On December 17, 2012, the Immigration History Research Center collections, now to be known as the IHRC Archives, formally became part of the Department of Archives and Special Collections. The Immigration History Research Center, directed by Prof. Erika Lee, will continue to promote the study of immigrant populations within the College of Liberal Arts, and the University Libraries will support the collections. The IHRC and Archives and Special Collections will collaborate through programming, exhibits, events, and outreach to immigrant communities. The IHRCA is second only to the University Archives in terms of the size of the collection, and is one of the most heavily used of the collections in Andersen Library.

Earlier in the fall, the collections of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest were donated to the Nathan and Theresa Berman Upper Midwest Jewish Archives. A portion of the JHSUM materials had been on deposit in Andersen Library for a number of years, and the donation reunites all of the collections in one place. We are very pleased that Kate Dietrick will be joining ASC as curator of the Berman Archives in March. Kate comes to us from the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. She received her MS in Library and Information Science from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, and her BA in history and women’s studies from St. Olaf College.

We are delighted to add these two stellar collections to our wide-ranging complement of research materials. Both the IHRCA and the Berman Archives connect with other departmental collecting strengths, most notably the Social Welfare History Archives and the Kautz Family YMCA Archives, forming a solid core of research materials in immigration and social history found nowhere else.

Kris Kiesling, Director of Archives and Special Collections