Note: This post ran as a Presidential Column in the Winter 2021/22 issue of the Mining History News.

I have a confession: I’m a historian, and yet I haven’t set foot in an archive since 2019 due to COVID-19. I’m getting antsy– I’ll look for digitized photos in online repositories, browse electronic versions of the Engineering and Mining Journal and Mining and Scientific Press, check out high-resolution historic newspapers at the Chronicling America site, and even peek at census images, but it’s not the same. I miss interaction with the real-deal paper record!

Historians call the records and documents created in the past “primary sources” and view them as the basic building blocks of good history. Distinguishing between a primary source and a secondary source can be tricky, but one of the most succinct descriptions I’ve heard is that the creators of primary sources did not make them to save or tell history, while creators of secondary sources, such as books, articles, or websites, were deliberately committing an act of historymaking.

People who study mining history in the United States have some well-known collections of primary sources which rarely fail to provide at least some insight. Newspapers are an essential resource, prolific in the 19th and early 20th century, and now often widely available in digital form. The technical press – publications written by and for the mining industry – forms a crucial and robust source base for the same time period. And government reports, mostly at the federal level but also sometimes extending to the state level, contain invaluable information.

But how can we go beyond these standard sources? To be sure, good historians develop a knack for extracting insight from sources that might seem more like gangue than ore at first. Clark Spence’s use of British incorporation records to discuss English investment in American mining is one excellent example. Census records can also illuminate life in mining towns as demonstrated by Cathy Spude’s work on Skagway, Ron James’ writing about Virginia City, and Ralph Mann’s study of Grass Valley, to name just a few of my favorites. And, of course, oral histories are not exactly primary sources like the others I’ve mentioned so far but are the heart of many excellent works of mining history, especially mining in more recent time periods.

What we really need to have is more primary sources, such as personal papers, corporate records, and low-level government archives. All too often, people involved with mining might not think that their everyday paper trail matters. There can be some truth in that. Any archivist would tell you that it’s impossible to save everything, that not every piece of paper ever touched by a miner ends up being mining history, and that only “significant” materials generally warrant saving. All true. But excellent archivists also have a capacious sense of what might actually be “significant” to future researchers. Plus, it makes sense that the people who made those primary sources might not be able to envision how they could be used by future historians – because the primary sources were not created with history in mind!

Personal papers are essential to revealing mining history from the standpoint of those who were there. In the past, these included letters, personal photographs, and other materials. (Today, this probably includes emails!) Corporate records are likewise crucial. So much mining in the last century or more has been done under the auspices of corporations (large and small) that any realistic mining history must reckon with mining businesses, which is much more likely to be accurate if corporate primary sources are available for research. Records generated by governments can also be quite important, and while they might be somewhat more likely to be saved for posterity, these documents too, especially at lower levels of government, can slip through the cracks and disappear from history.

So what can we, as mining historians, do to help make sure these primary source records survive for future researchers? I can think of a few steps that anyone can take. First, we need to take steps to help preserve them if we are can. This could mean proper caring for family papers, trying to find a good archival home for unwanted records (in local or state archives, or in research libraries that collect mining-related materials), advocating within corporate or bureaucratic structures for record retention and preservation, or even monetary donations to your favorite archives, if able.

The second step we can take is to go use them and give credit to their keepers! Prescient past archivists may have envisioned that “someday” the records they saved would be valuable to a researcher, but using archival records actually demonstrates that “someday” has arrived. If the archives have proof that mining-related historical records are valuable, because they are being used, there will be a better chance of allocating scarce resources of time or money into saving more of them or making the ones they already have easier to access. Many grants for preserving sources likewise require that the archives demonstrate their value, and again, existing use is the most valuable coin of the realm. Correctly citing where archival materials came from is therefore an essential step in ensuring valuable use. In today’s networked world, it is all too simple to copy and share a historic photo without giving credit to the organization who preserved it and then scanned it in the first place. (To say nothing of those online meanies who actually remove credit information and replace it with their own, to enhance their own online presence. String ‘em up by the thumbs!) But without correctly citing the archives, there’s none of that credit flowing back, demonstrating the value of saving mining history records. One more good idea along these lines: if you’ve used records held by an archive, and then published that information somewhere, let the archive know and provide them with a copy of the publication, if possible.

It’s true that my COVID-enforced time away from archives hasn’t been all bad. Archivists have redoubled their efforts to share digital copies of materials, and I have gotten to spend additional time with projects I hadn’t gotten around to finishing before. But I can’t wait to get back in a real reading room and get my hands on some genuine mining history primary sources. Because doing this isn’t just good for my own work, it’s good for our whole field of mining history.

Eric Nystrom, MHA President

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