Last year, Ethel Hoffman of the Mennonite Board of Missions (MBM) at Elkhart, Indiana, initiated a push to work with its older records. This was done to anticipate the completely new organization, Mennonite Mission Network, which would begin February 1, 2002. The old had to go to make room for the new. This mission organization also wanted to reflect on its 120-year history, and some of this information was in those old files.

In the end, work was completed by four departments: Communications, Global Ministries, Human Resources, and Services and Facilities. Archival records were then transferred from these offices to the Church Archives at Goshen, Indiana. This then gave me a chance to write this report on the things I learned as I assisted this mission agency to work through its inactive and archival records.

Decentralized Organization and Centralized Coordinator Role

Unlike Mennonite Central Committee with its centralized records management system, the Mennonite Board of Missions was decentralized. Each department was responsible for its own inactive and archival records. Hoffman served as coordinator of office services, and often took initiative to work with the older files of the departments.

I have found this centralized role of coordinator important at MBM. Hoffman was the one who did all the paperwork connected with the transfer of materials to the Archives. She also kept a complete list (inventory) of the archival files found at the Archives at her desk. In this way she knew where to look for the historical documents, and how they had been organized. She also directed the departments on how to prepare the files, and how to type out an inventory listing.

I find it interesting that this coordinator role was housed with the services division of the organization. This division looked after finances, computers and personnel of MBM. Through the years this department has also looked after all the facilities. And I guess this could mean something as practical as knowing what to do with all those filing cabinets full of old documents. At Mennonite Media, in Harrisonburg, Virginia (a division of MBM), it is the business manager who assumes this role.

The need to do something with the old files, however, is often recognized first by the department. Sometimes the filing cabinet gets too full or, as in this case, the organization goes through a restructuring.

In the end, the work of going through the files fell on persons within the four departments mentioned above, and each story was a bit different.

Services and Facilities Department, 1947-2001

It was Ethel Hoffman herself who culled and prepared the files of this department for the Archives. She had been involved with this office since the early 1980s, so she knew the files well. This department began in 1980 and became separate from the executive office. Maybe this beginning was a result of the increased responsibility of managing the Mennonite Offices building at 500 South Main Street into which MBM had moved in 1975. The building was purchased in 1974 as a cooperative venture between Greencroft, a corporation providing housing for senior citizens, and three program boards of the Mennonite Church. The Mennonite Offices occupied the first three floors, and occupying the top six floors of this former hotel was Greencroft Center.

None of these files had ever been archived. Some that dated back to 1947. Many were from 1974-96 which included records of the "Greencroft / Mennonites Offices" relationship. The files also showed the activities of the department in relation to the office handbook, the social committee, the staff meetings of the secretaries and administrative assistants, the library, and the auxiliary of MBM. The files also showed how MBM already had an archival policy in place in 1962 dealing with its records.

In the end, Hoffman kept one box of materials (1.25 linear feet), and transferred it to the Archives on November 5, 2001. She also prepared an introduction to the inventory list of files explaining the history of the department from 1980-2001.

Overseas Personnel Files, 1899-1984 (Global Ministries)

A second batch of files that needed to be gone through were the overseas personnel files. This job fell on Deborah Byler and Diana Cook of the Human Resources Department. The files of North American personnel had been transferred to the Archives in 1962 already, since most of these included shorter-term personnel. And these personnel files had been sent to the Archives on a regular basis since then. The files for the long-term overseas missionaries, however, had been maintained by the Global Ministries Department all these years. And they had not been archived. When the management of all personnel files was centralized, it fell on the Human Resources office to prepare the files for the Archives.

This work began already in August 2000, and the first thing the staff did was to visit the Archives. They wanted to see what was in those short-term personnel files, and wanted to get an idea how one would go about this work. The work lasted over a year, and eventually over 250 personnel files were prepared and transferred to the Archives on November 5, 2001. The files filled three boxes (3.75 linear feet).

Staff found that the files dated back to 1899, with persons like Jacob Burkhard (1900-06) and his spouse Mary (Yoder) Burkhard, 1900-15, who served in India. The files contained such things as application forms, doctrinal statements, pictures, and newspaper articles about the workers. Staff prepared an inventory listing, including each person by last name and first name, and gave the beginning and end dates of the file. A short introduction was also added.

The question was also raised about the policy governing access to these files. These files remain Restricted, and any requests for information need to be channeled through the Human Resources Department. The personnel records are also found on a database on the computer maintained by that office. Information includes such things as name, address, location served and years served. And the staff are continually trying to maintain an up-to-date and accurate database on personnel, reaching back to the beginnings of the Mission Board in 1882.

Global Ministries (Overseas) Files, 1985-90

It was on my visit with Rachel Good in October 2001 that I gained the most insight into the work of culling and weeding files. Good had already begun work on these overseas files a year or two earlier since they filled quite a few file drawers. In the end the final quantity of files filled five boxes (6 linear feet). It was in July of 2001 that these files had been transferred to the Archives. This inventory listing included the names of all the persons who had worked in the Global Ministries Department during that five-year period, 1985-90, including the dates they served, and their area of work.

Back in 1995, I myself had tried to weed and cull an earlier batch of overseas files, dating from 1980-84. I did well with the list of file titles, the dates, and a brief introduction. But I had trouble deciding what correspondence and reports in these files were of long-term archival value. So when I saw these 1985-90 files come into the Archives, I immediately made an appointment to have on-the-job training from Good.

She first gave me a tour of the Global Ministries offices, and showed me thirteen drawers of inactive overseas files dating from 1990-2000. Usually files were kept active for one year. Then they were culled and weeded and transferred to the inactive "Archive" drawers, where they continued to be accessible to staff for nine more years. After the files were ten years old, they were culled and weeded again, and then transferred to the Archives in sets of five years.

These files contained correspondence and reports of the work being carried out in various places overseas. The first rule of thumb was "Does the letter provide a good description of the work being carried out?" Second, "Does the letter answer questions as to who (personnel) and their specific ministry?" The persons could be missionaries or someone from the local church. For example, a report of an administrative trip to the country should be kept. But just as important would be a report from a local pastor or administrator of that country. And third, "Does the letter show any change to the program and personnel?" This change could be a decision to start a new ministry, or it could show the end or transfer of a program to another person or organization. In the end, a good sample of the key correspondence and reports are kept.

What then not to keep? A notice of a meeting, routine travel arrangements, news articles, carbon copies of letters which are not the main program of this Global Ministries department, articles written on situations which do not come from primary persons involved, schedules, and correspondence that does not add to the letters mentioned above. Sampling is also a good method to retain certain types of materials in the file, without having to keep every one. This can pertain to newsletters, for example.
The only real question that came up was whether minutes of the local church conference should be kept in the Global Ministries files. Since the responsibility of keeping these records rests with the church, these minutes were taken out of the files and sent to the Archives to be placed in that conference's archival collection: for example, the Argentina Mennonite Conference.

In the end, about 60-75% of the material is weeded out of the files and 25-40% kept. This however, seems to me to be more of an art than a science. It means one has to become acquainted with the program and the people in order to know what documents will have long-term value in telling the story of God's work around the world, and who the persons were who carried out this ministry. The hope is that some guidelines can be prepared for staff whose interest and gifts are in working through old files.

Historical Photographs, 1900-1995

While the culling and weeding project was a challenge, I much more enjoyed helping out in organizing the historical photographs. This project was urgently needed because the Mission Board was planning to publish two commemorative issues in their magazine Missions Now. The Communications Department was also working on a chronological time line for their web site, and needed illustrations.

Communications Director Tom Price had asked one of their staff persons, Tim Voliva, to work with these photographs. Voliva was a senior history student at Goshen College, and was doing an internship at the Mission Board. Voliva soon called me for help, and we were able to come up with a system to organize the photographs.

These photographs filled sixteen boxes (24 linear feet), and included almost 1,000 files. The files were not in any order, and the file labels did not include dates. There seemed to be some files dating back to the late 1930s, with others from the 1980s. It seemed like the photographs had been filed alphabetically by country or city, and that this had been kept up for 5-10 years. But as the amount of photographs kept growing, and as only the most recent photographs were needed for ongoing publicity, it was difficult to keep the older sections in order.

Tim Voliva started by numbering each folder, giving it a title, and indicating the beginning and ending dates of the photographs found in each file. He entered all this into the computer. (This took four months.) With the use of the sort function in the computer word-processing program, he could then sort the whole section alphabetically. The files were then physically rearranged according to the computer printout. The historical photographs thus became accessible to the Communication Department. They were transferred to the Archives in January 2002.

Conclusion

I hope this report on the work of these four mission departments shows how one works with a variety of records in an organization. It shows how different gifts are needed to work with the older files. And I have valued the role of a central coordinator, especially in a decentralized organization, in continually reminding departments to stay on top of their inactive and historical materials.