By Gloria Stravelli
MANALAPAN – Accustomed to working with faded maps, dusty ledgers and time-worn images, archivists are now at the forefront of ushering historical records into the digital age.
“Digitization is the major format for archives now, it’s really where a lot of archives are going, transferring their paper records over to digital versions,” explained newly appointed Monmouth County Archivist Julia Telonidis. “Everybody expects everything to be online these days and at their fingertips and virtual.
“So many archives have vast paper collections and they’re trying to convert at least some of their collections to digital because that’s what people expect,” she continued. “And it has a lot of advantages as well in terms of making documents more accessible and preserving the original documents.”
The digitization project is currently ongoing at the Monmouth County Archives, located on the lower level of Monmouth County Library Headquarters on Symmes Road in Manalapan.
“We share a building with the library, but we are completely separate,” said Telonidis, who has extensive experience with the digitization of archival collections. She was recently appointed to the county archivist post by Monmouth County Clerk Christine Giordano Hanlon. An Ocean Township resident, Telonidis succeeds Gary Saretzky, who retired in 2019.
According to Telonidis, the work of conserving records digitally involves scanning a paper record to produce a digital version, making it available online for research.
“That makes it, obviously, more convenient for people accessing the record and importantly, reduces wear-and-tear on the original. It also creates an additional copy and allows for the longer-term preservation of the record,” she explained. “There are a lot of benefits to it.
“Is it a monumental task? Yes, it’s page-by-page-by-page.”
Until recently, microfilm was the method of choice for conserving records, but scanning has replaced that format, she said. “We have moved away from that, but we do have a lot of our paper collection on microfilm, it had been done for many decades.”
Beyond digitizing paper documents, Telonidis said the newest focus for archivists is on records that originate in digital format. “Digital photos, emails, documents, all these things are born digital,” she said, and require different preservation techniques.
“We are all taking digital records” every day, she explained, underscoring the importance of preserving those items as well.
Telonidis said the core mission of the county archivist and archive staff is to be the caretakers, or curators, of historical records and ensure public access to them as well as their long-term preservation.
“We preserve the one-of-a-kind records of the county that offer insight into the history of the county, its development from the very beginning,” she said.
“Also, the records we have here help to provide insight into people’s individual history, the history of their families, genealogy, things like immigration-related records, property ownership, history of towns, insight into legal history and also the general workings of local governments.”
The scope of the Monmouth County Archive is unique in the state, Telonidis said. She attributed the county’s extensive archive to Jane Clayton, a previous county clerk. The Monmouth County Archives Division of the county clerk’s office was founded by Clayton in 1994 to index and preserve many of the county’s historic records dating back to the 1600s and make the records readily available to the public for historical, genealogical and other research.
“Many others had a hand in setting up the archives,” Telonidis said, citing former county clerks Claire French and Amy Handlin as well as her predecessor Gary Saretzky, who, she said, “did a great deal in helping to establish the archives here and set up their preservation and access to all the records we have.”
The span of the archive encompasses five centuries, beginning in the late 17th century. “It’s a very large span of hundreds of years,” she said. The earliest record in the archive is contained in a marriage collection that goes back to 1684.
“We have such a wide variety of items, from very early deeds for the county, old maps, slave manumission records, Civil War muster lists, some photo collections,” Telonidis said.
Several factors weigh in favor of an artifact rising to the archival level, she explained. “I think it needs to provide some historical, some research value. It’s helpful if the item is one-of-a-kind, doesn’t exist in another place. Things like this make a record worth preserving.”
As for the process of deciding whether to include an artifact or not, she explained that new materials for the archives are decided upon collectively with the staff.
“There are things that come to our attention and we make a decision whether to add them to the archives. Usually it’s a group decision of what would fit here and what belongs here and what would be an asset for our researchers.”
The collections were assembled in various ways and early on were scattered throughout the county. “They were stored in various buildings in the county, not under the best of conditions, she said. It’s the staff’s job to keep the collections intact and up to date.
“The head research archivist handles a lot of the questions coming in,” she said, and the support staff works on scanning projects, taking care of collections and improving ways for people to access the collections. Telonidis noted there are always ongoing projects, like the database of all county board of commissioner minutes the staff is currently creating, the new acquisition of a small collection of county landmarks, or dealing with a backlog of items to give the public better access to items the archive already have.
Researchers who come to the archive include “scholars, people looking for their family history, people who are writing books, doing census research,” she said, all looking to access records.
“The more casual historians, genealogists, looking for family records through deeds, through naturalization and other immigration records, their first stop is usually our website,” Telonidis said. “We have finding aids available on the website, we have different databases you can check, and scans of our paper records. We can respond to inquiries through email, you can reach us by phone and also we get some people coming by appointment who want to research in person.” Even during the pandemic.
“You can make an appointment,” she said. “We’ve been open since the summer on a limited basis.”
Telonidis said archivists would be gathering some material for a COVID-19 collection in the near future. “We don’t know the extent of the collection or what it will be like,” she said. “We are gathering materials – not things like a mask – it would be county records pertaining to COVID.”
Telonidis has more than 20 years of archival and management experience, most recently at the Moore and Talbott Libraries of Rider University in Lawrenceville, where she served as archives specialist, curating archival exhibitions and processing numerous archival collections.
Previously, the Ocean Township native was acting library director and curator of manuscripts at The New Jersey Historical Society and has worked at the United Nations Archives and the Newark Public Library doing consulting and archival processing work. She has also served as senior librarian at the New York Public Library, working on a large-scale digitization project.
Access to the Monmouth County Archives Division is free and by appointment only, Monday to Friday, from 1 to 4 p.m. To schedule an appointment, call the archives at 732-308-3771 or visit the website monmouthcountyclerk.com/archives for more information.
This article originally appeared in the Feb. 11 – 17, 2021, print edition of The Two River Times.
