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While processing some unidentified Channel 9&10 News film yesterday, we were thrilled to find  moving images of a very young Michigan Governor William Milliken in his first year of office addressing a packed crowd in Central Michigan University (CMU)'s Finch Fieldhouse for President William B. Boyd's Inauguration on May 12, 1969. President Boyd is sitting behind him. President Boyd had assumed office on July 1, 1968. Folksinger Buffy Saint- Marie played at the end of the event, but was not filmed by 9&10 News. While CMU University Communications' predecessor units have still shots of the ceremony, there does not appear to be any CMU film of the event, so this is a huge find! Here are a two shots of the crowd. President Boyd is one of the most important CMU presidents. During his predecessor's tenure, the State of Michigan Special Investigative Committee of politicians agreed with CMU faculty after many hearings that we needed a union. How often does that happen?...

  It looks like a body bag, and it took two of us to lift it, but no, it is not a body bag. If you look at what Maci is holding for a clue, you'll see it's really oversized, rolled railroad drawings, which are densely packed, wrapped and taped inside several garbage bags to protect them. She's holding a smaller rolled drawing, but some of them are quite large, bigger than our processing tables. These drawings are part of the collection of the Grand Trunk Western Railroad Historical Society (GTWRRHS) of Durand, Michigan. This is the second of two large "body bags" of drawings. There is also a large storage tub of them. The collection, which totaled approximately 90 cubic feet before processing, includes GTWRR annual reports and public relations publications, circulars, correspondence, administrative materials, manuals, catalogs, clippings, images, objects, and many architectural and engineering drawings. While most of the material covers Durand and Battle Creek sta...

  After 12 years of processing and describing Channel 9&10 News film footage of Michigan events, people, and locations, my students finally finished the last of the 392 reels of the Alpha Chrono series, the majority of the collection. These reels are compilations of the unedited daily footage filmed by the 9&10 crew as they traveled throughout Michigan covering local and state news, and a bit of national news. Here is Max with reel 910-392. See all the archival blue film cannisters? They represent a massive effort by multiple students over the years. Well done everyone! We are excited! Max and Rebekah are now finishing about 10 boxes of the Eye on Michigan series. Some smaller series include "Permanent" film, stock, and miscellaneous. We should be done with all processing and description by May 2027, which will conclude this huge film project that Tressa Graves and I began in 2014. This project was possible due to student labor. Thanks and kudos to all my amazing stud...

  Hello, my name is Maci Bird, and I was a Special Projects Archives Processing Assistant over the course of this summer. I’m currently a junior at CMU this fall majoring in anthropology and public history. I’ve had the pleasure of continuing to be here at the Clarke, up close and personal with lots of super interesting collections and materials. I worked closely with another coworker, Daria, who was wonderful and always super helpful and fast. I was able to work on completing 5 collections this summer, including Madison, Jelenek, Pine River Superfund Task Force, CMU Office of Academic and Curricular Affairs (OACA), and the Luedke Engineering Collection. Daria and I also worked on and completed the weeding and removal of the 67,000 Madison digital files that were donated with the rest of the physical collection, and that was super interesting to learn to work with digital material and learn new things about how to use a computer w...

My name is Daria Batzner, and I’m going into my fourth year of my undergrad here at CMU as a History Major and Dance Minor. Over the Summer of 2026, I worked as a student archival processing assistant. I mainly worked with the Barbara Madison collection, which was quite the first experience with archival work for me. I spent a lot of time going through Madison’s papers, and I learned a lot about how to process material along the way. Once I had finished processing and encoding the Madison collection, I moved on to other smaller collections that were much easier to process. The switch to working with collections with an original organization system, like the Pine River Superfund and related collections, made everything seem a lot easier. Even though the work could be confusing or tedious at times, I loved every minute of it.   During my time at the Clarke, I worked closely with Marian. She taught me how to process collections, including what should be withdrawn vs. retained, how t...

Daria and Maci with 10 boxes on lower shelves of the Pine River Superfund Citizen Task Force Organizational Records.   Daria and Maci with 2 collections, 22 boxes of Barbara Madison Indigenous Tribal Histories and Genealogies Papers, and the 12 box addition to Jane Keon Jelenek's Pine River Superfund Citizen Task Force Organizational Records. Maci and Daria Edward C. Lorenz's Pine River Superfund Citizen Task Force Organizational Records, 7 cubic feet of which is the latest addition My two summer students, Daria and Maci, have completed a Herculean effort this summer, processing and describing a lot of records in 4 collections. Here is the finished physical result. What does not show here is that they've also gone through many boxes of materials we either withdrew (duplicates, blanks, miscellaneous, publications we already had or which are available online) or returned to donors, as well as reviewed a lot of digital material, making much of it for extra review or withdrawal...