Volunteers needed at County Archive Center

The Cape Girardeau County Archive Center in Jackson houses many treasures, and is committing those treasures to microfilm.

But to do that takes time, and it takes manpower, said director Steve Pledger, the latter of which is in short supply these days.

The center has only about three active volunteers where once there were 10, he said.

There's a reading room inside the front door, where records owned by the Cape Girardeau County Genealogy Society are accessible, Pledger said.

But the stacks are where the real action is.

The entry door to the stacks has a picture taped to it, a reminder of where the records used to be housed -- in the basement of Cape Girardeau's Common Pleas Courthouse.

Moisture was a problem there, Pledger said.

The staircase leading into the basement was also in disrepair, according to previous reporting by the Southeast Missourian.

The archive center's concrete floor, solid walls, reliable heating and cooling systems and dehumidifiers are an improvement, he said.

The center opened in 2001 at 112 E. Washington St. in Jackson, Pledger said, and he's been there since the beginning, first as a volunteer, then a part-time employee, and finally the center's director.

Coming up, Pledger said, he's hoping to bring in more volunteers to help with digitizing records.

That's not to say those paper records will be done away with, he said, but for ease of research, having a digital copy will help.

The county archive center houses documents from the circuit court in Jackson, the common pleas courthouse in Cape Girardeau and various other county offices and entities.

Archives for Jackson's early-1900s German-language newspaper Deutscher Volksfreund and minutes from County Commission meetings dating back to 1805 adorn the shelves, along with hundreds of boxes of marriage licenses dated from 1805 to present day, some court records, and other miscellaneous items available to the public, Pledger said.

That's a small fraction of records on those shelves, he said.

"It takes manpower to transfer the volumes to digital form," Pledger said. "And we keep the original."

Archiving is an important consideration, he said.

"We want these records to still be accessible 200 years from now," Pledger said.

Some records are stored on floppy disks, meaning the archive center has to keep a store of devices that can access old technology, Pledger said.

Silver microfilm is designed to last for 500 years if stored properly, Pledger said.

That's what he hopes to transfer several documents to, as it's considered a permanent record.

It takes volunteers to make it happen, he said.

Volunteers don't need special knowledge or training before coming on board, Pledger said: "We'll train them."

As to whether volunteers use specialized equipment, Pledger said the center largely has done away with wearing gloves, for example.

It's easier to damage the pages if the reader can't feel the page, he said.

Strict hand-washing rules help cut down on oil smudges from fingers, and they do have tools to remove staples and pull up rubber bands broken and fused to documents, Pledger said.

And the materials on recently-installed rolling shelves need to be reorganized, Pledger said.

"Volunteers can help with all of that," he said.

In the meantime, they'll keep working with what they have.

mniederkorn@semissourian.com

(573) 388-3630

Pertinent address:

112 E. Washington St., Jackson, Mo.