Note: This article originally appeared in the December 2007 issue of Indiana Genealogist.
The Archives of DePauw University and Indiana United Methodism, as it is officially called, is located in Greencastle, Indiana. Founded in 1951 by DePauw alumnus and Methodist minister Worth M. Tippy, ours is a joint archives whose mission is to collect the records of both DePauw University and the United Methodist Church in Indiana. Since the Archives has funding from the two conferences of the United Methodist Church in Indiana as well as DePauw University, it is able to provide two full-time and three part-time staff members, as well as up to one full-time employee equivalent in work study students.
Our climate-controlled reading room, processing area and stacks were built as part of the 1987 renovation of the Roy O. West Library and are located on the second floor overlooking the campus. The holdings are evenly divided between church and university collections, with a total of about 2,510 linear feet in the stacks and another 650 linear feet stored off-site. The collection represents all media types, from early nineteenth century manuscripts and records to modern office files, and daguerreotypes to digital images. Collections that have inventories are MARC cataloged and included in the university library’s catalog.
Archives staff members provide reference service to between 600 and 700 visitors (students, faculty, staff, and local church historians) annually and answer another 700 requests for information each year. Research requests that come from outside the University or the church in Indiana are completed for a fee of $24 per hour plus copy charges.
Most of the Archives’ audio collection has been digitized through a grant-funded project a few years ago. The video collection—composed of several hundred 16 mm movies and videotapes on reels and in U-Matic, Beta and VHS formats—is in need of digitization in order to provide better access by the public. Some of the video and movies were digitized when a copy of the item was requested by a researcher.
Scanning of the photograph collection is ongoing and is currently at about 25,000 images, or about half the total number of images described in the database. Steps are being taken to provide digital images to the public via an online image resource, Luna, within the next few months and a greater effort is being made to complete scanning of the rest of the images in the database.
The Archives is also planning to implement Archon, a program developed by the University of Illinois to provide a better way to collect information about archival collections for the preparation of finding aids, Encoded Archival Description records (EAD), and MARC records for online public access catalogs.
Our website is located at http://www.depauw.edu/library/archives and an archives staff member may be reached by e-mailing archives@depauw.edu or calling (765) 658-4406. Our reading room is open 8 am to 5 pm, Monday-Friday and on Tuesday evenings until 9 pm during the academic year.
Wesley W. Wilson
DePauw University Archives
11 E. Larabee St.
P.O. Box 37
Greencastle, IN 46135
Phone: (765) 658-4407
E-mail: wwwilson@depauw.edu