Regional History Center

In 1962 Bernadine Hanby, Director of the University Library, brought to NIU President Leslie Holmes attention the need to preserve the records of the University.  On January 10, 1963 Holmes issued a memorandum to all University administrators announcing the establishment of a University Archives.  "Northern has reached--or passed--the point," he noted, "where official records should be more carefully saved..."  Holmes set the new archives in the University’s Swen Parson Library [rooms 184 and 186] and backed his directive with funds to support the program and to hire a full time professional archivist beginning in the fall of 1964. J. Joseph Bauxar was appointed the first University Archivist for NIU in 1964.  With Masters Degrees in Anthropology/History and Library Science, and experience as a Research Assistant at the Illinois State Museum, Ethnohistorian at the University of Tennessee, and Librarian at Rockford College, Bauxar was well qualified to undertake the responsibilities of preserving information relating to the history, organization, and administration of the University.  In 1976, Northern President Richard Nelson, responding to Illinois State Archivist John Daly's initiative, committed the University to participation in a statewide program to preserve historically valuable local government records.  Northern joined five other public universities to form the Illinois Regional Archives Depository (IRAD) System.  The local government records in IRAD were placed under the responsibility of the University Archives, significantly broadening the primary research resources available on campus. To commemorate the U.S. Bicentennial, the NIU History Department proposed the creation of a “Center for the Study of the Regional History of Northern Illinois.”  It’s purpose to collect primary source materials from individuals, groups, town and county government agencies, etc., and make them available for use by scholars.  This proposal was presented to President Nelson by Emory Evans, Carroll Moody, Alfred Young, and Clyde Walton, Director of Libraries during the summer of 1975.  In 1977 the History Department, working with Library Director Walton, secured a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to embark on an intensive three year program to locate and acquire the primary historical records which would document the heritage of the university's public service region.  These manuscript collections would complement the University Archives and local government records collections. To pull all three programs together - University Archives, IRAD, and Regional Collections - the University, in 1978, created the Northern Illinois Regional History Center as an academic support program, removing it from the University Libraries.  The Center became a free-standing unit with department status reporting to the Director [now Dean] of the University Libraries.  The Board of Regents approved the creation of the Center as an academic support unit in 1978 and the Illinois Board of Higher Education voted its approval in 1979. There were other changes as well.  A new library, Founders Memorial Library, was built across Normal Road and opened in January 1977, leaving the general education collection, the Fouser Music Room and the Archives in Swen Parson Hall.  The physical location of the Archives/Regional History Center offices and reading room also changed now that more space was available, moving to room 226 in 1977, to 268 in 1980 and finally settling into room 155 in 1983.  Archival materials were located on several tiers of the former library stack tower. Joe Bauxar retired in August of 1979, but continued to assist the new University Archivist and Director of the Regional History Center, Glen A. Gildemeister, on a part-time basis until June 1980.  Gildemeister had received both his Masters and Doctoral Degrees in History from Northern and returned to NIU in 1977 from the Ohio Historical Society where he was co-director of the Ohio Labor History Project.  Known as tireless worker and a first-rate researcher, Gildemeister was a member of many professional organizations including the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and the Midwest Archives Conference (MAC), and was sought after for presentations on various local history topics, as well as on the resources found in the Regional History Center.  In 2005 his book Castle on a Hill was published, a photographic history of Northern Illinois University and its relationship to the local community.  He was also a major organizer of DeKalb’s sesquicentennial activities in 2006. In a major undertaking, Gildemeister oversaw the move of the Regional History Center and all of it’s archival materials into Founders Memorial Library in February of 2002.  The new reading room is located in Room 400, and archival materials are paged from a basement storage area. Following his retirement on March 31, 2007, Cindy Ditzler, the Regional History Center’s Curator of Collections for the past eighteen years, became the Director of the Center.

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