“The Development of an Archives Program for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America”

 Elisabeth Wittman, Director and Chief Archivist, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

International Association for Mission Studies - International Association of Catholic Missiologists Conference:

 “Rescuing the Memories of our Peoples”, Rome, Italy, September 29 - October 6, 2002

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is among the youngest church bodies represented at this meeting.  The ELCA was founded in 1987, a church formed by the merger of three predecessor churches.  Therefore, what I can say about our archives program will reflect a “new” archives, although it was one with an existing archival collection and constituency.   Even with considerable collections and clientele, we were not “up and running” like we wanted to be in the first year, nor for a few years after that.  As my boss said at the time, “we are more than the sum of our parts,” and so we had much to work out before we could settle into a daily routine.  Since that time we have had some routine, but we have also experienced many changes and adjustments, mainly caused by economic problems more than anything else in the last 15 years. 

 As a bit of further introduction to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, I will provide some historical background which will help you to understand many of the points I will make later in my presentation.   First, the ELCA may have come into existence in 1987, but its history dates back to 17^th century congregations founded in what is now New York and the U.S. Virgin Islands.  In New York, the Lutherans were Dutch, part of New Amsterdam.  The islands now part of U.S. territory were owned by Denmark and the earliest churches of the Danish West Indies were part of the Church of Denmark, that is, Lutheran.  The earliest Lutheran pastors in North America were persons who spoke languages other than English, namely Dutch, Danish and before long German.   It was among the German Lutherans, living in large numbers in the State of Pennsylvania that the first North American Lutheran church body was formed. In 1748 the Ministerium of Pennsylvania was founded by the Rev. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, a missionary from Halle, Germany.   Eventually this church organization spread to other states and over time, was also the source for Lutheran pastors in Lower Canada, now Ontario, and the Maritime Provinces of Canada, further to the east.   

 Also in the 17^th century, Swedes and Finns came to an area of the Delaware River Valley and what is now the states of Pennsylvania and Delaware.   Today, Gloria Dei “Old Swedes” Church in Philadelphia is one of the surviving churches, but like all the others left from the original settlement of 1638, it is now a congregation of the Episcopal Church in the U.S.A.   It was not until the 19^th century that larger immigrations of Scandinavians and Finns began and then before long, other Lutheran church bodies were formed in North America, around each groups use of their native language.   Once sufficient numbers were gathered, new church bodies were formed in various parts of the country along ethnic lines. The early settlements in the eastern part of the country had already started to introduce the English language even before theses new immigrants arrived in other parts of the country, using only  their old-world languages. 

 Many other things could be said about our history other than ethnic origins, but this was a defining factor for a long time and it was not until church mergers started taking place at the time of World War I, that Lutherans in the U.S. and Canada organized activities and cooperated together on the national level.   And it was not until the 1960s, when two large mergers took place, that the Lutheran church bodies were no longer organized mainly based on ethnic origins.  By 1987, common understandings on theology and structure had been worked out and the church was finally shedding most of its immigrant past.  The church today no longer looks only to the traditional ethnic groups from Northern Europe, although the membership of the ELCA still only contains a small percentage of persons of color.  The ELCA has been slowly working to incorporate people with other European origins, as well as Africans, Latin Americans, Asians and Native Americans. 

 So how does this history of an immigrant church effect what we are doing in the 21^st century?  Well, it means that we have languages to learn, collections scattered among the former ethnically based seminaries and colleges, and loyalties to those institutions continues remain to today.  Not all of this is bad for archives, but it is something that those who study North American Lutheran history must get used to.

 Of course the challenges of preserving non-English records continues in our “new” archives and that also includes materials coming from a variety of mission and ecumenical  interactions,  including missions within the U.S. to new immigrants, such as the many Southeast Asians who came to the U.S. at the end of the Viet Nam War, or Liberians forced to leave their country due to Civil War in the last decade.  Among these refugees are many Lutherans who have become the majority incertain city congregations.  The ELCA has congregations worshiping is more than 30 different languages.

 It has been recognized that Lutheran churches often have good records.  This is a carry over from the various Northern European countries where Lutheranism is or was the State Church.  In the U.S. and Canada, where church and state are separate, even the earliest Lutheran immigrants felt the need to keep parish records as they did in Europe and most of them did so.  These records are and will be very highly sought by persons doing family history and genealogy.   Without interruption, genealogists were the most numerous researchers to follow the archives into the new merged church.   During the first year of the ELCA’s existence, we sent form letters to genealogists saying that we would retain their letters until such time as we were able to devote staff time to them.   Other requests, from within the church, including student and faculty researchers, were given access, but even that was not always easy.  But those groups needing information for current administration, or historical work within the ELCA became our designated high priority constituencies and that has remained the same through today.    We have set this one limit on our reference services, that is, making persons from within the ELCA a priority over others.  We hoped to eventually be able to do our reference work unrestricted, but we had to allow for our resources to be in place before we could promise to respond to genealogical inquiries.   Eventually, not only did we answer these inquires, but we also developed a microfilm loan program for records of congregations on microfilm.  We did not have staff time to devote to doing the genealogical research, especially since the fees would not cover the actual costs of providing the service.  With microfilm loan, we charge a fee and any profit made goes back into accessing and preserving the same film collection.

 In that early time period after 1987, we were also fortunate to continue to have researchers from partner Lutheran churches from other continents.  Among the most memorable in 1988 was a Japanese seminary professor who was teaching at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and doing research with us over a period of about three months.  We allowed full access to all of the records in the archives, most of which were unprocessed.  We made copies of whatever materials he requested.  The copies were so numerous, that our Division for Global Mission arranged to have them shipped back to Japan at the expense of the division.

 A few years after that, visiting professors from Argentina and India made similar trips to our archives and again, they received full access to the collections.  For the Argentinians, copies were made of many photographs, which they did not have in their collections.  When leaving for Argentina, the professor and his wife put all their copies into their suitcases and shipped their clothing and other personal belongings separately, lest they lose the products of their research.    Photographs were also very important for a later, Chinese researcher whose family lost personal   possessions in the 1940s.  The photos of their loved ones in our archives were the only ones that were still in existence.   For the Indian researcher, he was gathering information for a history of their church, which was about to celebrate its 150^th anniversary.  That anniversary dates from the time of the first American Lutheran missionary arriving there in 1842.  In a few years, the 300^th anniversary of the first Lutheran missionary to India will be celebrated.   That missionary came from Germany.

 Since the time when the professor from Argentina was here, we have stayed in touch and whenever he returns to the U.S., he has called me to talk over either historical research he is doing, or some other matter on archives.  One year, we had received a box of materials from a former missionary to Argentina, which he had brought to the U.S. from Argentina,  mainly because he was working on a doctoral dissertation.  Even though these were records of the U.S. mission to Argentina, when I told my friend about them, he indicated that they should be returned to Argentina.  At that time, we determined that the records should be retained in the ELCA Archives for the time being. Within just the last two years, on another trip to the U.S., he inquired about the records again and we made extensive photocopies for his use, and for the time being that solved the problem of access to the records, if not the question of their ownership. Later in this presentation, I will return to this issue again.

 Another thing that we recognized early on, was that even though we had many Lutheran collections under one roof by 1987, there was considerable, important material located with various synod archives, as well as with seminary and college libraries around the country.   Going back to the nature of the growth of the church, the earliest records of ELCA history are in archives in the Eastern part of the country, where the earliest seminaries were founded. It is at those institutions that the collections from the earlier church bodies had accumulated and been maintained for many, many years.  In the previous mergers in our history, in the 1960s, a decision was made to leave certain collections with the various seminaries or synods.  This was done mainly because the institutions felt that the materials belonged there and the question of local access may have come up, but was not the only factor.  The collections were at institutions that had some resources for accessing and maintaining them, but for the most part, because they had them, they wanted to keep them.  They could merge the churches, but not the archives!   There was no overriding, practical reason to maintain these separated collections, just tradition and the fact that they were already part of an institution’s collection.  

 In the case of the papers of individuals and other independent Lutheran organizations, their records would not fall naturally under the “official” umbrella of the ELCA collecting policy.  Papers of individuals can be donated anywhere a donor wishes, even to a non-church archives.

So, in some cases, it is hard to tell which repositories may have personal papers collections and which have current or former Lutheran organizational records.

 With all the Lutheran collections scattered around both the U.S. and Canada, for our work in Chicago it was necessary to be aware of all archival collections related to the ELCA.  Even the archives located in Canada, where another new Lutheran church body has gathered together ELCA predecessor congregations as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, we will always have a special relationship based on a mutual history.  Even if we are two separate churches today, our history will always be linked in a distinctive way.    In many ways one could say the same thing for our church and the mission organizations of Lutheran churches in Europe from which our church owes its early origins.

 Another reason for the decentralized archives system in the ELCA today, was the hope that local congregations and synods would have archival program resources available on their own territory.  We wanted congregations and synods to actively care for their records. By looking upon the scattered collections as an asset to promote this, synod archivists began to build on those collections and created new relationships with congregations who needed their assistance regarding record keeping, archives, historical research and celebrating anniversaries.  While there remain difficulties about who should collect what, the problem of the scattered collections is not as problematic as we once thought.   We view the other archivists and archives around the ELCA as partners with something different to offer to the church than could be provided from one archives in Chicago.   As long as we know what each collection includes, then we can assist many people in getting to the location where needed records are deposited. 

 At the churchwide archives, practically since our inception, we have been part of a library database system for cataloging our book and serials holdings, but also eventually briefer, cataloging information about our archives holdings.  In this way, at least for the materials that are fully processed and organized, our collections could be known to anyone who could access that library database. In the U.S., this was also the library resource used by most ELCA college and seminary libraries.    Within just the last two years, our on-line catalog has become searchable through our Web page.  This not only helps other ELCA archivists in understanding our holdings, but anyone in the world can now search for materials from a computer wherever they may be.   Just recently, we had the experience of someone writing to us and requesting specific file folders within a collection of Papua New Guinea mission materials.

 This leads me back to what we have been able to offer to overseas partner churches in terms of access to collections we have that reflect their history as much as they do ours.  Having the archives information on the web page was a goal for many years, basically since the invention of the Internet.  It seemed like this could be an insurmountable goal, but a number of circumstances allowed this goal to be realized fairly quickly.  

 It was also just about the same time, in 1997, that we joined into a partnership with our Division for Global Mission, which had special educational funds which they felt could be used for a multi-year history project.  The Global Mission History Research Project began in 1997, and the first thing that was done was to hire a person to compile various pieces of information to get us started.  One of those informational pieces was a bibliography of historical works written about ELCA global missions.  A motivation for the project had been to encourage new histories to be written, not only from the viewpoint of the missionaries and historians from our country, but by and for those in the churches that developed from past mission work.  We thought the bibliography would likely prove the point that no recent histories had been written about partner churches and those were mainly written by missionaries.  Researchers from partner churches needed to be encouraged, since many of them already have a long history and new generations may not have direct knowledge of the “mission period” of their history.  And we know that each generation needs to make its own conclusions about the past. 

 The second thing attempted in what we called phase one of this project was to compile lists of all missionaries, including full names, spouses names, country served and dates of service.   Since our church was formed by merger as indicated earlier, many sources were needed for compiling these lists and even though we have both the missionary lists and the historical bibliography on our web page, the missionary lists are considered a work in progress.  Even with just the rather small amount of data we wished to include, with so many names, it is hard to ensure the correctness of every entry.  But still, they do include information that we have tried our best to compile, including contacting former missionaries to make sure the data was correct.  We have had times when we were told by researchers that they found information via the web page lists, including one just last week from the Lutheran Church in Taiwan, which found the missionaries names, but also needed further biographical information.   In addition to such known web contacts,  we also had a sample month in November 2001 where the section of the web page that had the most “hits” or visits, was the bibliographical information on missions in Papua New Guinea.   That was even above the number of “hits” on an on-line exhibit on Martin Luther!   Apparently our hope that the missions information would draw a lot of use turned out to be correct.    It would be good to hear from those attending this conference about what else could be compiled for the web from mission collections.

 In phase two of the project, we determined that we needed to make the original records known and accessible in much more specific detail.  In this phase, we hired an archivist who began processing of the oldest mission records in our holdings and working through to the materials from prior to our ELCA merger in 1987.   In the two years of this project, materials from the 19^th century were completed and much more materials through to the 1960s.  The project archivists also created cataloging records for each collection. Therefore, when the new system for displaying the information on the Internet came along, not only was there cataloging information to be seen on the Web Page, but in most cases, the entire finding aid for each collection was searchable there.  Recently, someone from Finland discovered the extensive records we have for Tanzania and he spent two weeks researching with us.  The Internet led him to our collections and then our reference archivist sent further information via e-mail, so that he knew that he should make a trip to our repository and how much time he would need to stay.  

 In the future, researchers from other countries, and even other states in the U.S. will be able to access our missions collections via microfilm.  Earlier this year, we developed a pilot project with Yale University Divinity School Library, where by our mission collections will be microfilmed, and in addition to Yale receiving a copy, the negatives will be placed with the American Theological Library Association who will in turn have them marketed and distributed for sale to any other libraries, archives or individuals who want them.   The ELCA Archives will receive two positive copies of each record series.  It is hoped that the second copy would be made available to an appropriate repository related to the partner churches whose history is contained in the records.  The pilot phase of the project has just begun and we have started with the oldest records first.  In addition to the records being more accessible for research, some of the materials are in poor condition, so that the microfilm may be easier to use and the originals can remain untouched with no further damage.  We expect to have 70 reels of film from this pilot phase of the project.

 One of the main reasons we have gotten to the point of microfilming is that we were ready to enter into the agreement with Yale.  In order to be filmed, records need to be processed and finding aids completed.  If records are in no particular order, there would be no way to find materials in the resulting film either.  The finding aid also becomes part of the filmed record, so that the order of the materials on film is understood and materials can be found easily.   In a previous microfilming project, with another group of records, we had also already been through the process of preparing records for filming, so we were able to begin this new project with a good amount of experience behind us. 

 Another thing about the development of the ELCA Archives which was very important, was that they be brought together as soon as possible and that the archives should be located at the churchwide office or nearby if it could not be in the same building.    The church had a time table that would not allow for building a structure, so they obtained the next best thing: a building with the basics and already built.  We attempted to adapt the building work spaces according to the needs of the archives program.  However, staff space was not adequate and the building they found for us did not have space that could become a completely, controlled environment.   The building was located in a nearby suburb, only 1-2 miles away from the main offices.  It was renovated and as best they could, an environmentally controlled space was created, but through the years, fairly drastic fluctuations often occurred.  The building chosen was at first leased, then purchased which became quite important later. In 1998, the town where we were located wanted to develop the properties on our street and so we had to move by June 1999.  A building was located, purchased, renovated and we moved in over about a 9 month period.    

The importance of the archives being located near to the churchwide offices cannot be stressed enough.  In our case, when the archives of the predecessors were located in states removed from the churchwide offices, the archivists were required to travel to those offices periodically to make sure records would be transferred and to meet with the secretary of the church, who had overall responsibility for the archives program.  For example, I joined one of the predecessor church archives in 1984 and for the next three years, I was in Chicago and my boss was in New York City!   It may not be possible for the archives to be located in conjunction with the churchwide office of a denomination, but for us, it made an important difference.  We were seen as part of the on-going administrative structure and we could be easily available for consultation at the offices at any time.  At the very beginning, we were even able to invite staff members to come to the archives to locate materials that would ultimately become part of a records center.  Since the church was “new,” staff had to get used to many new arrangements in administrative matters and one of them early on became records management.  In the predecessor churches, there had been some records management, but it had not functioned well since it was added after staff members had established filing systems. The staff were also leery about the fact that when records were removed from their location, they would be traveling away to another state for long-term storage.  With no distance impediment and since it got going early, the ELCA records management program has worked quite well, especially as the offices grew and their space became more and more limited.   Our records manager, located at the main office,  is consulted on a regular basis and can reassure staff that their records are not lost if they go to either the records center or the archives.   While at times people still do not use their records schedule to move older materials to the archives, the system works well for most offices. 

My approach for this paper has been more from the standpoint of practicality, structure and economics than a general philosophy of what it takes to develop an archives program.   For us the key elements that I have discussed are, understanding who your constituency is; building on collections in diverse locations as a part of a decentralized system of archives;  having a building close to the churchwide offices; and establishing a records management program as early as possible.   These things allowed us to have visibility within the churchwide structure, so that our priority constituency, churchwide offices and staff, would understand the mission of the archives and use the collections and the service offered by records management.   Being visible also led us to a new building in 1999, which is much more suited to the needs of staff and researchers and has a much better controlled storage environment.  

 In addition, by  acknowledging and valuing the need for archival work throughout the church, we have helped to preserve more materials than one central office could ever do alone.  One area of concern I have had with our system is a problematic area of various regional or other archives collecting materials that really relate more to the collections in Chicago rather than to their own.   And if the regional archivists were here today, I would say that they would say the same of us.    Either way, it is strange to find that your main competition for collecting records is likely another archives within the church.   It would appear that the so-called “danger” we once feared, that records would be deposited in a non-church archives, is not really as large a question as it could be.   In one case, for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, one of their synods cooperates with a provincial archives to store and preserve their records.  The fact that they cooperate directly with the provincial archives and the records stay in the local vicinity, makes this model quite workable for them.   I would not recommend this as a first choice for preserving archives, but it would be an understandable choice if others were not possible.   Having records in non-institutional locations or even in places like a church basement,  would be particularly dangerous, so a government run, professional repository, could be a good alternative choice in some cases. 

 I also need to mention my boss, the secretary of our church, the Rev. Lowell G. Almen.  In his oversight of the archives program, he has given us a large amount of freedom to develop the archives program.  He has allowed us to increase staff more than once, he supports travel to conferences and has supported the introduction of new technology to improve access.  Without sounding too boastful, I would have to say that when resources were sent our way, we were able to show good results.  Once one successful project was completed, we were able to build on that experience and develop new ones.   Throughout the years, I have always felt supported to do our work according to current, professional standards, so there has also been a lot of satisfaction in my work as well.

 Another part of what I have learned in these past 15 years, is that while I cannot become an expert on all of the areas of North American Lutheran history. However, knowing something of the history of the church in all regions has been good for relationships in the church and fun for me.   I am fortunate that there is also an organization, the Lutheran Historical Conference, that meets biennially and I am able to meet our primary constituency of Lutheran historians and hear papers on the history of the church.   I have also taken a chapter from the “Bob Shuster School of Archives” and pursued outreach opportunities as much as possible.  I have gone from traveling to one event per year to about 10 this year.   Among these trips are some to secular, archives meetings, and not just church sponsored events.    These visits often include speaking with donors or speaking to groups, mainly on preservation of archives and to make the ELCA Archives known within church and in the archival community also.   In fact, I would say that outreach activities I do now often are neither just one or the other anymore.  There is always something I can do to promote our archives, in whatever setting I find myself in.  

 Another part of the philosophy of the ELCA Archives program which I take for granted, is that in the beginning we were given no access restrictions for most of the records sent into the archives.  More than likely, we may have established restrictions upon closer examination of the records, even if the creators did not.  When we were establishing the archives, in 1987, it was still generally thought that religious archives in the U.S. were the most restricted in use of any type of archives.  We did not necessarily make a precedent in this area, but it was something we realized was not what the majority of researchers and other archivists might have thought.   In the ELCA Archives, restricted collections are a rarity, some related to the privacy of individuals and others imposed by donors.

 In conclusion, I hope that my presentation does not paint an overly positive picture of our archives program.   It may be that our solutions are not transferable to your situation, but these are some of the things that worked well for us.   I could also tell you stories of activities that did not fare well, but for the most part, I think the failures are due to our specific set of circumstances than from anything else.   I look forward to your stories of success as well.  It would be my privilege to say that I was able to provide encouragement and perhaps resources to programs of partner churches around the world.