Story by Steven Cunningham

(Photo by: The National Archives (United Kingdom), Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported)

Tucked away at the end of a hallway on the third floor, just above the library, are the Johnson County Community College (JCCC) Archives. What started as conventional record keeping when the college campus opened would become an official function of the college as a part of the library in the 1980s, and has continued to grow since.

“It’s the college’s memory,” said John Russell, professor and archives librarian. “It’s preserving and identifying things that document where the college has been and maintains them for the future.”

While the responsibility for archives has gone through many hands over the years, it is now overseen by two experts: Russell, who has been helping preserve the college’s history for roughly 40 years, and Assistant Archivist Laura Theel, who began working at JCCC two years ago. These two are the heart of the archives. Their passion for their work is noticeable when they begin to explain what they do, what they have in their possession, and why they enjoy it.

What the archive holds

The amount of information stored about the history of the college is immense. The archives retain documents going back to the first board meeting in 1967, before the first classes or before the current campus was even built. They even have information on the first classes which were held in 1969 at a different location, before the current campus would open in 1972. Items in their collection include photos of the campus across decades, files on the events that have occurred on campus over the years, and many things produced by staff and students since the college opened.

Plenty of interesting things can be found looking through their repository. They include gifts the college has received (like a flag that flew over the U.S. Capitol building), photos of the land around campus before it was developed, and photos of the college’s first mascot. Sometimes items are found that end up in their collections by incredible odds, such as letters from Gov. Franklin Roosevelt of New York to a Kansan in the early 1930s. Russell said what he finds most fascinating about the work is, “just finding things we didn’t know existed.”

One interesting bit of trivia is around the school’s first mascot. When the college first opened, there was no mascot. Prior to the Cavalier, a drawing contest was held for a campus mascot. The winner was a drawing of a figure called “The Kansan” by student Jere Haney. This was then turned into an oil painting. That painting, nearly 50 years later, is now being planned to be hung up in the library after receiving a protective cover.

Speaking of the importance of this work, Russell told a few personal anecdotes, including one about a woman who wanted to discover more about her father who once attended the college. Through an intermediary, she contacted the JCCC Archives to find out more about him. Going through their records, they were able to provide information to her about her father and his time there.

Another anecdote he told was about a woman who wanted to find a poem she published while she was a student at JCCC in the 1980s. Her children did not believe she published a poem. By going through records of a campus magazine called “The Mind’s Eye,” they were able to help her find the issue in which she published the poem so she could prove it to her children.

While not all of their possessions are kept on campus, and some of their items are shared with KU, they do keep quite a lot stored in their repository on campus. Items are well maintained, and the documents are kept in specific folders used regularly in archives to protect them from erosion over time.

Many of the photos and documents are in the middle of being preserved and backed up and stored electronically as well. Theel says, “An archive is like making organization out of chaos.”

The future of the archives

Many students do not seem to know about the archives on campus. The archives hold a lot of fascinating firsthand records of local Kansas history that cover more than 50 years. Theel wants to grow the archives and make it a more utilized student resource.

“I want to promote that we are here a little bit more, because I think there are cool things here I’d like to display and to show there is an archive here,” Theel said.

The Archives are now an official part of the library function of JCCC with records of the school going back to the 1960s. With more than half a century of records and photos, this has developed into something special. The archives are now a resource on campus for those interested in local history and for those on campus interested in learning how archives work. One can be sure they will only become more valuable as the college continues.

“If you’re going to work in archives, you have to have a sensitivity to history and preserving the past, and try to look toward the future,” Russell said.