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Illinois' first lady of history The Illinois State Historical Library an institution in this state since 1889—was recently reorganized as the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, although the new library facility will not officially open until later this spring. Kathryn Harris, who has been director of the historical library since 1990, had an impressive career in library services before she assumed the helm, and, has been a successful and vocal advocate for the library and for Illinois history. Her new title, Director of Library Services for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, gives her new responsibilities and ensures that library patrons—professional historians and family genealogists alike—will continue to enjoy excellent service in a state-of-the-art facility. Illinois Heritage interviewed Ms. Harris in December, before the library reorganization, to get her reflections on her own remarkable career and the equally remarkable move into the new facilities.
Illinois Heritage: Tell us a little about your upbringing. Kathryn Harris: I was born in Carbondale, one of ten kids—nine brothers and sisters, one deceased. I thought our family was like everyone else, because in my neighborhood we were just regular people. I was an adult before I realized that we were poor. In hindsight, I'd say we were in the upper class, if there is such a thing. Mom and Dad both worked; my dad worked for and retired from the Illinois Central railroad. My mom did domestic work and eventually got to be a cook at a fraternity house at Southern Illinois University. She also worked as a domestic in the Home Economics Building at SIU. It was through mother's job at SIU that my oldest sister was able to attend University High School, a lab school on campus. In those days that was really something for a black child to go to University High; the few that did were children of university employees, mostly domestics. Both of my parents graduated from high school but neither went to college. My mom instilled in us at a very early age the value of education. Like most parents, she wanted her children to do better than she had done. Illinois Heritage: Were your parents social or political activists? Kathryn Harris: Because my mom had so many kids she was very active in the community, active in the school, and active in the church. My mom and my dad were both politically active. My father was a precinct committeeman and my mom was always going to city council meetings and neighborhood association meetings, trying to make things better for those of us who lived on the east side, which is where the majority of the black people lived. She was very vocal, so much so that, in the last years of her life she was hired by the city—around the time of the "Model Cities program—to be the "go-to" person in the black community. It was a paid staff position, so she no longer had to cook. In the last two or three years of her life she worked hard to get a community center built on the northeast side of Carbondale. She died before it could be built, but for her efforts it was named in her honor: The Eurma C. Hayes Community Center, which is still open today. Illinois Heritage: Was Carbondale very segregated when you were growing up? KH: I should say. All of my older brothers and sisters, except my oldest sister, attended the all-black grade school, Attucks Elementary, and the all-black high school, Attucks High School, which is where I would have gone. But my mother 14 | Illinois Heritage knew that the school was going to close before I graduated, so in 1961, I went to Carbondale Community High School, where all the white kids went. In my freshman class, I could count on one hand the number of kids I had graduated with from eighth grade. It was my first experience going to school with white folks. I graduated from high school third in my class, which was quite remarkable at the time. It went against the grain of what people in Carbondale had heard about the ability of black folks to learn. Illinois Heritage: What did you read as a child? KH: I read Nancy Drew mysteries. I really did. I went to the public library and read all the books in the children's section. My mom got special permission for me to go upstairs to the adult section to check out books; you had to be twelve and I was only eleven at the time. The books I remember reading were a series of biographies; they had blue covers with orange letters. I must have read every one of them. It's funny to me now because of my work as "Harriet Tubman," but I read her biography several times; she was one of my favorites from the time I was in the fifth grade. I read about all the American presidents, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and, because our school was named for Crispus Attucks (African-American patriot and the first to fall in the American Revolution), I read about him. Illinois Heritage: At what point did you decide to go into library work? KH: When I got to high school I took French and I took it all four years. In college I majored in French. For a while I thought I might like to be an interpreter at the United Nations, so I also took Russian. Well, that kind of fizzled out, so I decided to become a French teacher like my high school teacher. I went through all the education courses and when it was time, did my student teaching at local a high school. And, I started to apply for jobs. But then a little thing called "my daughter' came along. You have to remember that this was during the late 1960s and I wasn't married. I applied for a job teaching in a suburban Chicago school. When I was filling out all those applications, I asked my mom how I should fill them out regarding my daughter. She advised me to tell the truth, otherwise it would come back to haunt me.
I was invited to a Chicago suburb and had a terrific interview, but that summer, after all my friends had finalized their placement with schools, I kept waiting and waiting to hear. Finally, in July I heard that, although I had been done well in my interview, I had not been hired. That's when I decided that, if I couldn't get a job teaching in Chicago, where minds were presumably broader, then I certainly wasn't going to get hired in southern Illinois, where minds were much narrower about such things. I confided this to my sorority sister, who said, "Why don't you apply to library school?" I never thought about going to library school, so, on a whim, I applied at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The rest is history. It all worked out. My daughter, Kori, went with me to library school. She was only about two years old. Fortunately, I had my sorority sisters. I lived with them and they helped babysit. I would not recommend that path to anyone else; it was a challenge. Illinois Heritage: Where did you acquire your talent for the stage? KH: Growing up we were all very much involved in our church. The Christmas play, the Easter pageant, or whatever—our mom saw that we Hayes children were involved and a part of it. My mom was a Methodist; our dad was a Baptist. We learned and recited scripture in both churches. Performing in front of people was never a problem for us because we grew up in the church. Even today, I encourage children in church to not be afraid of speaking in public; this is good training ground a perfect audience and venue for performing. Illinois Heritage: When did you land in Springfield? KH: After I graduated from library school, I was hired by the Lincoln Library—the public library of Springfield—and was the first African American on the staff with a degree in Illinois Heritage | 15 library science. I was there for about nine or ten months, and then moved to Sangamon State University in 1972, which was then very new. The library was housed in a "temporary building' and Brookens Library had not yet been built. I worked out there for a year and a half, got married, and then we moved to Florida, where I got a job at South Florida University, a very similar institution to Sangamon State, as head of the circulation department. That library soon moved from its temporary quarters to a permanent facility, and that was my first experience with helping to move a library. Soon after, my husband and I fell on hard times and we separated. I moved back to Carbondale and later moved up to Springfield to live with my sister. I was hired as a secretary by the State Board of Education. But I type really badly. My supervisor noticed and encouraged me to apply my talents and credentials... elsewhere. She encouraged me to look around and was more than willing to help me out. I started working at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine as an extension librarian. That turned out to be a really good experience, as I had never worked in any kind of specialized library before. It opened up a whole new realm of library work for me, helping rural communities establish medical libraries. One of the most challenging aspects was getting to know the terminology. I was the liaison between rural communities and the med school, which was committed at the time to establishing hospital libraries in rural areas and providing up-to-date information to hospital medical staffs. Unfortunately, that position was abolished and I just became part of the reference staff at the library. But another opportunity presented itself in 1984. I left the medical school and joined the staff at the Illinois State Library. It, too, was another specialized library with a specialized body of literature, this one about state government. By then, online searching became much more prevalent. The very first online database, the Medline, was started by the National Library of Medicine; those that came after were patterned after it. I worked at the Illinois State Library for six years and, guess what? They started to build the new library. I left that job in May 1990 and the new library opened in June. On the day of the library dedication, I asked [library director] Bridget Lamont if I could sit in the office I had helped plan.
Illinois Heritage: When did you start to work for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency? KH: The Historic Preservation Agency started in 1985, I believe. I had never worked in an historical library before. I knew I could be the supervisor of the reference section; at the state library my reference section was bigger than this one. But it was the technical services aspect I had never done before. I was more used to the public service side of library work than the behind-the-scenes side. Illinois Heritage: What is unique about the Illinois State Historical Library? KH: Of course, we have an extensive collection of Illinois-related materials, similar I suspect to what historical libraries in other states have. But we have one of the best Civil War collections in the nation, not only our regimental histories but on the whole ante-bellum era. We have Confederate imprints that few libraries have. Many of the Confederate imprints were burned during the course of the war. We have pre-1871 Chicago imprints, some that even the Chicago Historical Society does not have. Our presidential history and biography section is really very good, too. We have information on all the presidents up to 1990. I don't think we have anything on George W. Bush, but I know we have materials on Mr. Nixon, if not on Mr. Reagan. Illinois Heritage: What resources do you wish you had? KH: I wish we had more resources on post-1945 America. Now, that gets into two areas: the availability of materials and, the resources to buy them. We are trying to focus on World War II forward, because 50 years from now, or 100 years from now, people I believe will have as much interest in that area as we do today in the Civil War era. A lot of the folks from the post-World War II era are getting up in years and are not going to be around too much longer. When you look at the body of literature out there and juxtapose it against our resources, the question becomes, do we play to our strengths—the Civil War and 19 16 | Illinois Heritage Century America, or do we focus on the modern era, it's really a hard call. Right now, this year we are focusing on the Lewis and Clark bicentennial. We are trying to purchase a number of titles that focus on the event. Illinois Heritage: Do you have any interest in historical artifacts? KH: Not at all. We don't have any way to maintain and care for artifacts. Regarding the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial, we are looking for materials that were written and published at that time. The question is, can we afford them? We can say with pride that we do have many contemporary items about the expedition that were published at the time, in 1803, 1804, and 1806. We do have some of those resources and some of the maps that were published at that time. Certainly, we try to have materials in our collection that the researchers and the staff at the agency can use to help to create the programming we present at our historic sites. We do have material about Bishop Hill, about the lead mines at Galena, and about the Elihu B.Washburne... whatever. Not only because it's Illinois history, but because it supports what our agency does for the creation of programming. We have materials in our manuscript, book, or photo collections that support most every site. Illinois Heritage: Are you actively seeking new materials? KH: We don't do a lot of soliciting, mostly because of a lack of space. But now that we have that above-ground building with windows, we have LOTS of space and I think we are going to be more vigorous in our solicitation. That is not to say that people do not call us all the time to donate materials. We pretty much accept what people give, particularly unique, one-of-a-kind manuscript items. Books are a different story. We will take duplicates of what we have in our collection, because sometimes what people give us is in much better condition that what we have in the collection. But if we can't accept something, and, if it's all right with the donor, we will try to find another home for that item. We are always interested in Illinois county materials, things that have to do with the people of a particular community. Even cemetery records. Our average user in the library is a family historian, not an academically trained historian. The more local records we can acquire, the better we are able to serve our customers. A lot of those things you don't get from standard book publishers. You get those things from the little ladies in the local genealogical and historical societies who have gone down to the county courthouse and transcribed all the "big books," as they call them. Those items are important, not only to the genealogists who come here everyday, but to the folks in the Lincoln Legal papers and the historic sites division. They use those items just as much because the stories they are telling at the sites are—guess what?—stories about people who live in Illinois. It's just a different use. Illinois Heritage: When do you expect the library to move? KH: The move will come whenever the building is completed. The agency administration, our director Maynard Crossland and Richard Norton Smith, executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, have said we are not moving until the building is done and all the sign-offs have been made. When is that going to be? I am hoping that the library will move in the late spring. I have been told that the "fix" on the building will be done in April and, shortly thereafter, I think that the library will be moved. It should be open at least six months before the museum. The library has been preparing to move for more than a year, but we have actually put our work on hold for the time being. But in the next forty to sixty days we will be getting ready. We have marked the shelves here noting where things will be placed when we move in—but we have not done the same at the new library, simply because there is still work being done. Illinois Heritage: How will the library change? KH: People will be able to see outside (laughs). I think that the surroundings will be much more comfortable, beautiful, and attractive. In so far as service... It doesn't sound good to say that nothing will change. Things will change. We will have, for example, more visitors, probably because people can find us. Our physical presence will be elevated. I believe that when we open the doors to that building, we're going to have a lot of gawkers, people who just want to see the building. That's just fine, because the building is beautiful. Whether those gawkers will also be users remains to be seen. Certainly when the museum portion opens... oh my God!... that's going to be a whole new cup of tea for everybody in Springfield. Illinois Heritage: What about technical services and support? KH: There will be more computers for public use. By the time the building opens, for example, we will have a new on-line cataloging system in place. We will be learning to use it as we open. There will be more public "When the Illinois Heritage | 17
Illinois Heritage: How much of the collection will be available on-line? KH: There's something called M.O.N.E.Y. and S.T.A.F.F. and that will determine what we can put on-line. We are not running over with either. But our executive director is interested in having more of our collection on-line and is looking for money for that purpose. We would like to have more of our photo collection online. That's one part of our collection that's not readily available to John Q. Public. We have more than 350,000 images in our photo collection and we don't have the staff or time to put all those image up there. But we will begin to put the most frequently requested items on-line—the Lincoln documents, photographs, and some manuscripts. We are trying to find money so that some of these thing can come to pass. The funds that we have in our average GRF appropriation cannot accommodate this. We don't have enough equipment and we don t have enough hands to do the work. I think that, and you know that, the staff at the Illinois State Historical Library is not excessive, and there is very little, if any, waste. It will be a while, but these are all things that I would like to see happen during my tenure at the library. Illinois heritage | 25 |
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Kathryn Harris grew up in Carbondale and became a librarian after her dreams of becoming a United Nations translator evaporated.
Photo courtesy Illinois Historic Preservation Agency
The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum should be completed in the fall. The library component will open later this spring.
