Archive Profile: Herbert Hoover Pres Library
West Branch, Iowa about 45 miles East of Des Moines, 3h west of Chicago
I’ve been meaning to write up profiles of the various archives that I have spent time at.
A friend refers to me as an “Archives Rat” - so this is apparently part of my personality.
My kind spouse often budgets time on road trips where I might be able to spend a day or two traipsing around various archives while on vacation. In other contexts I think that would be referred to as an ‘enabler’ of this particular affliction to thumb through such dusty documents.
Once you get the smell of mildewy documents and old book glue, I guess there’s no going back.
The main reason I wanted to go to the Hoover library, other than it coinciding with our vacation plans, was that I wanted to go through the archives of journalist Westbrook Pegler (1894-1969).
Elsewhere I had run across correspondence between Pegler and another imprisoned journalist from WW2.
I have a soft spot for past journalists who opposed the power structure, and who suffered for their scribes.
Pegler was fired from the Hearst chain after criticizing Hearst executives. But he spent most of his words criticizing Presidents, especially FDR and Truman.
Pegler worked for Col. McCormick’s (1880-1955) Chicago Tribune for many years, alongside another suppressed journalist, Donald S. Day (1895-1966), whom I have spent a good deal of time researching.
My spouse once implored me to leave a different archive after many late hours with the words, “Tomorrow Donald Day will still be dead, but we are living and we need you right now.”
Going through these documents and archives, it’s tough to mentally stay in the present. Diving into archives often feels like a time machine of sorts.
Anyhow, the Hoover Presidential Archive in West Branch, Iowa is a fine facility, and well worth the trip. It’s important to distinguish the Hoover Presidential Archive from the Hoover Institution at Stanford.
The California Hoover Institution, run by Stanford, is a world-class repository of all things military, Cold War, and more. Its collection on Communism, for example, is truly second to none.
The Iowa Hoover Presidential Library, run by the National Archives, has many fewer documents and is much more limited.
To contrast the size and scope difference, the Hoover Presidential Library has about 300 collections, of which Pegler’s files are one. The Hoover Institute has about 6,500 collections. So the size and scope difference is nearly 20x by just that sole metric.
Each collection has, typically, a ‘finding aid’ or a document that lists out, generally, what’s in the collection.
Here’s the finding aid for Westbrook Pegler’s papers.
Typically, a finding aid has:
A brief biographical statement
A rough timeline of the subject
A topical index, in alphabetical order
A rundown of, very generally, of what is in each box of files.
Often, the description of what is in a box, is very generalized.
A box is an archive box, typically just a ‘banker’s box’ of files, lumped into manila folders. When an archive speaks of a ‘linear foot’, it’s roughly saying a single archive box. Sometimes the finding aid will say how many boxes are in the collection, other times it will say how many linear feet are in the collection, they roughly mean the same thing.
The folders are sometimes numbered, sometimes organized by subtopic, and sometimes they’re just a hot mess.
When you go through files by topic, it’s often a reflection of the subject as to what you’re going to find. So, for example, for journalists you will often find drafts of their articles on the given topic, and often their handwritten notes. There is often personal correspondence.
These documents, as one will find in time, are a weird gray area in terms of what would be considered primary or secondary sources. They often capture, of course, people’s present-sense-mental-impressions. They are often cagey and evasive. They reflect the person, the conversation, the topic.
As you can probably imagine, archival work is often tedious. You’re literally sorting through a blend of a proverbial needle-in-a-haystack within what might otherwise be considered a historical treasure box. I will say, that at least once per day spent going through an archive, so on the frequency of about once every 6-8 hours, I run across something that makes me audibly say ‘wow.’
One learns how much history is narrative-controlled, and how much there is yet to learn.
Anyway, in profiling these archives, I’d like to try to make a quick rubric so that if you ever wanted to go there, you could easily walk in and within 5 minutes, be busy sifting.
One interesting collection at the Hoover Presidential Library, for example, are the Laura Ingalls Wilder and daughter Rose Wilder Lane papers.
It’s not really my area of interest, but one of the Hoover archivists mentioned to me that in the letters and correspondence between the two, which are in the archive, they apparently had a bit of a testy relationship. The daughter, Lane, was the editor for the books written by her mother, Wilder. The relationship was, like any writer-editor arrangement, one of both love and hate apparently.
I had no interest in going through those archives, but that little nugget provided a mental itch I can’t scratch. I’m curious to see what he meant, and to see the testy words between two writers. According to the archivist, as well, Lane was a bit of an early libertarian, critiquing both the New Deal and modern economics in her writing and wanted to shoehorn in those lessons into Wilder’s books, and part of their tension was the resistance from Wilder, who simply wanted to retell her stories growing up.
The more modern editor-daughter was trying to relate the tales to the present whereas the writer-mother was simply just trying to tell her stories free from interference. I empathize with both of them.
So the process at this point is to have an idea of which collections you want to rummage through.
Staying organized is a great challenge. What I do is to use folders in the cloud with a reliable service.
I would recommend bringing:
A laptop with a long powercord/extension cord
A phone, with long powercord, with PDF-scanning software, I use TurboScan
optional 1: A stand/tripod for a camera, such as this one. Though many archives have camera stands that they will loan out, though most only have one available and chances are another researcher will request it.
optional 2: A device for no-touch scanning documents, such as the CZUR Shine Ultra
HOOVER PRESIDENTIAL ARCHIVES
What’s there: Herbert Hoover’s personal papers. 300 other archival collections, primarily people from the Hoover administration and also a mix of center-right journalists who were leaving their archives in the 50s and 60s.
Hoover Manuscript Collections: link here.
What’s not there: Hoover’s Presidential Papers, which are in CA at Stanford Hoover.
How to get there: By car, there’s a parking lot. It’s not very accessible otherwise.
Where to stay: Nearby Iowa City is probably your best bet, it’s a college town with the normal array of hotels for $100-150 per night.
Where to eat: West Branch is not a big city. I would suggest bringing your own lunch or snacks. There’s a water fountain in the hallway outside the archives room.
Getting Access & Hours: The Archives are run by the National Archives, so they follow federal government procedure on hours, holidays, and access.
Appointments required? Thankfully no.
Fees? None.
Crowds? The several days I was there, there were 0-1 other researchers present, and usually just one archivist.
Unique aspects of the place:
They provide for free tours of the Museum for researchers
There are many obscure journalist files from the 1950s because they were hungry for content
Ingalls Wilder and Wilder Lane papers of Little House on the Prairie fame
PARKING
In the picture below, if the red truck pulls up 50 feet and angles to the left, that’s the best parking for the archives.
Park in the lot where the darker blue dot is at. The other lot is the staff lot, and the driveway further goes to Hoover’s gravesite.
BUILDING
Go through the columned entrance.
That will take you into the lobby. This is the basic ‘look’ to the lobby. There are three doorways, the entrance to the Galleries/Museum straight ahead, the bookstore to your right, and a long hallway to your left.
Tell the guard you’re there to visit the archives. They should call down to the archivist to let them know you’re coming.
Go down the long hallway. At the end of the hallway, there’s a door. There’s a buzzer, but the archivist will let you in.
STAFF
There’s usually one archivist working. The archivist works for the federal National Archives. There was a point where I was a little anxious about disclosing my eccentric research interests to the archivists, but from my experience they are so bored and starved for human interaction, that even if they are personally left-wing, they’re just happy someone’s there and happy to see someone doing research. The NARA archivists have all been great over the years.
You will need to work with them to determine, at first, which collection you want to review.
Every collection has a “finding aid” to tell you what kind of content is in which boxes. You want to be able to give the archivist:
The Collection name
The box numbers you want pulled
You will fill those out into a request slip. The archivist will then ‘approve’ the request, and take those slips into the stacks and retrieve the boxes. They will push them back on a cart. They usually limit you to a certain number of boxes at one time.
POLICIES
You don’t need an appointment.
Don’t bring any pens. They will provide pencils if you want to write.
The staff are very helpful.
There is no set ‘pull time’ for records. The pulls were usually quick, within 10-15 minutes from submitting the records request.
When the records come out, they only want you handling one box at a time, and one folder within the box at a time. They provide a laminated oversized card they want you to stick in the box to mark the spot where the folder was at, where you pulled from within the box. So stick the laminated card in the spot before you withdraw the folder.
They typically want you to set the folder flat on the table and review the materials, one page at a time. Staples are often in the way of reading a document, and I just try to be discrete about removing the staples. I’m sure the archivists would pitch a fit if they noticed what I was doing.
They will ‘hold’ records for you so that things are available on your cart for your return, for up to a week.
SORTING, SCANNING, & ORGANIZING YOUR FILES
Now comes the fun part: actually going through the files.
As you go through, be sure to note especially key files and where they’re at, and what’s notable that they say.
I think every time I do archival work, I start reading the materials, and then at a certain point I can just eyeball a document and know whether I want to scan it. Or I start scanning everything like a compulsive digital hoarder. The point is, you want to have a system in place, and make these decisions before-hand, and not on the fly.
It’s also common for me to find a thousand other rabbit holes to go down. There are so many little stories, little threads, to pursue. It’s very easy to get distracted, and after a while, it starts to feel like you’re drinking from a historical firehose.
My best advice here is to mirror the National Archives’ finding aid and use that same numbering system. You want to keep track of which box something was in, and which folder you found something in.
Processing the documents becomes a significant challenge. You are receiving the master file of all the documents, you are then doing an eyeball review of the material, and likely selecting key things out for scanning. So that’s three layers of scanning: 1) the originals, 2) your eyes and discretion, 3) your scanning. The output of your scans is likely to just be a dump of files with unrelated file names.
One trick I try to remember is that in the series of photos, to take photos of new boxes and folders when they come up. That helps me remember where in the files these specific items were found.
I try to take a photo of all the file names within the specific box as well, because those are often not reproduced on the finding aid.
Here’s an example:
As well, when taking a photo, I try to be aware to capture the folder name in the photo.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:
I would immediately back up your files to the cloud after doing archival work.
I would also scan/photo any handwritten notes you have and include those in the files and otherwise trash them. Put those within the archive files in their own folder. Thank me later.
You will want to organize your files in a smart and usable way. I try to organize mine by Institution/Collection, and sometimes I just try to capture everything from a certain date I did research at a certain place. Regardless of how you do it, it will be a critical determination for how your research progresses.
Having to constantly re-research and re-review your own photographic/scanned file folder is a major pain. Having stronger organization will save enormous time down the road when you’re trying to look for just that one document you remember.
I had years worth of archives work stored with those criminals at Google, which they decided to delete one day and ignore my requests to get it back. So, be warned on that particular service.
And I would immediately fix any oversight about boxes, folders, finding aids if you forgot to capture those in the files. It will be near difficult to recreate that materially remotely after you leave, whereas it usually just takes a moment when you’re on-site.
USING YOUR FILES
For private archives, the materials are often available but subject to certain restrictions on use. Academic purposes are fine, but commercial and public presentation purposes are generally subject to approval. For federal institutions, almost all documents are presumptively public records and, therefore, you can do whatever you want.
Certain collections may be subject to certain remnant copyright interests in the original author, however, so be warned.
So I’ve described this elaborate process and, now, I don’t have much else to say here.
The truth is, it’s hard to find good uses for the files. The reward is really in the process of going through them, of learning from them, of experiencing the primary documents.
You can write academic works and cite to the letters you’ve found.
You can start a Substack and regale your friends with your documents.
You can pick fights with authors and writers over emails with PDF attachments highlighting the documents you’ve uncovered.
I try to host many of the files I find at Archive.org with sufficient descriptions that hopefully web crawlers will pick up the files in time. This is in the, perhaps naive hope, that by digitizing and bringing these files into the present, they might live again in a way and add to the public discourse. The truth is, though, that few seem to be going through these archives and doing this kind of work. I don’t want to be dour on the matter, but the idea that you’re going to find explosive things and then make the news for your discovery is not realistic. The idea that there’s a wide audience for this material is not realistic. Even the idea that relevant scholars in the field will want to engage you with your interpretations of these documents is a bit unrealistic.
So, as is true with so many things, you have to get addicted to it because you find self satisfaction, gratification, and enjoyment from the thing itself.
And if nothing else you can probably easily find more war crimes from FDR so you can assist me in my personal jihad against the Rooseveltians.
Politica | ARCHIVE PROFILES SERIES:
Pt. 1 - Herbert Hoover Presidential Library & Archives | West Branch, Iowa