The Schowalter Foundation, North Newton, Kansas, has provided $10,000 to fund up to four semester-long internships at the MC USA Archives and to help digitize fragile resources in 2024.
“J.A. Schowalter wanted his legacy to continue beyond his lifetime, supporting the missional work of Mennonite churches and organizations with similar faith and values,” said Schowalter Foundation President Diane Yoder. “We are pleased to support the efforts of MC USA Archives through his vision and generosity.”
Oscar J. Murguia, Goshen College student and spring 2024 MC USA Archives intern.
Oscar J. Murguia, a third-year history major at Goshen (Indiana) College, has been awarded the 2024 spring semester internship. Murguia and the other three future interns will help the Archives staff process a backlog of manuscript collections and audiovisual materials.
The Mennonite Church USA Archives has over 800 linear feet of unprocessed documents and audiovisual materials, according to Archives Coordinator Olivia Krall. “We receive more collections each year than we can process, and this problem has worsened in recent years. Unprocessed materials are less accessible to researchers, and their contents are often housed in boxes that do not meet archival standards and are potentially damaging to the records inside,” she explained.
The students also will learn about the process of digitizing film.
“Many of our film reels are deteriorating due to age, putting their contents at risk,” Krall said. “We currently have several boxes of films we suspect have ‘vinegar syndrome,’ so named because of the vinegar smell films emit as they deteriorate. However, we have not had the staff or financial resources to digitize these materials.” Students will learn how to test the film’s quality to determine which reels to digitize and learn how to catalog and preserve the new digital copies.
Krall said she hopes the internship program will bring greater awareness of Mennonite history and foster a new generation of historically minded leaders.
Lydia Stauffer and Andrew Ness, 2022-2023 MC USA Archives interns from Goshen College.
Andrew Ness, a recent Goshen College graduate and 2022-2023 intern, said he values his experience in the MC USA Archives. “Not only did I learn about working in an archive, but I also encountered fascinating stories, people and artifacts that I never would have come into contact with otherwise,” he said.
Mennonite Church USA is an Anabaptist Christian denomination, founded in 2002 by the merger of the Mennonite Church and the General Conference Mennonite Church. Members of this historic peace church seek to follow Jesus by rejecting violence and resisting injustice. MC USA’s Renewed Commitments state the following shared commitments among its diverse body of believers: to follow Jesus, witness to God’s peace and experience the transformation of the Holy Spirit. Mennoniteusa.org
Written by Camille Dager