The University of Nebraska–Lincoln has begun an effort to digitize the archive of beloved Nebraska author Mari Sandoz (1896-1966), who chronicled pioneer life in the Great Plains, the Lincoln Journal Star’s Chris Dunker reported Aug. 23.
The project, similar to the university’s Willa Cather Archive, would make nearly 200 boxes of manuscripts, correspondence, research materials, notes, maps and items from Sandoz’s personal library accessible to a wider audience online.
“I always felt, personally, that it was important that we do the same kind of work that we did with (Cather) with (Sandoz),” said Mary Ellen Ducey, professor of University Libraries, who oversees the Sandoz archive.
The university took ownership of the Sandoz archive — which is more extensive than the Cather Archive — in the 1970s, Dunker reported. It was photographed and put on microfilm in the 1990s but has largely remained accessible only to researchers who are physically present in Lincoln.
With permission from Sandoz’s publisher and her family’s blessing, the university has been using a seed grant from the Mari Sandoz Heritage Society over the last year “to lay a foundation” for how to organize the soon-to-be-digitized records, Ducey said.
Once the research team has a better idea of what’s included in the 20,000-item archive and how to organize it, Ducey said, the university will seek a larger grant to fund the project.
Two of the “Old Jules” author’s distant cousins — Yvonne Sandoz of Basel, Switzerland, and Joy (Sandoz) Lange of South Dakota — visited the Sandoz archive, housed in Love Library, for the first time Aug. 22, Dunker reported.
“This will be a really, really good way of letting more people get to know her,” Yvonne Sandoz, an archivist and family historian, said of the digitization project. “It will be for me, too.”
Read the full story in the Lincoln Journal Star.
Learn more about Archives and Special Collections at Nebraska.
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