Immigration History Research Center awarded grant for heritage preservation (05/19/02)

Immigration History Research Center awarded grant for heritage preservation

MINNEAPOLIS - The National Park Service has awarded $250,000 to the University of Minnesota Immigration History Research Center (IHRC) through the heritage preservation program "Save America's Treasures." This federal matching award will support "Documentation of the Immigrant experience," an IHRC initiative aimed at providing educational resources for ethnic community organizations, school classrooms and the general public.

The IHRC is one of six organizations in Minnesota with initiatives designated as official projects of "Save America's Treasures," a public/private partnership of the White House Millennium Council and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The current grant was made possible with assistance from U.S. Rep. Martin O. Sabo of Minnesota's 5th District.

"Documentation of the Immigrant Experience" will make original historical source materials more widely available and assist ethnic communities in preserving their unique histories. A central feature of the effort will be the digitizing of selected documents from the IHRC collections to establish a major new Internet resource of historical photographs, memoirs, letters, newspaper articles, pamphlets and other material.

Partnering with community cultural and ethnic organizations, the project also will gather and create new historical documentation on immigration - including exhibits, oral histories, public programming and publications reflecting the perspectives and voices of immigrants. It will also sponsor workshops for educators on the use of historical source materials for teaching.

"We have never subscribed to an elitist view that archives are for the few," said historian and IHRC director Rudolph Vecoli. "During the lHRC's 37-year history we have attempted to make the center's documentary treasures accessible to the many, through workshops for teachers and family historians publications, exhibits, even a vaudeville show - and more recently, the Internet. This grant will expand our capability for outreach manyfold. Soon, more people than ever will have access to immigrant letters and diaries, photos, and other precious and fragile records - with a simple keystroke."

Steven Rosenstone, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, lauded the IHRC for its "spectacular success" in documenting the immigrant experience, noting, "The IHRC is one of our great treasures. As immigration issues maintain their prominence in our news, it is particularly important that this center continue to build its resources and reach out to communities throughout the country."

The IHRC has begun the process of launching "Documentation of the Immigrant Experience" by readying a set of photographs from its collections for access on its website, www.umn.edu/ihrc. The project is expected to run for three years initially, with many features becoming a permanent part of the IHRC's program. Additional funding to match the "Save America's Treasures" award will be sought throughout the project.

For more information about the project, including how individual's schools or ethnic organizations can participate, contact IHRC Curator and Asstistant Director Joel Wurl at: phone, (612) 625-0553; or e-mail, wurlx001@umn.edu.

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