Are you interested in unique collections that show the history of some of the Midwest’s prominent immigrant and ethnic groups? Do you work with collections in languages that you or your institution’s researchers are unfamiliar with? Do you enjoy seeing pictures of people in lederhosen? If you answered yes to any of these questions, be sure to attend the session “A Conundrum at the Crossroads: Challenges of Ethnic and Immigrant Collections” on Saturday April 24th at 10:30 am. In this session, Suzanne Maggard of the University of Cincinnati, Kären Mason of the University of Iowa, and Christina Johansson of Augustana College will discuss three unique immigrant and ethnic collections and the obstacles that they have overcome in managing these collections.
First, this session will explore the German-Americana collection at the University of Cincinnati. In a city which hosts North America’s largest Oktoberfest, German-American culture is still evident. Yet German speakers are not nearly as common as they once were. Suzanne Maggard will discuss her experiences with the German-Americana collection with no prior knowledge of the German language. Further information on the collection is available at: http://www.libraries.uc.edu/libraries/arb/ger_americana/index.html
Next, Kären Mason of the Iowa Women’s Archives at the University of Iowa will discuss the Mujeres Latina Project. Although you might not immediately associate Latin Americans with Iowa, the history of Latinas in Iowa extends back to the 1880s. Mason will describe the challenges of funding and managing transcription of oral histories conducted in Spanish. More information about the collection and this project is available at: http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/iwa/mujeres.html
This session will conclude with a discussion of a Swedish immigrant collection. Augustana College, founded by Swedish immigrants in 1860, is the home of the Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center. In her discussion of this collection, Christina Johansson will focus on solutions to make non-English materials accessible to English-only speakers. The Swenson Center’s collection contains resources for the study of Swedish immigration to North America, the communities the immigrants established, and the role the immigrants and their descendants have played in American life. Explore this collection at: http://www.augustana.edu/x13856.xml
