HOUGHTON – The Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country Collections, located in the Van Pelt and Opie Library, is a public research facility and always has been, according to Lindsay Hiltunen, senior archivist.

“One of the misconceptions is that we’re not open to the general public, but we really want to make sure that people know that, yes, we are open to the general public,” Hiltunen said.

The archives serves a variety of people in numerous ways.

“We are here to serve the Michigan Tech community and our researchers and our students here,” Hiltunen said, “but also the general community – but not just within the Copper Country. We have people that travel to visit us, not just from around the local region or the United States, but also internationally.”

Hiltunen said the archives are able to help those who can’t walk in the door as well, reaching researchers throughout the U.S. and around the globe though the use of digital communications.

“I remember a day when I handled research questions from Finland, England, Germany, Arizona, California, Texas and from Calumet, all in the same day, just emailing copper@mtu.edu, and I was able to have some global flavor just coming to Houghton,” Hiltunen said.

In addition to individuals, the archives also assists groups.

“We’ve had some history students come in from the social sciences department at Michigan Tech,” Hiltunen said. “We’ve had scientific and technical communications students from the humanities department here. We’ve also done hands-on workshops with high school students to get them ready for Michigan History Day research.”

While the archive is definitely a public research facility, Hiltunen wants people to not be intimidated by the archives.

“We’re not a closed-off, white-glove archives,” she said. “We want people to come in and touch the documents and sift through the folders. We want them to have that experience. So, these research workshops are designed for student groups or small groups that have an interest in doing historical research with primary resources. I cater it to whatever their specific research need is.”

The workshops are designed to be thorough in their approach to teaching people how to use the archives.

“What we do is, I have a small, one-page activity, and they look at a primary source,” Hiltunen said. “They assess it and analyze its condition; they talk about what is the context of the document, what was the context within which it was created.”