A Real Docu-Drama

Article reproduced with permission of the Daily News Record

Graduate students Tiffany Cole and Victoria Edwards were featured in a Harrisonburg (VA) Daily News Record article about the preservation of Rockingham County public records ("A Real Docu-Drama"). Many of the documents have to do with area roads and include maps detailing the homes and businesses along those roads. The students will index the records. The article appeared on July 20, 2009.

By Jeff Mellott, Harrisonburg (VA) Daily News Record, July 20, 2009. Reprinted with permission.

Neatly folded and wrapped with a pink cloth string, hundreds of Rockingham County documents, many brown with age, will be opened and indexed in the coming weeks and then stored to aid their preservation by two James Madison University graduate students.

To prepare for their work, history students Tiffany Cole and Victoria Edwards learned archival procedures on Wednesday at the Rockingham County Courthouse.

Paid with a Library of Virginia grant, the project is a rare example of the state, a clerk of court office and a university working together to find, record and preserve records, said Carl Childs, Virginia Library director of local records services.

Training

For the students, the internship project is an opportunity to get paid and work for class credit in a field they love.

The students, both 26, hope the work will help them in their endeavors after they graduate.

Cole would like to work for a museum.

Along with archiving the records, Cole, who grew up in Broadway, hopes her archival work will help with her thesis on moonshining. Old documents could include any number of clues that might lead her to information on the practice, an important part of the area's history, she said.

 "I have a soft spot for Rockingham County," she said.

Edwards, who is from Reedville, said she enjoys delving into public records.

She says her experience in the coming weeks will be an asset when she begins shopping her resume around.

The work is great hands-on experience for the students, said associate history professor Gabrielle Lanier, who directs JMU's public history program.

The work by the students also helps build connections between JMU and the community, said associate history professor Kevin Borg, the internship coordinator.

Once completed, information in the records will be more accessible.

Many of the documents being archived by the two students have to do with area roads, including requests to build or develop them. They often include maps detailing homes and businesses along various roads and other features, said Rachel Muse, senior local records archivist for the Virginia Library.

"People still use these records to find out who owned the land and where the roads used to go," she said.

Preservation

The work in the coming weeks will be paid for by a Virginia Library grant of $8,965.

"We see this as a beginning of looking at a lot of different types of court records," Childs said.

Archiving the road records and other documents is part of Rockingham County Circuit Court Clerk Chaz Evans-Haywood's ongoing efforts to preserve county documents.

Since taking office on Jan. 1, Evans-Haywood has sought and received $64,847 to preserve records and keep them secure.

"We are going to lose that history if we don't preserve it," he said.