Plymouth Magazine-Fall24-DIGITAL - Flipbook - Page 6
Plymouth’s Archives Team
Uncovering Our Church’s Past
By Amy Elbert (she/her)
Decrepit filing cabinets stuffed with
crumbling documents, random piles
of water-damaged meeting minutes
sliding off sagging shelves, mountains
of unlabeled slides, and even pretend
Pilgrim muskets and sports trophies.
That’s what faced our newly formed
Archive Committee in August of 2022
when we walked into the basement room
adjacent to the gym.
For years, the so-called archive room was
the kitchen junk drawer of the church, a
drop-off spot for items no one knew what
to do with, including broken office chairs,
outdated audio-video equipment, and
random costumes from past productions.
(Paper mache cow head anyone?)
Plymouth member Lorna Truck,
a retired Des Moines City Library
employee with extensive background in
archive preservation and digital library
organization, spearheaded the archive
clean up. She was re-organizing the
Plymouth Library when she discovered
the disarray of the church archives.
Lorna and I, as Church Secretary, pulled
together a committee of volunteers
who bring years of data organization,
library, and technology expertise, as
well as personal Plymouth connections.
Before retiring, team member Susan
6
Lees was Records Manager for Pioneer
and sat for professional certification as
a Certified Records Manager. 50-year
Plymouth member Dixie Hoekman is
our go-to detective when we’re stumped
by undated, unidentified photos.
Other members include Pam Kenyon,
Kathleen Murrin, Carol Stratemeyer,
and Polly Welp.
While meeting weekly, the Archives
Team painstakingly pulled out every
folder, book, and artifact and itemized
them in a database. The physical materials
were stored in plastic bins (leftover from
the Plymouth Career Closet days) to
await re-filing and organizing in archivequality folders and boxes in a traceable
and searchable system. Plymouth staff
(thank you Connie Broich, Dan Mowry,
and Custodial Team) cleared space for a
much-improved archive room in a former
storage and paint room near the gym.
The committee was granted $4,550 by
the Plymouth Foundation to pay for
file cabinets, metal shelves, and archivesafe storage boxes, folders, and acrylic
sleeves for the new archive space. Funds
also will go toward digitizing historic
documents, photos, slides, and video
and audio recordings.
