Kansas Wesleyan, Eisenhower Library to Join Forces

Learning to decipher the language of police incident reports takes some practice.

But one on display this week in the lobby of Kansas Wesleyan University’s Memorial Library reads like it came from another age: “… upon arrival the bus operator said he had a colored female sitting in the white section of the bus, and would not move back,” the report states. “We (Day and Mixon) also saw her. The bus operator signed a warrant for her, Rosa Parks, (cf) 634 Clevelend Court. Rosa Parks (cf) was charged with chapter 6 section 11 of the Montgomery City Code.”

It’s one of several documents on loan from the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in Abilene and one of the first visible signs of a new 10-year partnership between the Eisenhower library and KWU, formally signed Tuesday afternoon.

Such partnerships are fairly common between presidential libraries and nearby universities, said Karl Weissenbach, director of the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. “We want to take this to a new level.”

Already, the two institutions have collaborated on some programs, including a public forum at KWU on the future of agriculture this past fall, featuring Kansas Farm Bureau president Steve Baccus and Land Institute founder Wes Jackson.

Weissenbach said the two institutions share a mission: “The bottom line is, we are an educational institution as well.”

The partnership will allow sharing of documents from the library, as well as help open doors for KWU students to conduct research at the library, and for student internships, Weissenbach said.

It also will allow students to gain new skills while earning their degrees. Anita Specht, chairwoman of Wesleyan’s history department, said Michael Russell, assistant professor of history, has long wanted to add a study concentration in museums for history majors.

“That could open up whole new job opportunities for them,” she said.

Weissenbach also said that by being partnered with a university, the Eisenhower Library should be able to attract new guest speakers to the area for programs.

KWU president Fletcher Lamkin said the new partnership would enhance several of Wesleyan’s academic programs, and that allowing students access to the presidential library’s materials would make their studies “more relevant and interesting.”

“It will help our students become more engaged with history, and learn about a man who was able to bring together diverse groups to work together,” Lamkin said.

And there’s plenty to study; Weissenbach said the library’s still-growing collection includes some 27 million documents, 500,000 photos, 75,000 artifacts and “miles of videotape.” The collection also includes some 300,000 documents that are still classified.

The library has been growing in visibility in recent years, Weissenbach said. It set a record last year for the number of academic researchers using the facility and drew 170,000 visitors in 2011, including people from all 50 states and 26 other countries, “yet a lot of people in Kansas don’t know what we have here.”

Other documents currently on display in the Kansas Wesleyan library include a letter from Martin Luther King Jr. to Eisenhower, and a letter from Eisenhower to King’s parents after King’s assassination.