Friends of the Indiana State Archives, Inc.

Congratulations to our volunteers on their House and Senate Concurrent Resolution! (Read more!)

The volunteer experience at the State Archives can be very rewarding for the person who understands the need to preserve Indiana’s historical records and make them more accessible to the public. In 2008,

forty-three dedicated volunteers and a groups of IUPUI students donated 6,199.25 hours to their projects at the Archives.

Since the volunteer program began in 1991, volunteers have donated 40,199.5 hours to the State Archives. They have indexed naturalization records for 22 counties that are available online, and work on several other counties is in progress. Thanks to volunteers, land records from the Ft. Wayne and LaPorte-Winamac Land Offices can be accessed through your home computer. Two volunteers are currently entering statistics from the Vincennes Land Office records that will also be available online in the near future. Other volunteers are working on land records for the Crawfordsville Land office.

Other current projects include data entry of information from Central State Hospital admission books and the final revisions of the Civil War Soldiers index. Volunteers are also working on conservation of photograph collections

from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, refoldering and reboxing of early Department of Conservation files, and reorganizing Board of State Charities correspondence.

In addition to the projects listed above, the following searchable databases, created by staff and volunteers, are or soon will be available online: indexes of inmates housed at the Indiana State Prison North, the Indiana State Prison South, the Indiana Girls’ School, and the Indiana Boys’ School; foster care files from the Board of State Charities; Central State Hospital inquest records; records from the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Children’s Home at Knightstown; Hoosier Homestead Awards; records from the State Soldiers’ Home; trademarks registered with the Secretary of State; and State Fair photo collections. For those researchers who are interested in history beyond personal genealogy, Governor Oliver P. Morton’s Civil War telegraph correspondence is also available online.

If you are interested in volunteering at the State Archives, we can offer you a variety of projects from which to choose, flexible hours, a friendly working environment, and free parking. Volunteers may work

as few as two or as many as fifteen or more hours a week. If you are only available once a month or if you winter in a warmer climate, we can usually accommodate your schedule. We are grateful for whatever amount of time you can give. We also have a recognition program to thank our volunteers for their hours of service, including a 100 Hour Club, a 500 Hour Club, and even a 1000 Hour Club. Projects vary widely. Some involve data entry, but many do not require any computer expertise. There are several collections that need to be preserved by simply removing them from their acidic folders and boxes and placing them in acid free archival materials.

For further information or to set up an interview, please contact volunteer coordinator, Barb Wood. Archives: 317-591-5222, e-mail: volunteers@fisa-in.org, or c/o Indiana State Archives, 6440 E. 30th St., Indianapolis, IN, 46219