Clarke Historical Library provides a glimpse into Michigan past
Norman Clarke was a young boy who collected eggs. He grew up to abandon the egg collection because a rotten egg cracked in his mouth upon retrieving it from a tree. He replaced it with a book collection filled with first editions of Mark Twain novels.
Clarke's collection grew extensively to 2,160 pieces of historical content, all of which were donated to Central Michigan University in 1954.
"Over time, (Clarke) started collecting more and more, and people found out he was a collector and would offer him things, because when you’re a known collector people know they can sell things to you," said Bryan Whitledge, reference specialist at the library. "He had the resources and chose to spend it on books and history."
Clarke's donation was the first step in developing the Clarke Historical Library. The special collections library focuses in on three specific collections: The Lucille Children's Literature Collection, the Michigan Great Lakes Collection and CMU archives.
Lucile Clarke Memorial Children's Library
The Clarke Historical Library Children's Literature Collection was started in 1969 in honor of Clarke's deceased wife Lucile. It has adopted collections from Mary Harbage collection of Arthur Rackham material.
The children's library also houses resources such as books by and for Native American children, international children's books, school books and Sunday school books.
"We have a strong collection in 18th and 19th century British and American children’s literature," said John Fierst, Clarke Historic Library reference librarian. "We’ve added to that so we have more contemporary literature as well."
The collection originally consisted of 2,300 volumes and now houses 4,500. It includes collections of books printed in the United States prior to 1821.
"We’ve been adding a bit to our international children’s literature," Whitledge said." One or two other libraries in the country might have some of the books we have here. These books come from all over the world."
Clarke is featuring the International Children's Books exhibit that will continue until August.
The Michigan Great Lakes Collection
Clarke is home to the largest collection of birdseye view maps of Michigan in the state. The specials library has strong collections within Northern Michigan history.
"Our focus in Michigan is north of Lansing to Mackinac. We have the best collection of Native American materials in the state of Michigan," said Marian Matyn, reference librarian.
The library houses unique collections on The Great Lakes Native American history, such as the Bingham Family Collection.
"Abel Bingham was a baptist missionary that came to Sault Ste. Marie in the mid 1820s and built an Indian missionary school," Fierst said. "He kept very extensive correspondence with his board in Boston. He also kept a lot of diaries. He stayed here until the 1850’s, so if you’re going to do any type of history research on the Sault, you really need to consult the Bingham records."
Clarke also contains a number of original dictionaries that show Ojibway and English languages. It also has original sources that help identify original tribal membership of the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe.
"We get some use of that. People who try to determine their genealogy will come to the Clarke," Fierst said.
CMU archives and the Michigan Newspaper Preservation
Clarke is home to all of CMU's recorded history. The CMU archives house yearbooks, a record of CMU presidents, the history of CMU names, homecoming and graduation ceremonies.
"The archival materials are the most interesting part of the Clarke because they’re unique," Matyn said. "I think its fascinating to research in the archives and have someone from the past talk to you through their materials. I also think its amazing that some of these items continue to exist."
The special collections library has a active digitizing program. This year Clarke will digitize 300,000 newspapers scans. A majority of those are Michigan newspapers which will be placed online through the library's digital repository, CONDOR.
"This is a program we’ve been doing for over 50 years," said Frank Boles, library director. "For distribution (purposes), everyone wants newspapers to be digital because it's easier and faster."
Clarke uses microfilming, a unit that works to preserve newspapers so that they can be looked at in the future. Microfiliming is used because news print is cheap paper made of pulp.
"We microfilm papers. We have about 10-15 papers we microfilm every week," Whiteledge said. "These get filmed and preserved onto reels. A reel of it holds about a 1,000 pages and are meant to withstand 500 years. So you’ve got this document that isn’t meant to withstand much time, you have the microfilm which is meant to withstand 500 years, we’ve extended that time by 5,000 times."
The library scans newspapers such as Central Michigan Life, The Morning Sun and Lakeshore Guardian. The library has filmed approximately 5.7 million pages of newspapers.
