The archives was part of a joint proposal with the Blair Public Library in 2014 to construct new facility for both the public library and the archives.[5] However, in 2015, the archives was able to purchase their current building, and remain there today.

Library and Archives, Materials, and Access

Holdings

The Danish American Archive and Library houses 13,000 volumes in its library collection, of which approximately two-thirds are in Danish. Its archival holdings include over 3000 archival boxes (10.5” x 15.5” x 3”), a few dozen larger boxes, and approximately 100 large-format boxes for newspapers. The Danish American publications have been digitized and are available through the Museum of Danish America. The archives periodical holdings include over 300 titles from the United States and Denmark. The completeness of the titles varies from just a few issues to a complete set.[6]

The types of materials the Danish American Archive and Library hold include documents, photographs, and periodicals on subjects relating to Danish American life “including, but not limited to, letters and family history, music, organizations, business and industry, religion, culture, and education.”[1]

The archives also has an extensive collection of materials and records from Dana College. With Dana College closed, many of the documents and records from the school were transferred to the Danish American Archive and Library. In the archives, the materials have their own room, “the Dana Room,” district from the rest of the holdings. These include large periodical collections of Dana publications dating back to the beginning of the college in the late 1800s. The archives also hold institutional records from Dana, some of which have been organized and categorized, but there are many more in boxes that have not been arranged or described yet. The holdings from Dana College also include a dozen boxes of “memorabilia” from the college.[6]

Access

Materials are available on-site at the archives with a limited subset of digitized material available online.

In Person and COVID-19

The entirety of the archival and library holdings are available in person; however, because of the COVID-19 pandemic the Danish American Archive and Museum remains closed to in-person visitors and volunteers. Volunteers are working from home wherever possible. Research assistance is still available via phone or email. Additionally, users wishing to visit in person can inquire about scheduling an appointment about visiting the building.[7]

When users are able to visit, the following research resources are available on-site:[8]

  • Digitized portions of the family and personal collections
  • A companion digital archiving system to the online digital archive site.
  • Databases
    • List of archives’ collections
    • Danish Brotherhood and Sisterhood Membership Records
    • Obituaries (mostly of Danish descent)
    • Music recordings and cassette tapes, including many recordings from archives of Lauritz Melchoir
    • Oral history recordings:
      • History of Danes in America
      • Dana College history
      • Washington County history
    • List of Dana students, faculty, and staff throughout the years
    • List of periodicals (many in Danish) available

Online

he Danish American Archive and Library has a limited number of materials digitized, a process that has been underway for many years, but received renewed interest in 2018 through the “Digitizing the DAAL” initiative.[9]

While the online offerings are limited, the following are available:

Community and Engagement

People

The Danish American Archive and Library has a large community network spread across the United States and Denmark. The archives divides its community members who directly interact with the archives as either volunteers, users, or visitors. The archives maintains a community of people with Danish ancestry, Danes, as well as people with connections to the United Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church and Dana College. The archives communicates with all three user groups through its quarterly newsletter, the back catalogue of which are available on the archives’ website dating back to 2007. The newsletter includes news from the archives, noteworthy researchers or other visitors, spotlights on items in the archives’ holdings, as well as financial and planning information.[10]

The “Jottings” newsletter highlights when researchers and others working on projects with the archives’ holdings come through. This has included local researchers, instructors, and students from Dana College before it closed, other researchers around the United States, as well as researchers from Denmark.[11][12][13][14] The archives also received Danish royalty as visitors in 2009 when Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary visited the archives.[15]

Programming

The Danish American Archive and Library has been involved in a variety of programming throughout the years. When COVID-19 is not a factor, they run volunteer events on-site.[3][16] Since leaving Dana College, they have also hosted exhibits in their building, such as the exhibit on *The Danish Pioneer*, a Danish American newspaper.[3]

Institutional Relationships

The Danish American Archive and Library is currently affiliated with its two self-described “principal sister institutions” of the Archive of the Museum of Danish America in Elk Horn, Iowa, USA and Grand View University in Des, Moins, Iowa, USA, though it is not formally a part of either of these institutions.[8]

Because of the archives’ genesis within the United Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church and Dana College, it bore an implicit relationship with both of those institution. This was particularly so for Dana College, as the Danish American Archive and Library was an archive within the larger institutional archive at Dana College. When Dana College closed and the Danish American Archive and Library became independent, it took on the unique role of taking over many of the records of its former parent institution.

The changes in positioning of the Danish American Archive and Library over time has bearing on how to conceptualize what kind of archives it is now and was at various times throughout its history. It went from pieces of various institutional archives, to becoming a community archives with an ethnic niche situated within a larger institution, to becoming a fully independent community archives that then assumes custody of the same records that used to be housed in its former parent institution’s archives. Because of its institutional roots, it was initially situated in a context where the personal and non-institutional records would have been considered together in a recordkeeping frame of reference.[17] As time went on and the emphasis of the archives shifted away from its institutional roots towards its community and personal focus, it was in a position to consider the psychology of recordkeeping and why documents were created or kept by individuals. With this framing, it allowed the free-flowing idea of the intermingling of personal and professional “records.”[18] This was reflected in the acquisition policies and priorities of the archives as they expanded their mandate to collect and record personal documents alongside the institutional records from Dana College.

The Danish American Archive and Library has undergone many changes over its lifetime, but since it opened as an independent archives in 1986 focusing on Danish Americans, it has embodied one of the defining characteristics of a community archives—that it has “the active participation of a community in documenting and making accessible the history of their particular group and/or locality on their own terms.[19]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "About — The Danish American Archive and Library". The Danish American Archive and Library. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  2. ↑ "Jottings - May 2011". The Danish American Archive and Library. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Jottings – May 2012". The Danish American Archive and Library. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  4. ↑ "Jottings – January 2011". The Danish American Archive and Library. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  5. ↑ "Jottings – May 2014". The Danish American Archive and Library. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Personal correspondence with Michael Hennick, Library/Collections, Danish American Archive and Library, February 8, 2021.
  7. ↑ "The Danish American Archive and Library". The Danish American Archive and Library. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 "The Danish American Archive and Library's Digital Archive". The Danish American Archive and Library. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  9. ↑ "Jottings — September 2019". The Danish American Archive and Library. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  10. ↑ "Jottings News". The Danish American Archive and Library. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  11. ↑ "Jottings — May 2008". The Danish American Archive and Library. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  12. ↑ "Jottings — August 2009". The Danish American Archive and Library. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  13. ↑ "Jottings — January 2010". The Danish American Archive and Library. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  14. ↑ "Jottings — May 2010". The Danish American Archive and Library. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  15. ↑ "Jottings — January 2009". The Danish American Archive and Library.
  16. ↑ "Jottings — January 2021". The Danish American Archive and Library. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  17. ↑ McKemmish, Sue (May 1996). "Evidence of Me". Archives and Manuscripts. 24: 28–45.
  18. ↑ Hobbs, Catherine (2010). "Reenvisioning the Personal: Reframing Traces of Individual Life". Currents of Archival Thinking. Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited. pp. 28–45.
  19. ↑ Flinn, Andrew; Stevens, Mary; Shepherd, Elizabeth (2009). "Whose Memories, Whose Archives? Independent Community Archives, Autonomy and the Mainstream". Archival Science. 9: 71–86.
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