Over the last few years, a small group of alumni, via the Alumni Breakfast Club, have been making visits to the Evansville warehouse to go thru the memorabilia and archives that are stored there. The group has included several Scout alumni including, Lyle Sigglekow, Karson Klund, Tom Mcinvaille, David Woolpert, Scott Stewart, Jim Sanborn, and a few others.
We initially did a rough inventory of the material that was stored in a variety of boxes on the shelves to get an idea of what we are dealing with. We have now moved on to slowly reorganizing the artifacts into new storage bins (thanks to the generosity of Lyle and the Alumni Breakfast Club) and making an inventory/catalog of individual items. Tom Mcinvaille has been photographing the items, we collect some basic data, and are using a cloud-based spreadsheet/database to make the catalog available for sharing.
We plan to continue as long as it takes to get a complete inventory of this important archive. We will generate a list of contents for each bin and attach it to the outside of the bins. Once the catalog is complete, we can begin to prioritize which items are in need of more attention such as re-matting and re-framing some large-format photos, special storage, or for example, scanning the collection of more than 100 brass arrangements from the 1950s thru the 2000s.
Recently, Joe Murray and a few other alumni are looking at relocating all of the items to a closer-to-Madison location that is also climate-controlled to help protect our history. Also, this will allow the current corps to utilize the entire space for their needs.
Stay tuned for more developments as we work on these logistics.
~ Joe & David