NEDCC and muni archives

[Richard Boyden <richard.boyden@sanbruno.nara.gov>]

FYI, from the ARCHIVES listserv 

oston Globe 1/10/99
Andover document center reaches out to municipalities
New staffer from N.H. focuses on public papers

By Stacy Milbouer, Globe Correspondent, 01/10/99

MANCHESTER, N.H. - For years, librarians and members of historical
societies have been hip to the importance of preserving and managing
paper archives. Now, municipalities are catching on.

Enter Paul Bergeron, deputy city clerk of Manchester who was just
named to  the advisory board of the Northeast Document Conservation
Center in Andover, Mass., one of just two such nonprofit centers in the
country. 

Bergeron is the only member of the 29-member board who works in
municipal government. His goal is to spread the word to other local
governments and help them preserve their paper legacies.

When Bergeron became deputy city clerk five years ago, he never
dreamed he'd have to learn the ways of an archivist/conservationist. But
then came the announcement of Manchester City Hall's renovation, the
first really big overhaul of the facility in 100 years.

''There were records everywhere, stacked in every closet, in boiler
rooms, anyplace anyone could find,'' Bergeron said. ''And, basically,
that's how I became records manager. [City Clerk] Leo Bernier put me in
charge of organizing and preserving the city's records.''

And that led to his involvement with the Northeast Document
Conservation Center.

Bergeron enrolled in a one-year program on preservation management of
paper records.

Bergeron believes Manchester is the first municipality in New Hampshire
to open a records center.

He said he also has been to other municipalities, such as Bedford and
Burlington, Mass., to talk to city clerks about managing and preserving
paper records.

He said the Northeast center opened 25 years ago to further the
conservation and preservation of paper records. It offered expertise to
libraries, archives, museums and town offices that otherwise could not
afford it.

''It was an outgrowth of the brittle book fear,'' said Bergeron. ''People 
from libraries and other institutions were noticing that books and
documents were crumbling, falling apart because they hadn't been
preserved or stored properly.''

Now, said Bergeron, records are also saved in other forms. The center
deals with microfilm, textiles, bookbinding and digitalized records.

In Manchester, there are birth, death and marriage documents dating to
the middle of the 19th-century, and every other possible record of city
government. It amounts to 3,000 linear feet of records in all, he said.

It took expert advise and training to cull the junk from the treasures.

The city received several grants to hire expert archivists, which
Bergeron said were vital to the project's success. One of those
archivists, Pamela Edwards, had done some work at the Textile Museum
in Lowell. 

''She understood Manchester's relationship to Amoskeag Manufacturing
and her background of social history allowed us to save records, I
wouldn't have thought were necessary to save,'' Bergeron said.

Two rusted tin buckets were found when the records project began,
Bergeron said.

''When we pried the lid open we found engraving plates dating back to
the 1890s,'' depicting what were then new buildings - the city stables 
and scales and the post office on Hanover Street.

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