News

The Regional History Center and University Archives at Northern Illinois University will have on display historical cookbooks, recipes, and ephemera from its collection for its exhibit: “You Are What You Eat: Cookbooks as ingredients to shape identity and community.” Cookbooks and recipes often reveal more than just a list of ingredients. Ethnic recipes help preserve a cultural heritage and demonstrate different cultures that exist in an area. Passing along a favorite family recipe helps keep the memory of family members alive. We will explore how cookbooks have created a sense of identity in the northern Illinois region. The exhibit, which is being curated in conjunction with American Archives Month and the 50^th anniversary of the University Archives, will be on display through November 15^th on the first floor of Founders Memorial Library.

 

To celebrate these events and make the exhibit more interactive, the Center will be hosting an exhibit grand opening and reception on October 16th for NIU staff, faculty, students, and the public. 

·         Thursday, October 16, 2014

·         4:30 to 6:30 PM

·         Exhibit in Founders Memorial Library foyer

·         Reception in the Regional History Center, room 400

·         Light refreshments will be served

 

Parking is available in the NIU visitor’s lot located to the west of the library, off of Carroll Avenue.

 

The staff will be re-creating a few of the recipes featured in the exhibit, and copies of these recipes will be available for guests to take home. We will encourage visitors to make these recipes, share photos and stories, or share their own favorite recipes on our Facebook page throughout the month of October. We will also have a photo gallery on our Flickr site. For more information, links to our social media sites, and to view our digital exhibit, visit: http://libguides.niu.edu/cookbooks

From the National Archives at Chicago September 2014 Newsletter:

American Indian Schools in the Great Lakes Region

Saturday, November 8, 9:30 – 11:00 AM

Learn about Native Americans through the Bureau of Indian Affairs records with National Archives at Chicago archivist Katie Dishman. The National Archives has many government documents related to how American Indians were educated and housed from the late 19th through the early 20th century. This workshop will tap into the wealth of genealogical information about the students and their families and provide insights into the operations of the schools.

Treats, Treasures, and the Gift of History

Saturday, January 10, 9:30 – 11:00 AM

Discover rarely seen treasures of the National Archives at Chicago and gain tips for accessing these textual records with an insightful presentation from Director of NARA-Chicago, Doug Bicknese. Ideas for sharing your genealogical research with your loved ones also will be discussed.

Ancestry Presents Ancestry

Saturday, May 9, 9:30 – 11:00 AM

It’s a family affair! Loretto “Lou” Szucs and her daughter Juliana Smith will provide an overview and strategies for searching the world’s largest online family history resource.

BAMM! Business, Agriculture, Manufacturing, and Mortality Census Schedules

Saturday, June 13, 9:30 – 11:00 AM

BAMM! Add “explosive” details to your genealogy by utilizing non-population Census schedules of Business, Agriculture, Manufacturing and Mortality. Authorized by Congress, these records cover very specific time periods and locations during the 19th and 20th centuries and provide unique insights into the communities where our ancestors lived and worked. Kris Maldre Jarosik, Education Specialist at NARA-Chicago, will help you learn about these records.

Sign Up!

Each workshop is free and will be held at our facility near Ford City Mall at 7358 South Pulaski Road, Chicago, IL. Space is limited, so please RSVP to save a seat by sending an e-mail to kristina.jarosik@nara.gov . Please indicate in your e-mail which workshop you are interested in attending.

From the Midwest Nursing History Research Center:

Julie Fairman, PhD, RN, FAAN, will present the Harriet Fulmer Lecture on October 21, 2014

ZOMBIE IDEAS AND COMPETITION: BUILDING THE HISTORICAL CASE FOR APRN FULL SCOPE OF PRACTICE

Tuesday, October 21, 2014 from 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM

University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Nursing - 3rd Floor Event Center

Dr. Fairman is the Nightingale Professor of Nursing and Director of the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania.  Julie Fairman’s current work involves the history of the intersection of health policy and nurse practitioners in the United States from 1980 to the present. In 2009 she served as the IOM/AAN/ANF Scholar in Residence. In other words, she is an internationally known leader in the field of nursing history. We are delighted to welcome her to UIC.

Dr. Fairman’s talk will center on the history of regulation and scope of practice for Advanced Practice Registered Nurses with a focus on the Federal Trade Commission and advanced practice nurses.

Immediately following Dr. Fairman’s talk, there will be a short commemoration of the life of Dr. Martha Pitel.  Dr. Pitel, who died on April 19 2014, was a nurse researcher and educator. At a time when few nurses earned graduate degrees, Dr. Pitel was awarded a PhD in anatomy at the University of Minnesota and continued her research at the University of Paris. During her long career Dr. Pitel taught at several of the nation’s premier universities, including UIC, and chaired the Nursing Departments at the University of Kansas and at Chicago’s Northwestern University. We are proud to hold her papers at the MNHRC.  In her memory and through her support, the Center will open the The Martha Pitel Illinois Training School digital collection. The event will conclude with refreshments and optional tours of the Midwest Nursing History Research Center.

Please register for this free event through eventbrite. (Registration gives us a rough headcount for refreshments.)

Submitted by Anita Melcher, Union League Club of Chicago:

On October 1, 2014, the Archives Subcommittee of the Union League Club of Chicago marked the centenary of the outbreak of World War I with an event that included a presentation and lecture on the Club’s involvement in World War I. We had musical accompaniment by the ULC Brass Ensemble, playing music from that time period. We were honored to welcome Mr. Herbert Quelle, Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany to our presentation.

This event was the culmination of six months of research by myself and two ULC members. We utilized the Club’s archival collections, Club histories, local newspaper reports, and posters.  Bruce Grant’s Fight for a City - The Story of the Union League Club of Chicago and its Times (published for the Club’s 75^th anniversary in 1955) was a particularly valuable resource for accounts of the Club’s activities during this period.

What the Club did in the Spanish-American War, although different in scale and scope, served as a template for actions in the First and Second World Wars including the establishment of a War Committee that would: coordinate Club support of the national government in its war aims; support members of the armed services; and facilitate enlistments. 

During our research, it began to become very clear to us the poor condition of the WWI War Committee’s scrapbook from which we pulled many images and the binder that housed the War Committee meeting minutes.

We treated surfaces that were showing displays of red rot with “Cellugel” and I rehoused the 100-page scrapbook of the War Committee. The scrapbook pages were extremely brittle and acidic paper. Over the course of about 30 hours, I removed as much of the acidic paper as possible, replacing it with acid-free paper, and enveloped the items in archival polypropylene page protectors.

Submitted by Baha'i National Center:

A little over 100 years ago, at the age of 52, Chicagoan Susan Isobel Moody was so moved by her new-found Baha’i Faith that she finished medical school, learned to speak Persian, and moved to Iran to establish a hospital and school for girls.

Susan Moody was born in 1851 in Amsterdam, New York. As a young woman, in addition to the responsibilities of caring for her five orphaned younger siblings, she studied voice and fine arts in Chicago, New York and Paris. The young Miss Moody considered becoming a doctor, but abandoned medical studies because she couldn’t stand the dissecting room.

The Baha’i Faith began in Persia in the 1860s. The first mention of it in America was in Chicago in 1893 at the Columbian Exposition’s World Parliament of Religions.  In 1903, after much study and prayer, Susan Moody joined a growing cluster of Chicago believers and embraced the Faith and its teachings of the oneness of humanity.

In 1909 she visited Palestine to meet ‘Abdul-Baha’, the son of Baha’u’llah, the Founder of the Faith, who taught that the height of virtue is to serve others.  She learned of the poverty and need of the Persians, and vowed to do what she could to alleviate their suffering. She re-enrolled in medical school and learned the language before moving to Tehran.

Dr. Moody became a beloved figure in Tehran, where she worked for 25 years to help women overcome poverty and ignorance. Her patients, lacking knowledge of basic health and hygiene, often came to her with chronic, untreated conditions because they would not remove their veils for male physicians. Moody stayed faithful to her work there despite anti-Baha’i and early anti-American sentiments.

Photos courtesy of the National Baha’i Archives, United States

READ MORE: http://www.bahai.us/2013/03/23/susan-i-moody-pioneer-physician-and-educator-in-early-20th-century-iran/

 

Dr. Moody with Baha’i women in Tehran, 1910. These women were some of the first to appear in public without a veil.

 

Dr. Moody and Baha’is in Tehran, 1920.

 

Funeral for Dr. Susan Moody, Tehran, 1934. Hundreds attended, including many of her students.

From a release by the News Bureau at University of Illinois at Chicago:

Chicago’s commodities exchanges were the first in the U.S. - and heralded the city’s arrival as a commercial center.

Now the records of two of these exchanges - the Chicago Board of Trade and the MidAmerica Commodity Exchange - are available for research in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago. 

“This vast archive documents a story that goes well beyond the economic history of the city,” says Mary Case, UIC university librarian. “The files are rich with primary source materials concerning business and government relations, historical accounts from companies, the exchanges’ philanthropic responses to worldwide disasters, and the interactions of prominent business leaders.” 

The Chicago Board of Trade was established in 1848 in a flour store attic by 82 Chicago merchants and political figures. In 1859, CBOT was granted a charter allowing self-regulation from the Illinois legislature. It merged with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 2007 to become CME Group. 

The MidAmerica Commodity Exchange was founded in 1868 as “Pudd’s Exchange” in a field at LaSalle and Washington streets. It offered contracts smaller than those offered by CBOT, thus allowing individuals with smaller assets to trade commodities. It was incorporated as the Chicago Open Board of Trade in 1880.  It became the MidAmerica Commodity Exchange in 1973, was affiliated with CBOT in 1986, and was dissolved in 2003. 

Commodity trading benefited farmers by stabilizing markets and prices, and consumers by requiring that commodities be inspected and graded. Chicago’s exchanges set worldwide precedents for trading practices and relationships between boards of trade and chambers of commerce. 

The collections document the exchanges’ history, officers and members, operations, rules and regulations, and statistics. The materials include correspondence, meeting minutes, rulebooks, reports, legal papers, press clips, and publications, as well as photographs and blueprints of the iconic Chicago Board of Trade Building. 

Additional records will soon be added to the archive. “CME Group plans to add the records of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to UIC Daley Library later this year,” said Lindsay Siens, CME Group public affairs director. 

The collections are available for use in the Special Collections Department of Daley Library. Some materials are restricted. Visitors are advised to locate materials through the department’s online finding aids, then contact the department at (312) 996-2742 to ensure that the materials are open to the public.

Photo: Chicago Board of Trade trading floor, 1930. (CBOT records: Series V - Public Relations Department)

The Outreach Subcommittee is looking for a few more members to round out our group! Outreach develops services and materials that facilitate involvement in the profession, recognize professional accomplishments and contributions of its members, increase awareness of CAA within Chicago and regionally, and promote the archives profession. 

This year, we're working on coordinating an archives crawl for 2015 (along with the Events Subcommittee), publishing stories from area archives, facilitating a new CAA logo and Cafe Press store, as well as many other activities! 

In order to maintain our Subcommittee status, we must meet at least four times each year, either in person or online. It's a great group and we'd love to have you! If you are interested, please email the Co-chairs Gretchen Neidhardt (gretchenneidhardt@gmail.com) and Megan Keller (msmegankeller@gmail.com).

We have been making some changes to the website lately and you might have noticed that we have a new section to honor our Janet Olson Award winners! We are honored to create an award in Janet's honor. From her biography:

Janet's dedication to the local archives community is inspiring.  She was instrumental in the revitalization and optimal functioning of the Chicago Area Archivists organization.  From 1999 to 2014 she has served as chair, treasurer and membership director, and overseen such initiatives as the formation of the steering committee, updating of by-laws, online presence including website, list-serv, and membership directory.  She expertly fostered collaboration and quietly guided steering committee members to explore new ways of fulfilling the organization’s mission.

Read more about Janet and her achievements and learn how to nominate a fellow archivist for the award!