Deep within the bowels of the Heritage Center in Bismarck is a room with great riches. It contains items of staggering age and scientific value. This room contains the North Dakota State Fossil Collection. From giant swimming lizards to “trumpeting” mastodons, from specimens mounted on pins to those needing forklifts to move, the North Dakota State Fossil Collection contains a wealth and variety of specimens (fig. 1). It has been twenty years since the State Fossil Collection was created in 1989 and it has grown in leaps and bounds since then.

This image shows only a small variety of fossils found in the North Dakota State Fossil Collection.

North Dakota Geological Survey (NDGS) geologists had been picking up fossils during the course of their fieldwork since the inception of the Survey in 1895. Those specimens were typically incorporated into the geology department collection. Prior to 1981, the only fossil collections in North Dakota were teaching and research collections at the universities made by faculty, students, and amateur collectors. However, in 1981 Dr. John Hoganson was hired by the NDGS. At that time the NDGS began what is now referred to as the Fossil Resource Management Program, and the recovery of fossils by the NDGS began in earnest. Although not yet officially the “State Fossil Collection,” between 1981 and 1989 North Dakota’s “fossil collection” grew to a small accumulation (a few hundred specimens) of fossil vertebrates and invertebrates. When the main office of the Geological Survey was moved from Grand Forks to Bismarck in 1989, this small collection only required a few cabinets for storage space.

Over the last 20 years, the State Fossil Collection has grown exponentially and now contains approximately 6,100 cataloged specimens (with more being added all the time) and 3,800 fossil localities. It is difficult to give even a rough estimate of how many cataloged and uncataloged specimens are in the State Fossil Collection at this time. The collection now contains plant, invertebrate and vertebrate fossils, and also contains a large rock and mineral collection. After nearly 10 years in the Johnsrud Paleontology Laboratory under the auditorium, it was obvious that we had again outgrown our space. In 2009 the state legislators saw the need to expand the North Dakota Heritage Center and signed a bill allocating money to put a new addition on the current building. Over the years the collection has moved from Grand Forks to Bismarck, and then within Bismarck it has moved twice. With each move the storage space for collections has nearly tripled in size (fig. 2).

Size comparison between North Dakota Heritage Center lab and collection spaces. A) Lab and collection space used between 1991 and 2000. B) Lab and collection space used between 2000 and 2014. C) Lab and collection space currently in use since May 2014.

Although the state collection is very young (some of the older collections in the United States have been around for more than 100 years), we have a very important representation of Cretaceous, Paleocene, and Oligocene fossils not found in very many other museums across the country. This is something we are trying to expand on during every field season. Although many don’t know it, as you walk through the new Adaptation Gallery: Geologic Time, there are great riches just below your feet.

Do you remember the old Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup commercials? A couple of people bump into each other, mingling their chocolate and peanut butter snacks? Initially they are irritated with each other, but then they discovered the tasty goodness of combining the two treats. I think of those old ads every time I hear people asking why history museums need to add science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) to their regular programming. STEM is more than a trend or a buzzword. What seems to really be new about the STEM concept is the realization that we need to do more to engage students. This includes developing new ways of getting excited about subjects that are vital for a well-rounded education, and meet the needs of our modern workforce. This seemingly new push to include STEM curriculum into museum programming can initially cause some frustration. However, I like to think of it as my job to help people see the delightful new things we can now enjoy together.

Hesperornis and Xiphactinus are part of a nice science buffet in the new galleries.

So what does all of this have to do with history, and why does the State Historical Society of North Dakota care about STEM? Well, I’d like to challenge you to take history out of the science classroom or try to take science out of the history museum. I don’t think it can really be done without sacrificing something special and leaving us with substandard subject matter. Using science as an example, most textbooks have sidebars to explain why people such as Marie Curie and Albert Einstein are important to the field. Science classes also usually dig into how the field has changed and developed over time and how new research has added to or challenged previous understandings. That all speaks to the importance of using historical thought to help develop a well-rounded science class. In turn, we can take our students into the new Innovation Gallery: Early Peoples at the North Dakota Heritage Center and look at all the ways to think about STEM in a museum context.

Left: A stone tool demonstrates the technological skill of early peoples.
Right: Tipis and earthlodges are perfectly engineered for living on the prairie landscape.

There is the technology involved in flintknapping to make stone tools. There is science involved in brain-tanning animal hides. There is math involved in figuring out how much food needs to be stored to get your community through a hard winter. We even have the engineering involved in building a home on the prairie.

This exhibit in a grain bin is a great showcase for featuring the rich agricultural history of our state.

Music, literature, and art are also all represented in the new galleries. Need writing prompts for students? Our galleries are full of them. Interested in getting kids to think about nutrition for a health class? Spend some time in our galleries learning about traditional foodways of the Native Americans and immigrants who have lived here. Need an opportunity to connect urban students to where their food comes from? We’ve got you covered.

No matter what you are learning about, we have objects and artifacts that can help make a topic relevant for students. Even if you don’t think your topic is history-related, the history is probably all over it, making for a great intellectual treat.

I recently attended an amazing summit on archiving audio and video history collections. The speaker, Doug Boyd (you can follow him on Twitter, if you’d like), runs the Louie B. Nunn Center at the University of Kentucky.ⁱ

I, along with the rest of the attendees, listened with rapt attention as Boyd discussed the widespread implications of keeping and using these collections. Some of it was very technical, and some of it very poetic, in a way. As the time went on, his talk and discussion afterward helped me realize the depth of something I already believed: audio and video collections are a different breed of history.

Of course, objects and documents can be studied for information. (Danielle Stuckle, Outreach Coordinator, discussed how these historical items can be disseminated into information in her first blog post here). However, audio and video collections are best consumed in the form they are given to grant us the full impact of their importance and meaning.

For example—if you see an old cassette tape, you can examine it as an object…but it won’t tell you what is on it. *If* there is an accompanying transcript—and let’s just say that it is actually typed without error or sounds cut out, which is not always the case—you can glean different information from that. But if you listen to that old cassette, you will learn so much more. You can hear the accents of the people talking; you can consider the way questions are asked; if you hear noise in the background, you can think about what is going on if the interviewer is distracted; and you can intuit more meaning, even in where the speaker is hesitant, and where he or she is fast to answer.

Here is another example. This screenshot shows a partial transcript of an interview that I conducted with ND Vietnam veteran Paul Good Iron.ⁱⁱ

Now, here is the audio.

“Um” can take on more meaning when you hear it than when you read it. Even knowing that a speaker said it at all can change the impact of the story. The spoken word doesn’t really make for clean reading after all.

The challenge with these collections is that it is often easier and faster for researchers to read through a transcript than it is to listen to the audio. Once we have a transcript, it is easily digitized, and can be sent around the world—and researchers using it can search the text by word or read through it at their leisure. That is one of our goals, after all, as you avid readers may recall from my first blog post.

However, I invite you to consider these facts:

• Transcripts can be expensive. It takes a bit of money and a lot of time to get interviews transcribed, and that is not always possible—especially as collections grow.
• Transcripts are not always completely accurate. Have you ever read a transcript and noticed a name misspelled, a word changed, or some other error? Heck, have you ever tried to transcribe something spoken in a thick accent? Possibly where the interviewee lapses into a language that is familiar to them, but foreign to you? Yeah.
• Transcripts are often “cleaned up.” People don’t like to publish all of those uhs and ums and random swearing that may occur. Like it or not, there can be a loss of some authenticity.
• 

  SHSND 0003-184: Mrs. Ted (Ellen Roberts) Pope, pumping water in Slope County.

  Audio and video collections are often a primary source, and transcripts are a secondary source. Let me describe this picture for you. There is a woman with her back turned to the camera, pumping water from a well. She is looking over her shoulder. She is wearing a long dress. The vast prairie stretches out in front of her. It’s very windy. Do you want to take my words as a primary source? What did I miss? Granted, having some information on the photo helps, but what feelings can I invoke with words that can’t be seen through the image? That concept holds true with audio and video.
• There is no easy way to get a good transcript. There is no easy software you can download, no quick way to drop a file somewhere and pull the audio from it.

Yes, it is nice to have those transcripts. They are very useful. But in the end, would you rather read a biography about your great-grandfather (written by him or not), or would you rather hear his voice, speaking about the hardships he went through in settling the land he later would own?

It’s definitely a point for discussion, and each repository must make its own choices. But hopefully, that primary source of raw video and raw audio will find a prime spot on your shelf.

ⁱ The Louie B. Nunn Center has a phenomenal setup, with multiple ongoing projects, and a small team taking in and processing more audio and video collections in a year than some repositories currently have in their collection. As a point of comparison, we do have several expansive audio and video projects and multiple smaller collections in our Archives.

ⁱⁱ As a side note, transcribing this section (two minutes) took me half an hour. Or maybe it just felt that way.

Not that long ago my younger brother was asked, “What’s your sister doing these days?” He replied, “She’s a museum curator.” The follow-up question was, “So, what does she do?” After a pause in which he choked on a fly that had flown into his mouth, he said, as if stating the obvious, “She . . . curates.” He relayed this conversation to me during a phone call and then had to ask, in all seriousness, “So what do you actually do as a curator?” My reply - “Herd cats,” (because this is my little brother, and little brothers don’t usually deserve serious answers).

Curator is a nifty umbrella term that comes from the Latin cura which means “to care.” This is why we have curators scattered all over museums, zoos, and art galleries. Wherever there is a large collection of items, there needs to be someone to take care of those things. This is a massive simplification of hundreds of jobs that require years of education and experience, but when you burrow down through the ponderous verbiage of bureaucratic job descriptions what you end up with is a lot of people who passionately care about obscure things and, for the most part, can’t wait to tell you about them.

Which is how we come to my job – Curator of Exhibits – because one of the more specific definitions of a curator is “one who selects and presents.” I am blessed, challenged, and frequently humbled by the task of selecting from tens of thousands of items from the collections of the State Historical Society and presenting them to the public through exhibits.

The first part of the selection process is to determine what type of story we want to tell. Is it specific, such as Guns of North Dakota?

Or is it broad and sweeping, like North Dakota: Yesterday and Today?

The latter is the title of newest permanent exhibit that will open at the Heritage Center on November 2, 2014.

For the last two and a half years I’ve been part of a team that has worked to distill the story of North Dakota, and then tell that story through words, photos, and objects. This is the next step – what pieces do we put on exhibit? There is only so much room in exhibit galleries, and culling the list of possible objects is a long process of compromise. A colleague described it as “trying to decide which of your kids you love most.” And we want to show our “children” in their best light, so we also work to make sure the objects are safely displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner that complements the larger story – that’s the “present” part.

We hope you’ll come join us November 2^nd to see our newest exhibits, and we hope that you care about them as much as we do!

If you could go into the archaeology collections storage, what would you find? Mostly a lot of boxes. If you could peek into those boxes, what would you see? Mostly a lot of bags! If you could look inside one of those bags, what would you see? You would finally find an object! Since it isn’t possible for everyone to visit all the collections (and even if you could, there would not be much that you could easily see), this is the perfect opportunity for an online collections tour! This week’s tour will take us through some of the collection from Fort Rice (32MO102), a state historic site in Morton County, North Dakota (http://history.nd.gov/historicsites/rice/index.html).

Why Fort Rice? Quite a few projects I have worked on recently have involved this site, so there happen to be a lot of fun photos available. Dr. Barbara Handy-Marchello recently gave a talk at the fall North Dakota Archaeological Association (NDAA) meeting about the lives of officers’ wives who lived at this fort, and she needed me to photograph specific objects for her presentation. In the meantime, I cataloged about 678 additional objects from the site.

The first Fort Rice was established in 1864 as part of a chain of military forts built to protect transportation routes in the region. In 1868 Fort Rice was expanded and used as a military post until it was finally abandoned in 1878. Most of the objects in our collection date to the time of the fort, though some of the objects are more recent. Others pre-date the presence of non-native peoples in the area.

What kinds of questions come to your mind when you look at these objects? I wonder what their stories would be if they could talk (or write their own blog)!

Dentalium shell beads, like these, come from the ocean. Who wore these beads?

(2010.99.7312)

(2010.99.7312)

These are stone end scrapers for preparing animal hides. What was made out of the hides that these helped prepare?

(2010.99.6885, .6881, and .6884)

There are a lot of beautiful glass beads from Fort Rice. Which color would you pick to wear and why?

(2010.99.7198)

I would pick the green beads. I like green!

(2010.99.7242)

Or maybe I would choose the blue glass beads–I also like blue!

(2010.99.7228)

Or there is a bead with spots! Maybe I will just have to do a future post all about beads.

(2010.99.7307)

This boot was made for walking! Who wore this boot and where did they walk in it?

(2010.99.7444)

A metal spur. Did the person who wore this like riding fast? What was the horse’s name?

(2010.99.3214)

A fragment of a ceramic plate or saucer. This would probably have been part of a fancy place setting. What dinner party conversations did it witness?

(2010.99.1206)

These are fragments of a doll’s tea set. Was this someone’s favorite toy?

(2010.99.6296 and .6295)

There are a lot of glass bottles in the Fort Rice collection. This is a close-up of a medicine bottle. The letters on the bottle read: USA HOSP DEPT. Who needed this medicine and why?

(2010.99.2213)

Metal handcuffs. These look rather unpleasant. I wonder who had to wear these and for how long?

(2010.99.6159)

Where should we go next on our archaeology collections tour? Please let me know what kinds of artifacts or collections you would like to see in my next post!

Visitors often have personal connections to the history of Fort Totten. Researching the files we have at the site and answering a visitor’s question is one of the most rewarding parts of being a Site Supervisor. There are three resources we primarily use. Two of them are primary sources, and the third is secondary.

The first source we use when looking for an answer to a question is one of the three school yearbooks donated to us by former students of the boarding school that operated here between 1891 and 1959. The yearbooks are from 1910, 1939, and 1951. These have great pictures of former students and employees of the school as well as the clubs and sports organizations the school had throughout its history. This past summer, the 1910 yearbook was used to locate photos of two girls who had once attended the school. The girls were ancestors of a woman visiting the site. She was looking for information to help her research her family history.

Cover of 1951 yearbook

Archival staff and past Site Supervisors have also compiled wonderful collections of historical photos. Several of these have been placed in a large binder, located at the site. The photos show many of Fort Totten’s buildings-- some of which no longer exist. They are a great reference when showing visitors what the Fort used to look like. I used this binder and the historic photos while putting together information to have a gazebo rebuilt two summers ago. The gazebo had been constructed early on in the school era to beautify the grounds.

Picture of new gazebo

I also use historic photos to promote the site’s history on our Facebook page It has been a great way to interact with the public and to spark conversations about the site. Stories that people share about the site and post on the Facebook page are gathered and put in our site’s history files after permission is granted from the author.

The secondary source that I reference the most while searching for answers to visitors’ questions is the book, History of Fort Totten, which was written in the 1950s by the United States Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The book details the history of Fort Totten, including the Indian Industrial School and Frontier Fort Era. It also has a chapter of oral histories that were gathered by the State Historical Society of North Dakota in the 1970s and 1980s from former students of the school. Four of these oral histories were videotaped and are used in our orientation video.

As a Site Supervisor, I continue to add to the primary source history of the site by recording and saving the stories and memories that are told to me by those who come searching for answers to their questions.