History Alive
University historian sheds light on Kansas' past
Rebecca Bauman
Issue date: 10/2/08 Section: Campus Life
As an undergraduate, he worked in the school's library, where he became friendly with special collections curator and archivist Eugene DeGruson. DeGruson, along with other library staff, persuaded Roberts to operate as an unofficial reference desk librarian; Roberts helped students with reference questions simply because he found the work "fascinating."
In time, he was given the chance to split his hours as a graduate assistant between the university's History Department and Special Collections.
"I always loved history but, like most people, I thought all you could do with that kind of a degree was teach," said Roberts, who was not, at first, exceptionally keen on the idea of teaching. "I was very lucky to be introduced to other fields, to realize just how many things are available to someone who has my kind of interests."
An important part of Roberts' job as an archivist is to preserve objects of local history that would have otherwise been lost to time. He notes that one of the more illuminating items in his collection is a letter written by author Upton Sinclair to his Girard-based printer, regarding the first serialization and later publication of his novel, "The Jungle."
"This is when the archives provide something that a textbook might not," he said. "You can easily read the insecurity in the tone of his letter, the tension. He's written a book that's going to become a classic, but he doesn't know that. He's simply trying to survive, and he and his wife, during that time in 1905, 1906 and 1907, are starving."
Roberts' goal is to make materials like this available to scholars from around the world, so that they might better understand the significance of Southeast Kansas in American history.
"We were a heavily unionized, heavily industrialized area," he said, "and there's very little evidence of that now. We were a focal point of the socialist movement in North America, and there's very little evidence of that now. We were a leading publications center - for a time, there were as many published materials coming out of Girard as there were from a city like Chicago. And we had more than 50 different types of immigrants who once called this area home."
In time, he was given the chance to split his hours as a graduate assistant between the university's History Department and Special Collections.
"I always loved history but, like most people, I thought all you could do with that kind of a degree was teach," said Roberts, who was not, at first, exceptionally keen on the idea of teaching. "I was very lucky to be introduced to other fields, to realize just how many things are available to someone who has my kind of interests."
An important part of Roberts' job as an archivist is to preserve objects of local history that would have otherwise been lost to time. He notes that one of the more illuminating items in his collection is a letter written by author Upton Sinclair to his Girard-based printer, regarding the first serialization and later publication of his novel, "The Jungle."
"This is when the archives provide something that a textbook might not," he said. "You can easily read the insecurity in the tone of his letter, the tension. He's written a book that's going to become a classic, but he doesn't know that. He's simply trying to survive, and he and his wife, during that time in 1905, 1906 and 1907, are starving."
Roberts' goal is to make materials like this available to scholars from around the world, so that they might better understand the significance of Southeast Kansas in American history.
"We were a heavily unionized, heavily industrialized area," he said, "and there's very little evidence of that now. We were a focal point of the socialist movement in North America, and there's very little evidence of that now. We were a leading publications center - for a time, there were as many published materials coming out of Girard as there were from a city like Chicago. And we had more than 50 different types of immigrants who once called this area home."
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