Will the General Assembly fund a $90 million new home for more than 200 years of state records? Or will librarians and archivists have to find another way to manage an impending overflow?
The Tennessee State Library and Archives blends in with the other structures around the state capitol in Nashville. Its neighbor, the Supreme Court building, is a slightly different style of classical architecture.
Just past the security guards, a curious bookworm would discover the library’s reading room. It’s not much larger than some high school libraries. The books are Tennessee-related. Most of the items in this building can’t be checked out.
This public library gets about 50 visitors a day, mostly scholars, lawyers and people looking up family history. Which hasn’t helped put this building onto the legislative radar.
But this year is different. Chuck Sherrill, state librarian and archivist, says that time has definitely run out.
“The most critical reason (for) why now is that we are out of space,” Sherrill said.
Expanding the library is not a matter of adding few more bookshelves. Incoming legal documents take up entire rooms. Also, it’s the library’s function, under the Secretary of State, to house all of it.
“This is the central responsibility of state government,” Sherrill said. “To preserve the record of State Government.”
Gordon Belt, director of public services, walks down a windowless hall full of metal shelves filled to capacity with archival boxes. Only the staff is allowed down here.
He opens a box full of yellowed, handwritten documents from the 1790s.
“Governor (John) Sevier was our first Governor of Tennessee and these are his papers,” says Belt.
While most of these letters are also accessible on microfilm or on computers, Belt says that scholars or historians can still ask to hold the originals.
“A lot of times, microfilm records don’t really give you the level of detail you need to read, especially cursive handwriting,” Belt said.
Gov. Sevier served two terms. His official paperwork fills up seven boxes. When current Gov. Bill Haslam’s second term ends in 2019, he’ll turn over more than 1,000 boxes.
“Where will we put those?” Belt wonders. “It’s kind of hard to say at this point.”
The archives are full. One option is to hire a private company to warehouse documents off-site. But that would make it harder and more expensive for researchers to get information.
Secretary of State Tre Hargett has been personally lobbying lawmakers for the other option: a new, $90 million library and archives, built near the capitol on the Bicentennial Mall. The building is already designed. Storage would look more like an Amazon.com warehouse, with robotic units retrieving metal boxes from shelves nearly 40 feet tall. It would also have a more public footprint, a sort of showcase for historic documents.
Belt opens up a dark, cramped room where the temperature is a steady 55 degrees. This is the “vault,” where irreplaceable documents such as the original state constitution of Tennessee are kept, well out of sight.
It’s true that Tennessee’s constitution isn’t exactly a tourist attraction, as is the United States constitution in Washington DC. But the archives currently don’t even have a way of displaying such documents. There are no climate-controlled cabinets or museum-style curations. That could change in the new building, which would have a learning center, exhibit areas, and public tours.
The archives aren’t just full of old legal documents and newspaper clippings.
Senior conservator Carol Roberts recently received an antique mason jar stuffed with small packets of unknown papers. Her task was to unfold, preserve and catalog them.
Since 1955, the archives also began storing audio recordings. Most everything spoken on the record in the capitol building can be heard here. Cassette tapes take up quite a bit of room. Ask a librarian which official government recording is the most popular and they’ll direct you to a recording of Elvis Presley visiting the General Assembly in March of 1961.
That scratchy recording may not seem like much. But it’s Tennessee history. And in the coming weeks, with the end of the session in sight, state librarians await confirmation whether or not Elvis will be leaving the old building for a new one.
