Donated documents 'quarantined' at Cape County Archive Center

People who wish to donate historical documents to the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center may find their gifts need to be quarantined.

Quarantine is a word commonly associated with public health emergencies or, for those who remember the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, to a specific action at sea as former Soviet vessels approached Cuba.

A private donation was received Tuesday, Sept. 12, at the 23-year-old Archive Center in uptown Jackson that required the isolated treatment.

"Normally for government documents, quarantining is not necessary because they're coming from pretty sterile environments and typically don't have mold or excessive dust," said Marybeth Niederkorn, county archive director since November 2020.

"Our archive center doesn't accept donations of private collections but the county's genealogy society sometimes does and I can take gifts on behalf of the society," she added, noting she has agreements with donors that she may try to find new homes for documents such as high school yearbooks that the society doesn't need or want.

"We had a donor come in Tuesday with a box of books that she and her husband found in the basement of a home she and her husband are moving into," Niederkorn said.

"The first thing I noticed was an overwhelming smell of cigarette smoke, so we've put them in sealed storage containers with unscented cat litter to absorb the odor. A smell check is part of our usual process when items are donated to make sure the items aren't moldy, for example. If they have a scent of mold, we probably can't use them. With this donation, we did a surface clean with a vulcanized rubber sponge and a bamboo-handled brush to remove surface dirt, The cat litter is being used to remove the smell. I'll check the quarantine containers again early next week to see if things have improved."

Niederkorn encourages those who wish to donate private items to call the center first at (573) 204-2332.

More information may be found at capecounty.us/ archive-center.

Niederkorn said she errs on the side of wanting to see documents people have a desire to donate.

"A lot of material is stored in them that can be very valuable to people looking for their family history," she said.

Cape Girardeau County Archive Center is at No. 1 Barton Square, across the street from the county Administration Building.