For many years, the Chateau de Mores State Historic Site has largely downplayed some of the more controversial aspects of the de Mores story, namely the Marquis’s anti-Semitism. Most of this comes from the fact that the Marquis’ anti-Semitism seems to have manifested itself after the family left Medora in 1886. From the beginning, the site has focused mainly on telling the story of the family’s life in Dakota Territory. However, as the years have passed and with the last of the family gone, the site has become the repository for the full history of the de Mores family. Because of this, our interpretive duties have evolved to tell their post-Dakota Territory story as well.

A photo of the Marquis taken in France in 1889 during his political years.

It is important that while we do not shy away from discussing uncomfortable topics like anti-Semitism, we need to be careful about how we address it. This begins with proper training for all site employees. The interpreters need to be ready and able to talk to the visitors about what happened to the family after they closed the house for the final time in 1886. This naturally means the Marquis’s duels, political career, and death, much of which revolved around his anti-Semitic rhetoric and beliefs. After the Marquis returned to France, he became involved in politics. He supported anti-Semitic candidates and often spoke at rallies. The Marquis was also a frequent contributor to several anti-Semitic journals. An article in one of these journals led to one of the most famous episodes in the Marquis’s short life, his duel with Camille Dreyfus. Dreyfus, a Jewish government official, wrote an article in the journal La Nation attacking the Marquis’ anti-Semitism. The Marquis promptly challenged Dreyfus to a duel. Dreyfus accepted, and the duel took place on Feb. 3, 1890. Neither the Marquis nor Dreyfus was seriously hurt in the duel, but the Marquis shot Dreyfus in the arm, winning the duel. The Marquis’s death can also be viewed as an extension of his anti-Semitic activities. The Marquis’s reason for being in North Africa was to unite the Muslims against the Jews and their “British puppets.” It is ironic he was killed by the very Muslim tribesmen he was trying to recruit.

These are topics we address but do not dwell upon. However, the interpreter must be able to discuss the topic further if asked. It is the job of the site supervisor and assistant site supervisor, in spring training and morning meeting discussions to prepare the interpreter to speak intelligently and with sensitivity. Store employees, usually the first ones to interact with a visitor, must be as able as any interpreter to answer questions.

Technology has opened up new ways to enhance and add information to the tours. The site is currently using QR codes in several locations in the Chateau. This technology is inexpensive and easy to create. The possibilities with QR codes are almost limitless, providing graphics, text, and audio/visual resources on the visitor’s cell phone without intruding on others’ tour experiences. This allows topics like anti-Semitism to be addressed in a more in-depth way for those desiring additional information. Another technology the site uses is our eight-minute video. This free video is used at the interpretive center to provide some context for understanding the history of the site and the de Mores family. The video also discusses the Marquis’ background and personality, providing further background for the controversial views he expressed later in life. The video can be updated as we see fit. This is important because the video may be the only site information source for visitors.

As museums and historic sites become more willing to address darker issues in the past, sites like the Chateau have examples and advice for how best to open the door on these subjects. If done carefully and sensitively, confronting the more unsavory aspects of a historic site can lead to a more complete understanding of our past.

Microfilm. Microfiche. If you work in a museum, archives, or library, or have researched in enough museums, archives, or libraries, you are most likely very familiar with different types of microform. However, you may also be part of an ever-growing group of people unfamiliar with the material or even the word(s). Microform may be an older format, but it is both historic in its own development and highly useful for documenting and preserving items for the future, and should not be underrated.

In very basic terms, microform is a miniaturized, reproduced image of an item. (Makes sense, right?) We take something flat, like newspaper or a journal, and photograph each page. Microfilm is developed on photographic film that wraps around reels (and is the form we typically use), and microfiche is developed on a flat sheet. These items can then be used on readers, printers, and scanners, which work by shining light on the image and projecting it out at a larger size.

Microfilm is reel-based, like this old roll. A roll of microfilm can hold a lot. One roll can hold a month’s worth of a daily newspaper, such as The Fargo Forum or The Bismarck Tribune; perhaps two years of a weekly paper; multiple small manuscript collections; or several volumes of naturalization or marriage records.

In this world of touch-screen, high-speed internet tech, this may seem old fashioned. Okay, so it kind of is. Microform was actually developed in the mid-1800s, and was considered something of a novelty at first. The State Historical Society of North Dakota only began microfilming newspapers and other frequently used and/or fragile items in the 1950s. We are still microfilming today. This is evident in our Reading Room, where we have more than 16,000 rolls available for public use. The majority of this number encompasses newspapers from around the state, naturalization records, small manuscript collections, and an ever-increasing count of marriage records from various counties, pre-1925. We have masters to most of this film and other microform within collections stored away in more controlled environments.

Microfiche like this is a flat sheet. Each square represents a frame of film, which will include one image—in this instance, a page of The Grand Forks and North Dakota Manual for 1885.

Microfilm is not going away anytime soon. There are many reasons why. Microfilming allows us to capture a copy of an original that likely is in the process of deteriorating without handling it and possibly making it worse. It is relatively low cost to produce, maintain, and store; equipment needed to access microfilm is simple enough to use (really, all you need is some light and a method of magnification); the material is supposed to last hundreds of years; and the format is stable. The alternative, a more up-to-date digital file, can indeed be easy to access on the technology so many use on a daily basis—but takes time and money to digitize and store, requires vigilance in the case of updates and reformatting, and has an unknown (and possibly, in some cases, short) shelf-life. Also, it is noteworthy that digital items are not automatically OCR (optical character recognition)-capable. (That means you can’t necessarily search documents by key word, just because they are scanned.) For all of these reasons and more, many agencies continue to use microform for storing and accessing their files. This includes, or perhaps is led by, the National Archives and Records Administration, which succinctly highlights these very comments on its site.

You can see by the condition of our microfilm boxes that they take a lot of use. Is microform the next Holy Grail?

Despite the fact that we use microfilm all the time, in my front-desk capacity at the State Archives, I meet a lot of people who don’t. They run the gamut of ages, but there is definitely an upward tick in the younger age groups. I like to try to explain things in terms that make sense to people. I got pretty excited when I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for the first time—for no other reason than our hero was trying to obtain microform in one of the scenes. It’s my overwhelming memory of the film, which perhaps says something about the film—I’ll allow you to draw your own conclusions there—and it has led me to reference the film with certain age groups who enter our building.

Me: Hello, students who were not yet born in time to remember Y2K or 9/11!
Students: (mumble, mumble, mumble)
Me: So, do any of you know what microfilm is?
Students: (blank stares)
Me: Have any of you seen Indiana Jones? (Pause as students raise hands.) The last one? With the Crystal Skull?
Students: The first one is my favorite!/I just saw (insert latest move here)!/I liked that one!/I didn’t like that one!/etc.
Me: Remember when he was in the library? (Trying to disguise the fact that I barely remember that scene anymore, except to use it for this purpose, and hold up a disheveled little box as if it’s the greatest treasure on Earth.) This is what he was after! Microfilm!
Students: (Mixed reactions…perhaps not as excited as I am.)

Then I show them how it works. Just like movie magic, it’s actually seeing the microfilm on screen (in this case, on a microfilm reader/printer/scanner) that produces the best response. Once the film is loaded, and people of all ages find their own birth announcements, their great-grandfather’s naturalization record, a picture of their mother or father on the front page of a newspaper… it’s worth it.

The old technology of microfilm printers like this one was cutting edge back in the day; it is still useful, but does not offer the same options as the new types of machines.

That’s the miracle. It’s not the microform itself, but that we have something that can offer us such stability, and that we thus have the capabilities of making these items so accessible. The miracle is being able to use this format.

We recently acquired these modern microfilm scanners. They work on the computer and provide the user with more flexibility in making copies. They also can scan to a USB drive, which some researchers prefer to the older ones, which only print out paper.

Another series of bones are being slowly added to the State Fossil collection. Concordia College in Moorhead, MN, held one of the largest collections of Edmontosaurus (“duck-billed” dinosaur – same kind of animal as “Dakota the Dinomummy”) bones in the country. Dr. Ron Nellermoe, who recently retired from a position of teaching biology and geology at the school, worked on a quarry of Edmontosaurus in South Dakota for over ten years. During that time, thousands of fossils were collected, many with beautiful preservation. This collection of fossils is where I got my start – my real start – in paleontology.

I had spent the last five years preparing Green River Formation fossil fish from Wyoming, so I wasn’t totally new to the time and patience needed for fossils. It was the spring of 1998; my grandmother had spotted an ad in the local paper about a “communiversity” course being offered on dinosaurs and fossils. I wanted to jump at the chance, but I had already watched one opportunity vanish. Two years prior, my aunt let me know about a dig in Wyoming – BUT – you had to be 15 to go. I waited a year, only to find out the dig had shut down. Now at 16, I wanted more than anything to go on this dig, but we weren’t sure if they would allow a high school student along.

My family contacted the school, and thus Dr. Nellermoe. He wasn’t thrilled about the idea of a 16-year-old girl going along. -Somehow they convinced him and assured him that an adult would accompany me on site. I was in! The spring was spent volunteering in the paleontology lab, learning how to clean and identify bones, and reading every paleontological reference book I could. Summer finally hit, and I dove into digging. I pulled my weight, probably asked way too many questions, kept a journal, and soaked up as much as I could. Meanwhile my Mom painted the local landscape.

Pages from the first field journals Becky took at the Concordia Edmontosaurus quarry.

Fall hit – I was back volunteering in the lab. This kept up for the next two years until I finally could officially enroll at Concordia College. By this point, I transitioned my volunteering to work study and obtained one of my favorite job descriptions ever: bone technician.

Becky hiding from the summer sun. OR A young Becky on site. OR both.

After Concordia, I continued my schooling at NDSU, using the Edmontosaurus collection as the basis for my Master’s degree. Eventually graduating and moving to Bismarck, I had to wave a fond farewell to the collection and professors that played such a large part in getting me to where I was. Then a few years later – a phone call. The science buildings at Concordia were undergoing a massive renovation, and there would be no room for bones. Would the State Fossil collection in Bismarck make a good home?

Long story short, we’re in the process of transferring the collection – I get the chance to continue working with the bones that started me on my way.

Plastered and finished bones moved to the State Fossil collection so far.

When people find out I’m an archivist, I am often greeted with a very puzzled look and usually another question—like, “What’s that?”

On any day, you can find me processing collections of documents, records, photographs, or moving image materials. As archivists, one of our main priorities is to make sure items are stored and organized properly in order to maintain the longest record life possible. In this blog, I’ll discuss processing a large manuscript collection that includes all of these items.

Over the past year, I and other archivists at the State Historical Society picked up personal papers, research, and records belonging to Frank Vyzralek, North Dakota’s first state archivist. Vyzralek was a passionate historian who researched a great variety of topics in relation to North Dakota such as baseball, beer, the city of Bismarck, crime, mills and elevators, places in North Dakota, railroads, and steamboats.

When Vyzralek’s donation arrived at the State Archives, almost 400 feet of boxes contained loose papers, photographs, and audiovisual materials. We had to determine how to best organize and store this valuable collection.

The first step we took was to establish series for the different materials. In the archives world, a series is a group of similar records. The series we decided on were Research Files, Personal Papers, Photographs, and Audiovisual Materials. Within the series, we then created subseries and sub subseries that reflected the topics and types of records with each series.

Processed records from the Mill & Elevator Sub Subseries alphabetized and dated in archival folders

After the series, subseries, and sub subseries were established, we began the preliminary sorting. Most of the time, each box contained many different topics and types of records in no particular order. Along with the paper items, some boxes even had different types of artifacts like matchbooks and other collectables. These items will be offered to the Museum Division, because they are three-dimensional. This part of the processing took my colleague and I about three months to complete.

Newspaper clippings regarding mills and elevators in Burleigh County in chronological order

When we finished with the preliminary sort, we began a more in-depth process, where we tackled each subseries, organizing the records by location or chronologically. Vyzralek liked to use newspaper clippings in his research. For one sub subseries, for example Mills and Elevators, it took some time to organize the thousands of newspaper clippings in a way that would be useful to researchers who will use Vyzralek’s papers in the future. After eight months of alphabetizing and organizing chronologically, this part of the processing was complete. During this stage, we came across a few live bugs and spiders. It added some excitement (and screams) to the process.

Processing in progress on photographs

Once we were finished with the paper records, we began to process the photographs Vyzralek took or collected. Again, we had to decide how to organize the photographs in a way that would create the best accessibility for researchers. We thought it would be best to organize the photographs by those Vyzralek used for research and those that related to his personal life, such as family and school photos. Just as we did with papers, we organized the photographs by location and date. Topics in the research photos include railroad depots, postcards, aerials of towns, churches, breweries, and other buildings in North Dakota.

Hundreds of floppy disks from the Frank Vyzralek Collection

Vyzralek stored much of his research on floppy disks, which will also be in his collection. However, floppy disks are now obsolete. As we process the physical papers, we also have to harvest the files of his research off the floppy disks to make sure the digital files are accessible to researchers, too. This entails finding a floppy disk drive, scanning for viruses, and ensuring there are no changes to the file during the processing of the digital files. Digital files provide more accessibility to the collection.

We are still processing the Frank Vyzralek Collection, but it will be finished in spring 2016. Once processing is complete, there will be a finding aid available on our website (http://history.nd.gov/archives/manuscripts/inventory/10553.html) for researchers to use. This is just one of many rich collections of North Dakota history that can be researched in the State Archives.

When visitors come to one of our museums or interpretive centers, the exhibits on display are the end product of a long process. Depending on the size and complexity of the exhibit, it may take months or years and involve just a few or dozens of people. But all exhibits start with an idea, a concept, a whisper of possibility, and often with the phrase, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we could…”. Here are just a few of the places where we find exhibit inspiration.

Collections
Objects are continually being accepted into the collections of the State Historical Society. Sometimes there are a large number of related items from a single donor that can form the basis of an exhibit. A 2002 donation of more than 60 objects related to horticulturist Oscar H. Will became the basis for How Does Your Garden Grow?, our award-winning exhibit. Similarly, related objects can slowly come into the collection over years. Going on display this spring at the Pembina State Museum is The Art of Einar Olstad; SHSND acquired its first Olstad original painting in 1943 and its most recent in 2006.

Commemorations
The passage of time does not always give an object or occurrence more significance, but marking the anniversary of certain events can be an important way to encourage remembrance and reflection. We currently have two exhibits in planning that were prompted by upcoming anniversaries. In 2016 we’ll celebrate the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act, and in 2017, along with museums nationwide, will commemorate the centennial of the United States entry into World War I.

Site Specific
Many of the historic sites managed by the State Historical Society feature exhibits. Each site has a unique and rich history which can be tapped to create new exhibits. Topics have been as varied as Buffalo Soldiers, the Cold War, and 19th-century French aristocracy.

Fallout shelter

Inspiration has also come from visitor feedback. There are a few perennial favorite topics, including quilts, immigrant culture, and Native American art.

What has been your favorite exhibit or what would you like to see?

In the archaeology lab we are still busy inventorying and photographing fascinating objects from Like-A-Fishhook village (32ML2), as part of an artifact cataloging project started in early 2015. We do this every Friday morning (we call it “Like-A-Fishhook Fridays”).  As you already know from my previous blog post about Like-A-Fishhook, (http://blog.statemuseum.nd.gov/blog/adventures-archaeology-collections-fishhook-village), it was the last traditional earthlodge village built in North Dakota and was home to Hidatsa, Mandan, and Arikara people.  It was occupied from about 1845-1889.

Since the site of Like-A-Fishhook is now under water, the artifacts collected during archaeological excavations in the 1950s provide a very important record of the village. The things that people left at the site tell us about what life was like: what the environment was like, what people traded, what people ate, and even the games that they played. Here are a few more artifacts that we have seen in the archaeology lab in the past few months:

There is a piece of turtle shell.

A piece of turtle shell (12003.17)

Notice the distinctive sutures (the zig-zag looking edges) where the shell fits together. We can compare this piece to examples of turtle shell in the faunal comparative collection.

A piece of a turtle shell from the AHP faunal comparative collection (HP 94-45.1)

I was excited to see a beautiful abalone ornament. Abalone shell comes from the Pacific coast—a long way from North Dakota! How many hands did this shell pass through before it got to Like-A-Fishhook?  Who made it into an ornament? Was the ornament part of a necklace, or sewed on clothing? Who wore this?

An abalone shell ornament (12003.2276)

This is the end of a small wooden barrel. What do you think was stored or shipped in this barrel?

A wooden barrel end (12003.2330)

Another exciting object is a burl wood bowl.

A burl wood bowl (12003.13175)

This bowl is almost perfect. I like to think that it looks ready for some stew!

My favorite find from this past month included two samples that were labeled “bison hair cordage.”

Left: Bison hair cordage (12003.2501)
Right: A close-up view of the bison hair cordage, you can see the cut ends of the fiber in this photo (12003.2501)

The fiber is twisted and looks like it has been cut into short pieces. Bison hair has been used for many things in the past, and people still use it to make things today.

A bison hair yarn scarf woven by Nancy Eley in 2015

Work is important, but so are games! There are some domino pieces in this collection. This one is made of bone, and someone has carved a design on the back.

Left: A domino made from bone (12003.2124)
Right: The reverse side of the same domino (12003.2124)

Another domino is made out of bone or possibly ivory, and a wooden back has been added to comlete the piece.

Left: A domino made from polished bone or ivory (12003.2445)
Right: The reverse side of the same domino, a piece of wood has been nailed to the bone or ivory face (12003.2445)

If only we could see what games were played with these!

We still have a lot more boxes to go through, and I promise to keep you updated on the exciting things we find!