My Time in the Past

Guest Post by Nicholas Baumgart

For the final project I went into the archives to research Edward Bean. I went straight for the Milwaukee Zoological Society records. My goal was to find, obviously, information about Mr. Bean and the Society. More specifically, I was hoping the papers would give more information on Bean’s activities in the day-to-day operation of the zoo. I looked through the minutes of the Zoological Society’s near weekly meetings during his tenure. That search was not quite fruitless, but it did not provide personal information I could not find anything. The minutes, though, did show how the zoo was run and gave insight on how the zoo searched for animals and the role Bean played in that. Mr. Bean did not have much say, it seemed, on which animals were purchased, but he did provide many leads on where animals could be obtained. I enjoyed sifting through the pages in the archives, the delicate, yellowed pages in the near silence of the archives’ reading room. I enjoyed the time I spent in the archives, though, it always seemed intimidating reaching out and asking for help from the gatekeepers.

One very obvious item missing from the primary sources I looked through was interpretation. The minutes of the meetings were very concise and matter of fact. There were very few statements that delved into specifics of the committee’s actions. For example, when looking for an animal replacement, the only thing a speaker might say was “the llama was sick for a while and Bean knows someone nearby who is raising a healthy one.” There were no mentions of the value the animal brought to the zoo other than its financial value, no mention of how the keepers or the public felt of the animal.

Where I found the most success was the newspaper articles. The reporters provided interpretation and a more human touch to their stories. The articles, however, ignored the more matter of fact, dull, business proceedings of the zoo. Looking to the newspaper articles was not as fun as the archives because they were online, digital scans; there was just something cold about staring at the computer screen. I did, though, go through the microfilm collection in the UWM library. Microfilm is such a fun object to hold and flip through. This provided, for me, a clearer image for the first primary source project. One fun thing about reading the newspaper articles was reading the articles surrounding the relevant article. I found one macabre article reporting on a suicide in Madison, WI. A young man took his life because he believed that he could talk to people beyond the grave; his last words were something along the lines of “I’ll talk to you soon.”

In summary, the primary resources are fascinating, but they are not without a challenge. As a student learning where to look for the primary sources, my first go-to and main support of my arguments are secondary sources, sources that fill in gaps from minds that have done more learning and have had more experience. These exercises and this class have helped provide tools and practice with the tools for further research on different projects.