The Walk and Talk Webinar Touring the Indiana State Library - 6-26-2024
All right hello and welcome everyone to the What's Up Wednesday The Walk and Talk webinar tour of the Indiana State Library my name is Beth Yates I'm the Children's Consultant from the Indiana State Library’s Professional Development Office I will be your host and your question moderator today as my colleague Paula Newcom who is our Northeast Regional Coordinator operates the camera and my other colleague Suzanne Walker from the Indiana Young Readers Center uh leads us on a tour of the Indiana State Library today a couple of announcements first of all to register for other webinars or other trainings available from the Professional Development Office please see the Indiana State Library’s events calendar which can be found on our website at www.in.gov library and then it's under Services for Libraries if you're watching a recording of this webinar instructions on how to obtain your LEU are in the video's description on YouTube or you can also find those instructions on the Indiana State Library’s Continuing Education site under LEU policies but in short when you watch a recording someone in administration at your library should create a certificate for you as they're the ones who can verify that you watched all right I think we're ready to get started we're so happy to have you join us today this is an exciting new Endeavor for for us we'll be giving you a live tour of the Indiana State Library you'll get to see what the Indiana State Library divisions do uh those watching live today should be able to ask the staff members questions you'll get to see the building in real time and as I mentioned I'll be your host and question moderator and Paula Newcom is behind the camera with Suzanne Walker as your tour guide quick reminder that the library is open and so you might see folks in the background or hear them talking we're going to try our best to avoid it but as with any open library it's really hard to predict what we might come across um so we want to also apologize in advance about any light flares the camera may produce things like that um should we're very confident it's going to go great though no problem uh okay so I have a quote I want to start with it's from Steven Schmidt’s book “The Architectural Treasures of the Indiana State Library” and it says “When the State Library was founded in 1825, its mission was simply to support and serve the needs of the new Indiana State government. During the first century, the library moved repeatedly around the Statehouse, steadily growing its collection and adding new services until a new home was required. With the construction of the Indiana State Library and Historical Building in 1934, for the first time the library had a permanent home. Over the years the library’s collection continued to grow and its mission kept evolving to enhance its outreach to the libraries and citizens of Indiana. The State Library of today reaches far beyond its own walls to support libraries of
all types around the state and to offer enhanced services directly to the citizens of the state.” and with that I will hand everything over to Suzanne Walker and we will start our tour hey everybody I'm Suzanne Walker I am the Indiana Young Reader Center librarian and the Director of the Indiana Center for the Book and I'm really excited to be with all of you guys today uh we've had a great turnout and we're just super excited and a little nervous so just bear with us for all of that um I wanted to let you know that in 1976 the library doubled its size with a four story addition which is where we're standing now and I'm going to go ahead and start our tour today we're going to meet our Circulation Support Division Supervisor Rayjeana so let's just walk over here and this is Rayjeana Duty morning hi Rayjeana hello how are you I'm doing well how are you good thanks for being with us today um can you tell us a little bit about the patrons that you guys serve here in the Circulation Division we have a vast variety of patrons that come in we have people that come in for meetings we have children that want to visit the Young Readers Center we have people liking the microfilm genealogy so we have everything in here fantastic and can you tell us a little bit about how do State Library is different from our local public library so the State Library is more of a research library we don't have your everyday what's on demand books right now so we have your local history your genealogy your grant and stuff like that okay great fantastic anything else no okay fantastic thanks so much for joining us thank you all right guys we're gonna go ahead and start walking um we're going to walk this away we're going to come back so as you walk through the library the doors are behind me many of you probably know this elevator that takes you up to most of our meeting rooms um and right now we're walking over to the Historical Bureau the Indiana Historical Bureau and um we're going to meet Michella Marino so come on we're gonna head in this door how are you today I'm well so nice to see you this is Michella Marino she is your Deputy Director Indiana Historical Bureau fantastic so can you tell us a little bit more about the Historical Bureau I can um as you said I am the Deputy Director of the Historical Bureau and we are a public history organization that has been in operation uh since 1915 um it's long been our mission to provide publications and programs for citizens of all ages to both learn and teach about the history of their own communities um the state of Indiana and their relationship to the nation and world um we are composed of three departments the public History Department, the Digital Initiatives Department and the Rare Books and Manuscripts and the way I see those sort of in conversation with each other is that Digital Initiatives works with community partners to help digitize their collections and make them publicly accessible um Rare Books and Manuscripts curates um one of our largest collections here at the library and then the public historians get in and tell the stories that we find from all those collections and translate that um for the public um we at the Bureau have two legislatively mandated um projects or programs that we operate one is our State Historical Marker program which has been in operation since 1946 we have over 750 markers across the state we're in 91 of 92 Indiana counties Jay County is our hold out trying to get yes um and that is a public driven program um where we try to tell stories that highlight the the rich and diverse history across our state we also have one other legislatively mandated program which is the Indiana Legislative Oral History Initiative or the ILOHI or state government we love a good acronym right do and library yes of course right um and so we've been operating that since 2018 and that's where we conduct oral histories with former state legislators uh really in an attempt to better understand the political history of our state over the last four decades in particular um and how the state has evolved and those are available to the public through our online archive so um we also partner with a lot of other communities based organizations libraries and history based organizations across the state to provide public programming and then in sort of keeping with our mission we also host a variety of other projects here at the bureau namely our blog Untold Indiana our narrative podcast talking hoer history we also have hoer state Chronicles which is our newspaper digitization program um Indiana Memory which is a hub for online collections um and then of course also Rare Books and Manuscripts collection and our marker files that are open to the public for research as well so when do you sleep I don't know I don't know we are very busy but we like it that way and we love working with other organizations across the state that's great now this is off the cuff but um do you want to tell us a little bit about your space I do this is our new Historical Marker Center we still have a few things that we're bringing in we are envisioning this space as a place where folks can come in from the public that are interested in historical markers or working on applications and we can help them through that process and to learn what history is and in fact how to do history I love that Michella I love kind to like always a delight thank you so much you're welcome the tour go well thank you okay guys we're gonna head out this way now that was too fun great so I get to share some fun facts um today as Suzanne and Paula travel to various locations and they are headed now to Genealogy I believe right yes yeah so uh here's our first fact the building was renovated in 1999 and the outer walls were converted to windows to allow more natural light inside that's the area just to the left of where Suzanne just walked through uh this more modern section full of windows can be seen at the Ohio Street entrance to the library and ISL also has an entrance on Senate Avenue which has a more traditional facade including an Indiana limestone owl which looks down from the top of the entrance at everyone who enters although that door is typically not open to the public and it's definitely not open to the public right now because we're under construction on that side of the building so yes don't try to use that door right now okay everybody so we are now um in inside Genealogy but before we get to Genealogy we're actually going to talk about this booth behind me so um this is where the Indiana Voices Program records Indiana related books and magazines for patrons of the Indiana Talking Book and Braille Library and actually on February the 28th of this year we did a webinar with Abby Chumin from Talking Books and Braille so um you can visit that webinar on our Archived Webinars page to learn more about that department um specifically so I think Beth is going to be good enough to put that in the chat and I'm just going to invite Paula to kind of come a little bit closer so that you can see that inside of the booth we do have somebody working in there right now so much action happening okay so now we're going to just go a little deeper into Genealogy and we're gonna meet Jamie Dunn who's the Head of our Genealogy Division and she's ready hi Jamie hello how are you I'm good how are you great to see you so this is Jamie Dunn She's the head of our Genealogy Division Jamie um do you want to just tell us a little bit about what you guys do here in J sure we have have a large genealogy collection um roughly 50,000 books as well as numerous other materials vertical files microfilm that sort of thing and we collect primarily on Indiana and the Midwest just due to space constraints but we do collect something for all 50 states and other countries as well um our collections include family histories they include um county histories birth marriage and death in debes land records probate and will records just any kind of records that might be useful for genealogists we have indexes or copies of the actual records we also offer a lot of online resources some of those you have to be here in the library to use like Ancestry Library Edition fold three etc. um and others are on our website that anyone can use anywhere um INB scene Indiana records things we've digitized from our Collections and made available through our digital collections um things like that we're always adding new new things online that people can access from anywhere just to make our collections more available to everyone and that's pretty much what we have that's fantastic so I imagine that you guys get questions that are pretty difficult to answer sometimes it depends on what people are looking for sometimes it's people getting started and we help them when they've never done genealogy before other times answering something that's been you know bothering them for 20 years and we love working on any kind of question no matter how in depth or um like simple it is in the beginning that's great um have you gotten to be with patrons when they've had that aha moment yes that's our favorite part when they come in and we we set them up with whatever books are relevant to what they're looking for and they find exactly what they wanted that's so great very cool okay well thank you so much I'm gonna invite Paula just to go ahead and scan around the room so people can see your department quickly sure you're welcome yeah and this year the Genealogy Division is hosting the genealogy and local fa History Fair on Saturday October 26 if anybody is interested in that is free and open to the public and we'll provide three LEUs and the theme this year is At the Crossroads of America Westward Migration and Family History okay friends we're gonna quickly pop in the Nook this is our um gift shop that we have here at the State Library so if you do come and visit us us um they kind of turn the stuff over every once in a while so definitely come and see if there's some tricket that you need um we focus on stuff uh featuring Indiana of course and a little bit libraries we do have some books things like that so definitely come and take a look at the Nook okay um we're just walking through the lobby now you can see a little bit if you want to pan over there you can see some of those big windows we were talking about earlier and then um show you a couple of fun things here in our lobby so here on the floor is actually this um metal plate in the on the ground and it's not that exciting but whenever I'm on tours with children I always show them this plate because that's when you're jumping from the 1970 edition into the 1930s part of our our building and the other thing that kids like to see on the tour they love the ATM and they also love this can you believe that they love our pay phone which still works you know we're vintage here okay so we're going to go ahead and head down this hallway um and I'm gonna let Beth tell you a little bit about this that pay phone could fit into our historical collection at some point probably absolutely yeah so this portion of the library is called the exhibit hall it's uh filled with display cases as you can see uh they feature everchanging exhibits that are drawn from the collections of the State Library um there's all kinds of neat items here and lots of different formats and some of my favorite items which I've seen on display here a few different times so they must have them in uh you know periodic uh cycle of of display is a collection of South Shoreline travel posters from the 1920s they are so beautiful okay great thank you so much um I'm really excited I'm here in the State House Education Center now so we just walked through the exhibit hall and I'm here with Bailey Hinton-Matthews Bailey Matthews-Hinton hint whatever you want to say hey here's Bailey she's my good friend and uh Bailey runs the State House Education Center can you tell us a little bit about the center yeah so the State House Education Center opened as a legacy project for Indiana's Bicentennial in 2016 uh I always say that we are kind of like the trailer to the movie of the tour the uh you get at the state house so groups come here first before they go to the state house sometimes sometimes yeah it's like a little preview of what you get here or at the state house we focus a lot on Indiana history in Indiana government so kiddos can get a little bit of civics education um when they come in and check out our exhibits and you and I partner a ton on field trips we do we have the yeah high five lots of field trips in the fall we get hundreds hundreds hundreds of kids that come in bordering on thousands probably per year um but right now you have something exciting going on this summer I hold a summer camp every year for children of state employees so we're on our dead week right now nice uh but we've had two groups this past week or past two weeks and I've got another two groups coming in so I know you also have um a lot of uh features here you've got a feature about uh the the State House if you want to go ahead and show this case Paula this is like a little miniature of the State House which is really fun don't show the fact that those are out of order but this they're just turned off right now turned off for camp and then we also have an area where kids can vote we have an area where they talk about how it bill becomes a law and also bits about state government so which of these features is your favorite oh that's a good question um and I know I'm springing it on you yeah I think my favorite is GNA be the one in the back corner over here government works for me it just tells kids how government works for them and every as aspect of their lives right and it also has really cute miniature so we'll walk over there and take a look at it thank you so much thank you okay Paula we're just gonna pop over here so we can see this really yeah as Suzanne mentioned the State House Education Center contains several different interactive exhibits for kids um there's a 3D model of the state house there's pretend voting machines and Interactive simulations that explains the three branches of Indiana state government and some other cool stuff you can see the voting machines there to the right as she walks through and the tape is not usually on the floor that's for the camp yep okay fantastic so at this point we're heading into the Great Hall and it is great and it's fantastic this is our best part of our building but we're coming up the stairs from the side but we're going to take you over to what the old front door over here um so you're going to get to see our grand staircase and I hope you can hear me okay it gets a little echoey here um come on over this way don't run into that very good perfect so the marble grand staircase that you can see is really spectacular as it leads up to the original circulation desk and the card catalog I always tell people it's probably the biggest card catalog in Indiana but I don't have any I don't have a resource to vouch for me on that I'm pretty sure it is um and we're also going to see some beautiful stained glass bots ofos so I'm gonna let um Paula walk up the stairs here in a second and we're gonna have Beth tell us a little bit more about yeah this is the original library entrance off of Senate Avenue behind Paula there which is uh under construction uh the exterior of the library is constructed of Indiana limestone from the Bedford quarries in southern Indiana and the interior walls are covered with Monte Casino Sandstone from the Saint Meinrad Quarry which is also in southern Indiana and the outside of the building is currently being cleaned and repaired as Suzanne mentioned and is covered in scaffolding and tarps very lovely but normally it is it is truly lovely when it's not covered absolutely all right as we come to the top of the stairs you can see this wall full of card catalogs in front of you fun fact about the card catalogs there are 1,482 card sized drawers made from Indiana walnut of course and each drawer holds approximately 600 cards representing a total of nearly 900,000 cards that's a lot of cards so um this is a question for all of you guys who are joining us today I bring kids here for tours all the time and they see this big wall and I ask them if they know what it is so first of all do you think the kids know what this is and Beth you can tell me in the chat what people are saying yeah does anybody know what do you think the kids think it is well no my question is do they know what it is do they know it is no they all say no no yes they don't know what it is so what do you think that they think it is what do what do you guys think the kids think these are let's see if we've got any any any responses uh let see yeah somebody said mailboxes yep yep that's what they think they are they think all of a sudden that they're in the post office and that they think that these are mailboxes so obviously they're not they're the card catalog and uh we don't add to the card catalog any longer but we still do have researchers that will come in and go here first that's what they're used to doing um okay so in the great hall there's really so much to talk about we could probably do a webinar just on the Great Hall actually so you can see the ceiling um I think I think have you got the yeah there you go and you can see our chandeliers so the chandeliers are really supposed to be representative of a famous Indiana agricultural product it's not pineapples it's actually drum roll corn that's right and then um also at the top of sort of the columns we don't really have columns but at the top of the wall you might be able to see names carved up there and those are like it's a little bit like a game of categories because we have sets of three names that all represent a certain thinker or a certain topic so we have artists we have speakers we have explorers we have um inventors we have all kinds of people that in the 30s they decided to carved you know on our walls now are are any of them women no are any of them people of color not really so if we were going to do this again today we would definitely have a more diverse uh group of people that we um honor here at the State library but it does show you a little bit about what they thought was important back in the 30s and there are names that we definitely would think are important today like Gutenberg that's a important guy and also uh like they've got musicians to Bach and Beethoven and people like that okay so at this point um we're gonna go ahead and pop into one of these side rooms off at the State Library yeah oh sorry you want yeah as you explore the library of the first things you notice is that there are not very many books available for browsing and that's because the State Library as we've mentioned is a research library and it has closed stacks if you've never heard that term closed stacks means that the librarians have to go get the items for you but we do have a small browsing collection and those books are available to check out with an Evergreen Indiana and a library card and Suzanne's there now yes so sorry so this is the browsing area and I'll let Paula kind of pan around so you can see it a little bit this is the part of the library that's really the most like a public library everything in this room circulates and people can check out but like Beth said for the most part most of our stuff doesn't check out so we're just going to kind of turn around and we're going to pop into the reading room um so we do have researchers from all across the globe that come to the State library for their research and um today we actually have a researcher that's flying in from London to do research which is exciting and they need to have access to rare books and manuscripts and when they come and do their research they're actually going to sit here at some of these tables we always have to have staff uh with the person as they're doing their research so that we make sure all of our collections stay safe um the other thing about this room is it's beautiful we're going to turn around it actually actually sorry I'm gonna can we show these photos or are they going to be too glary you can tell me do they look okay okay so these are some giant photos that we have of the State Library when the State Library was first built so this is an early one you can see this old car and then over here we're going back in time this is before the State Library uh was you know completed you can see the skeleton kind of of the building I love this sign here it says slow Hospital quiet zone so that's kind of interesting and then way down here you can see when the library was just a speck of dirt a big big hole um and what I think is so fascinating about this photo which I hope you can see are all of the old cars and also there's actually people like digging in this hole and the way that they were able to do this construction before they had these giant you know um uh machinery the way that we have today like this little guy is kind of all they had and I'm sure you won't be well maybe we can do this look at the Machinery that we have today we have just giant machinery I don't know if you can see that at all oh yeah but back in the day they just really didn't okay so we're gonna go ahead and walk a little bit um well Beth do you want to go ahead and well sorry we're going to talk about the ceiling come on over and the ceiling um so the ceiling in here is made of cast concrete and you might see those little icons with the blue backgrounds and those are actually American publishers printers marks we're going to go into another room later and we're going to see European printers marks and then at the end of this room which I think we can go ahead and walk a little closer to it um this is one of four murals that we have here at the State Library this one is called “Indians Gift of Corn” and it really is my personal favorite mural um because it does show Native Americans kind of going about their daily life what we know we believe that the dwelling in this painting is accurate we're not as sure about the clothing that the people are wearing but it is a beautiful um mural and like I said there were four murals that were commissioned for the library when it was built um let's see here I think I'm going to let Beth tell you a little bit about our Manuscripts Division and then we're going to walk into the Indiana Young Readers Center sure that that reading room we just saw it belongs to the Manuscripts Reading Room and uh if you aren't familiar with what a manuscript collection is I know I wasn't until I came to work at the State Library in library terms manuscript generally means an unpublished work of any kind of medium our manuscripts collections range from 15th century to present day we have got Civil War era letters and diaries we've got family papers records of many political figures from the whole state and because of the age condition and rarity of the items they require special handling okay guys we've now entered the Indiana Young Reader Center which was my home away from home and my favorite part of the building I say that there's a couple of times I'm going to say that FYI so um this space uh became part of the library in 2016 before that it actually was the Manuscripts Reading Room but in 2016 as part of the Bicentennial they decided to go ahead and do an installation of an area specifically for kids so in this area we collect um books by Indiana authors um by Indiana illustrators and also books set in Indiana we also have if you're familiar with some of our state awards we have every book that's ever won the Indiana um young Hooser Book Award in all the categories we have all of those winners we also have all of the books that uh were nominated and won the Firefly award I'm actually gonna make Paula turn around and show you this again so that's where came in at so you can see this is our Firefly collection we have all the books that were nominated and won the Firefly and then over here this is our younger sections we have the picture books and we have it labeled by intermediate and then middle grade and then of course we also have every book that's won the Elliot Rosewater book award so um if you're interested in Indiana Awards we have all of those and then behind some of our like more special collections we talk about the Indiana author's award um these are the letters that have won Indiana Letters About Literature for the last 10 years or so I'll talk about that at the very end of our webinar today we also have a special collection of graphic novels by Indiana authors and then we're developing our Spanish collection by Indiana authors we have a little bit of Braille here and this is really just to Showcase that the State library is the entity that has talking books in Braille Library the Braille Library itself is in the basement and our bigger collection I think I could be wrong about that but our talking books like the um the audio books we have a massive collection of those so walking this way um you can see more about more inner space we've got a collection of cram globes actually which is kind of fun and then lots of books by Indiana authors that write for kids but the fun stuff is over here so we do have all of these alcoves along the all and in this first one we are just focusing on Indiana as well as Indiana Center for the Book so we have this fun um magnet board which you can see for Indiana County so you can come and find your county and put your put your puzzle piece on there which is kind of great and then in this next one we feature a few things that um we do here at the State Library so we focus on genealogy and we also um uh talk about primary sources in this alcove one of the things that's really popular is um this uh display about cursive writing we get I just had somebody in here yesterday that was like I can't believe kids need to know how important cursive writing is well you know there I don't know some schools teach it some schools don't teach it but we feel like it's an it's important so that kids can read you know diaries that their grandmother maybe would have written or their great-grandparents or other other documents from their life but also the founding uh documents of our country were all in cursive writing so it's important to have that okay one more we've got actually got three more so this next one is focusing on Indiana authors John Green and Meg Cabot some of our big hitters that write for teams and then this alcove talks about Clifford and Garfield we're really lucky in Indiana that we get a famous cat and a famous dog from Indiana so Clifford is from Indiana because Norman Bridwell is the author and Norman Bridwell is from Kokomo, Indiana and then Garfield is a Indiana cat because Jim Davis is actually from Grant County, Indiana um so we're happy to have both of them a couple other fun things in this area we do have Clifford's dog house which is great come in so you can see me Clifford's dog house is super fun it's very popular um during field trips and with kids we have a play area with in our picture book area and then our last alcove really focuses on um being an author or being an illustrator so we're trying to kind of encourage kids in that direction okay we're gonna step outside and I'm going to show you two more things you're doing great Paula so over here not to be outdone by Clifford's dog house we we have Garfield in a little photo zone so if you come to the State Library you take Garfield and I'm also going to mention our partnership with Dolly Parton Imagination Library so we do have a a nice big poster here about Dolly Parton's Imagination Library and you can go new partnership with them and I think Beth is probably gonna pop that link in the chat so that you guys can see that it's in there okay great all righty so now we're actually we're still in the Great Hall we've kind of done a little circle and now we're in the area of the Great Hall called the Mezzanine so this area is a lovely place to sit and relax it's frequently used for all kinds of events we do a lot of events here at the State Library we have receptions um special programs weddings all kinds of things lots of meetings with state government so over my shoulder hopefully you can see uh one of our beautiful stained glass windows I don't think I me mentioned this earlier but our stained glass windows and our murals were all done by J. Scott Williams so he was the artist that they hired to do all of this
when the building was built so they're all vintage um you can also see the original circulation desk this is kind of a good view of it we were near there earlier but I did point it out um and the doors behind that circulation dust actually lean lead directly to our vintage stacks which is kind of of cool so um the stacks are right there the librarian would have had just quick access to be able to go back and and see those um the desk is 100% vintage a lot of the things in our building are vintage the building is Art Nouveau um and we have all kinds of things kind of left over from when they built the building we have benches we have tables we have chairs we have old book carts we have old card catalogs it's really kind of cool to see all of that okay we're going to show you a couple of murals now I think we'll start we'll start with that one sorry so this one is um “The Building of the State” and uh this one really talks about what um what you need to make a great state and they feature things like agriculture and um industry along with jJustice and education and literature so it's really like the ideas of what made a great state back in the 30s and you can probably tell I don't know if you've ever seen Parks and Recreation but I always think of Parks and Recreation the opening of Parks and Recreation when I look at our murals they're very nationalistic they were done in the 30s you can tell you know this wasn't one of those projects that um that um was funded as part of the you know getting people out of the Great Depression it wasn't one of those is it WPA it wasn't one of those projects um but we still have those same kind of styles in the building okay the other one I'm going to show you is behind me and this one is called the “Winning of the State” and uh this one really has historical um people in it we've got Chief Little Turtle, Major General Anthony Wayne, we've got um George R Clark and Governor Henry Hamilton so all of those people and it's labeled which is really nice for when you're giving tours but the the thing I want to tell you about this mural and really the one behind me as well when when the artist was commissioned to do this he knew the um the measurements of the mural but they neglected to tell him that there was going to be a doorway at the bottom of it so after he planned his murals he had to plan them again once he realized that they was going to be that cutout at the bottom which was a real bummer okay a couple other things I'll show you um this stone right here is actually Indiana sandstone and sandstone is used a lot on um in outside buildings there's not a lot of examples of it being used internally we've actually had a geologist come to the State Library just to see the sandstone and they were just they think it's in great condition and it was really to talk to them okay quick I just wanted to mention that I popped a video with more information about those murals in the chat so if anybody's super interested in them you can check out that great video perfect um I think I'm gonna turn more lights on I think we have more lights yeah there's a little bit more light okay so now we're in the Indiana Author's Room this is another one of my favorite um rooms in the library the original purpose of this room was to house the Indiana Historical Society um and now they have their own building across the street so this room has been repurposed to house the Indiana author's collection so this is a collection of um fiction by Indiana authors mostly that write for grown-ups we have a few teen books in here but mostly those are in the young reader Center um so this is a beautiful room I talked a little bit about the sandstone and this room I'm going to talk about the walnut this is all Indiana walnut um it's all over this room and we actually also had a forester person come in someone who does forestry and they looked at this and they were like oh Indiana walnut what great condition it's in so we're pretty proud of the fact that we've been able to keep the building in its original condition for so long um this room is also used for meetings and conferences and weddings and concerts and all kinds of things we actually have an Indiana author that's coming here on August 10th you can put this in your calendar we're going to have Gabrielle Balkan who writes for kids she's going to be here as part of um celebrating the National Book Festival and she'll be in this room and we invite families and friends to come on by to meet Gabrielle Balkan at one o'clock uh the information is not out yet it'll be out soon you're getting a sneak preview um and I'm going to go ahead and point out this owl up here and I'm going to have Beth tell you a little bit more about owls I know we talked about the stone owl earlier yes those are some of my favorite owls in the library um I know they great they they're kind of Art Deco they're just so cool um so fun facts about owls for millennia they have been associated with wisdom and scholarship making owls a natural icon for libraries other owls around the State Library include more bronze owls like the ones you see there in both the Great Hall and the reference rooms as uh well as some wooden owls above the doors of the reference room and that limestone owl that I mentioned above the Senate Street entrance which is my other favorite owl at the State library and then even more along the external crown of the building so we really really like owls we do I forgot to tell you a little bit about the ceiling in this room so Paula is going to go ahead and tilt up so that you can see the ceiling so the ceiling in this room does have some stylized versions of some Indiana symbols we do have the things that look like torches are actually supposed to be Indiana corn again and then the circular big flowers are supposed to be Indiana Peony um which is of course our state flower and now I'm going to go ahead and go off on a tangent about why I think it should not be our state flower and that is my own personal opinion and is not endorsed by the State Library um it's not a native plant it's not native to Indiana and we should have an Indiana native plant as our state flower I said here you can join me in the chat if you agree you don't agree think about your choices they are really pretty though I'll give them that I know Beth and they smell really good and they're a nice plant I don't have anything against the plant I just don't think it should be our state totally understand okay so we have walked into the History Reference Room um where are we now I think I've lost myself just a minute I found myself okay so this is another room that's used for meetings and conferences if you've been to the State Library for a meeting you've probably been in this room um we're going to go ahead and look at the ceiling in this room as well so uh we do have gold leaf all over the State Library the around um little medallions that you see those are the publishers marks from um um from Europe and the other room that we looked at they were the American publishers marks and here they're the ones from Europe um it's a great room we've got really cool looking chandeliers that are very you know vintage as well and neat with that Art Nouveau look to them and then Paula is gonna turn around so you can see uh the last mural we saw the Native American one in the Browsing Room and this is um the one that we have here in the history reference room this is the fourth mural by J. Scott Williams and this one is called “Song of Labor” so this one really is showcasing like once the settlers got here they had to do a lot of work to make Indiana into a state and of course we're featuring white men and there were lots more people here than white men that made Indiana a state we had women we had people of color so again this is another example of that nationalistic art um that we have here in the building I'm going to go ahead and let Beth tell you a little bit more about some events and then we're going to walk over to our public desk on the second floor we're gonna go through like a dark area so don't be scared and Suzanne you'll be glad to know at least one person in the chat is agreeing about the state flower yay so if you've been to the State Library before for our Difference is You conference or for any other number of events you probably recognize the History Reference Room that we're in right now and are swiftly leaving um the keynote for the Difference is You is usually held in that room and speaking of DIY the 2024 conference will take place on Friday September 20th this is a conference designed for library support staff but any library staff are welcome to attend of course and registration closes on August 9th so I'm going to put the registration link in the chat for you for those who might be interested I hope we see some of you there um Suzanne's now heading to the public desk on the second floor and this is an area that contains our microfilm machines and other research computers as well as a few other spots where you can sit and read and it's darker over here so that folks can see the micro film scenes of course can you guys see us okay great yeah okay well Beth thanks for all of that um I'm here now on second floor information desk um and I'm here with Monique Howell and Monique is head of the Indiana Division uh can you tell us a little bit about the Indiana Division sure the Indiana Division holds um the newspaper collection state government documents collection um we digitize heavily from our state and local government history collection for state and local history collection um we also have a neat map collection uh statewide maps county maps city maps that we digitize heavily from to so you can find all that online so along with digitizing we also do a lot of microfilming we do we microfilm in the newspapers uh as a preservation step access wise you can find a lot of our newspapers on either Hoosier State Chronicles or through INSPIRE we're working with Newspapers.com to get a lot of that accessible online now uh you and I talked about this before but I'm gonna ask you now sorry I didn't tell you I was gonna ask you this um when we think about the longevity of like scanning some digitizing something versus having it on film do you have an opinion about which one lasts longer well the microfilm longer certainly um has lasted longer um I don't think any website has existed yet for a hundred years so time will tell how that adds up but we're always doing a balancing act between access and preservation so the preservation side is the microfilming we're still doing that and that's the industry standard but access you all know you want to find it online uh we do too so that's the way we do that thanks Monique is there anything else you want to add what's your favorite part about working the people working with me with you and the collection I didn't pay all right thanks Monique okay I'm gonna bring Michelle Sharp in Michelle Sharp is actually new this is what your second week third week third week here at the State Library tell us a little bit about what you're going to be working with here at the State Library so I'm the Collections and Outreach manager and I oversee the um Reference Division which includes the um General Collection the State Data Center and the Federal Depository Library and I just want to mention that um Michelle and are both using notes today that says it's too much to remember well and I'm new so I have my little cheat sheet here so tell us what what is um you said the State Data Center and then um the federal no tell us about the State Data Center do you have more about so the State Data Center assists the Census Bureau and disseminating information and ours at the State library is a member of a robust affiliation of a agencies that um create and circulate statistical and demographic data so a big part of its mission is to help others in finding the specific data and learning how to use the tools that can help refine their clarities have you dug into the census yourself for anything I've used the census for like genealogy research mostly um but also just for like planning programs and different things like that but yeah it's a very powerful tool it's so cool is there anything else you wanted to share with us today the State library is a great place to come visit has a lot of cool resources and being in my third week I'm learning about a lot of the stuff I never knew even existed here so I definitely encourage you to come check it out yay thank you so much for show okay I'm gonna bring which way do you want to go gonna that way okay Brent why don't you come on in I'm bringing Brent Abercrombie in and Brent um is gonna tell us about the Federal Depository yes what is a Federal Depository well that is a library that collects organizes and preserves print and electronic information produced by all parts of the federal government the mission of the Federal Depository Libraries is to provide local free access to federal information in an impartial environment a Federal Depository Library also has a full-time staff member who specializes in fat docs is that you that's me that's you yep so in addition to helping researchers I also organized uh a government information themed conference every other year called government information day but I'm uh always eager to go out and meet at a local library to talk about government information go docs answer any types of questions so are you saying that you would go out into the state and do a training at some public library about fed docs absolutely amazing you here well thank you and I have to admit that I um I got to present at Government Information Day this year and it was really cool thank you it's fun to meet people who are gaga for government resources and you stayed do there's such a wealth of information out there and so my job is to help kind of uh make it easier to navigate fantastic thanks Brent thank you great to talk to youwise everybody hi okay we are gonna walk um up to the third floor now but I'm gonna let Paula show you a little bit of our microfilm area we do have patrons in here every day um that use our microfilm like Beth said earlier it's a little darker here just so that the film shows up better on the screen okay and at this point I think I'm going to have um Beth go ahead and chat with you guys for a minute while we walk upstairs yeah okay so Paula and Suzanne are going to be heading to the third floor first um the third and fourth floors of the State Library are really primarily for staff offices and other behind the-scenes work and they generally aren't open to the public outside of a few meeting rooms so you're truly going to get some behind the scenes uh footage today um like I said we're first going to head to the third floor to the cataloging division and if you have any questions please feel free to put them in the chat I think I've answered most of the questions that I have seen if I missed it go ahead and put it in again um and we'll get those answered next time we have a pause but here they go into the cataloging division we're going to head all the way in we're infiltrating the Cataloging Division here at the State Library we also have some staff from Rare Books and Manuscripts that have their offices here and we're gonna come over and talk to Jocelyn Lewis hey how are you I'm okay good good nice to see you nice to see you too as usual okay so can you tell us a little bit about cataloging here at the State Library um cataloging here at the State library is just like cataloging at any other library um we provide bibliographic access to all the materials in our collection the only difference is we catalog some really unusual things um a lot of the things I catalog are pre 21st century okay so older things so a lot of older things a lot of ephemeral things like a little pamphlets take a long time take as much time to do one of these as a book does I imagine so you have to do a lot of original cataloging yes we do a lot of original cataloging here at the State Library we're the only people who have a lot of these materials in Indiana in Indiana in the world oh world so you're saying that we're the only people that have these specific materials yes okay I got you yes interesting um are there certain things that you like cataloging more than others I like cataloging bright shiny new things that have ISBNs and have a clear title page and author those are my favorites I don't get to do those a whole lot that's an easy day those are my favor so um which department on the State Library brings you the most new stuff at you for sure it is you it is it is you you and talking books are you're really close well talking books might be actually they probably do you get two copies of everything though that's true all right fantastic thanks so much for taking some time to talk with us today we do have a question about this actually Suzanne let's hear someone wanted to know are the manuscripts cataloged as well you're gonna be talking to them next okay and we'll save that question for Victoria all right we go upstairs perfect thank you okay guys I'm a little lost so let me see where I'm going now uh Beth is gonna talk to you while we go up to the fourth floor yeah more more stairs um so as Suzanne and Paula make their way up to the fourth floor I will tell you a little bit about that floor the fourth floor houses our Statewide Services offices the Library Development Office and the Professional Development Office we'll talk a little bit more about what those departments do later along with the State Librarian's Office and some other administrative staff are also up there our Business Office and things like that as well um the Conservation Lab is also on the fourth floor we'll be popping over there in a minute and you can also enter the closed stacks on the fourth floor which uh we will be going through that here in a bit too but Suzanne will first be stopping at the vault okay guys I think a great name yeah so these are the doors of the vault um it doesn't say on here this is the vault um whenever I do tours with kids I always ask them what kind of buildings have vaults what do you think they say they always say banks um but also our library has evolved too and that's where we keep you know um some of those materials that Jocelyn was talking about things that no one else has in the whole world we keep those here in our vault it doesn't say this is the vault for security and I have to use my badge to get in so I'm going to come over and badge myself in and we gonna pop in and see the vault and believe it or not our um our head of our Rare Books and Manuscripts Division is here this is Victoria Duncan great nice about say yes like you said this area is called the vault and it houses our over 5,000 manuscript collection the items in this division date back to the 15th century and primarily consist of letters diaries photographs artifacts and ephemera related to Indiana history notable Hoosiers and businesses and organizations from around the state that we don't require an appointment we do sometimes recommend it as a the best use of your time because it can take a little bit of extra time to page certain things like oversized items um when collections come here they're primarily donated and they are organized and described uh with something called a “Finding Aid” and we do have our own catalog called “Archive Space” and that helps patrons locate items in the many many pages that are contained in these boxes so everything is put in archival sleeves and in acid free sleeves and folders which helps preserve things for the future and then we also work closely with the conservation department to stabilize items that have deteriorated naturally over time for fixing like tears that can sometimes happen with paper so we get we take very good care of our collections here I love that so earlier when we were down talking with Jocelyn someone said um do you catalog your manuscripts so you kind of answered that but can you profit finding you or say that again in a different way so how do you catalog like a manuscript collection it's so different which is why I have a different cataloging system the thing that really makes it different is that we kind of have to organize things like I talked about oversized items we have to organize things by um format and shape so so we um organize the the many pages in a collection say by like um collections series subs series box and folder so you'll be looking through a long page of of items searching for things and see like okay what I need is in box 14 folder two and we know how to get that so but it can take some extra time it's a bit of a learning curve but we're here to help you uh we do always recommend just to just to message us um with any questions that you have fantastic so my other question is um how much stuff do you guys have that's not been catalog yet do we have a ton or not so much so we do have a ton that's not been fully process fully process yeah fully with with like a full finding a but we actually have at least a basic record for everything we want because we're a state entity we want everything to at least be um available to the other people know it's there and so once you know that something is very we can always talk to you about it but um anything else you want to share with that um no so great I you think you have the best that's great we've been hearing you know there's been a lot of like well this is good team that's great so yeah yay I love it thank you okay if you want to just kind of look down that great hallway so you can see all the cool stuff yeah we have the the cage back in the back that's for the sort of like items that are should we walk back there I know how can will be but we can try so some of our like oldest items we have like a book of hours um it's kept here oh we're losing okay we're losing okay we're gonna back out okay come on out we're gonna run away are we still there Beth yeah yeah yeah you're fine okay okay all right sorry we decided to abort because we were afraid of losing our internet connection okay I can't remember we walking through okay yeah you're going through too on your way that was great okay so we're gonna walk this way it's loud back here because stuff going on so I please do okay so as they walk through the movable stacks in the vault they are making their way to the Conservation Lab to speak with our conservator Seth Irwin uh from the State Library's website uh in December 2014 the ISL preservation department opened the Martha E. Wright Conservation Lab in honor of one of our former librarians her name is m Martha E. Wright uh the Conservation Lab uh their generous donation to the Indiana State Library’s Foundation for the preservation of our collection continues to aid our ability to restore access to fragile and rare collections to assure the continued access to all of our materials and to remember her personality her work and her love for the State Library so we have lots of thanks to give to Martha E. Wright for that yay okay so we're standing outside the Conservation Lab um we aren't going in because when we did our test we realized there's some dead spots in there for our internet so that's where we're not going in but I have Seth near with me today hello great to see you um we have about 50 people joining us today … exciting we're looking in your Conservation Lab there's all kinds of stuff going on do you want to pick a couple things what they are so actually let's walk down a little bit over here uh because uh this is a a good example so uh this is our our current graduate conservation intern Katherine who's waving uh she's working on a bird's eye view of Madison Indiana from 1854 I believe um and this is actually uh we have many of these in the collection and this one uh is for Madison but she's also going to be working on one for Indianapolis from 1854 it's these beautiful color Birds I've used and right now what she's doing is she's crumb cleaning it with eraser crumbs to remove dirt and grime that's settled on it and uh it's quite dirty for many years in our vault um and so right now she's surface cleaning it um and then if you walk over here um to this window uh she's uh in the process of finalizing working on of an extremely rare map or two rare maps uh the one the larger one on the right is a 1852 map of Indianapolis as far as we know uh this is the last one left in existence um and it's a wall map it's uh what we call a varnished wall map these were generally hung up on walls in city and clerk's offices and they usually had wood rods at the top and bottom uh this one uh at some point in the early 20th century was cut up into pieces and put into a book yes we have bad spots here so that's the
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