Tourism collections in the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe Wisconsin Historical Society has collected the history of Wisconsin for more than 150 years. The Society serves as the North American History Library for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as a manuscript repository, and as the official archive for the State of Wisconsin. Through regular assessment of the archival collection development policy, the subject area of recreation and leisure was identified as a significant topic that helped document the history of Wisconsin’s social/cultural organisations, hobbies and sports, and tourism. This topic was also relevant to documenting the history of the state’s economy, transportation, and folklore. The assessment also identified these subjects as a collection gap that could be amended with more targeted collecting. Beginning in the early 1990s, Society archivists have made an effort to identify and collect archival material related to the tourism economy of Wisconsin. The collections contain a wide variety of documentary source materials for scholars interested in twentieth-century tourism, hunting, conservation, tourism photography, and the role of tourism on state and local economies. The documentation for these subjects is wide-ranging and includes personal accounts of tourists, business records, affinity groups, and grassroots organisations, as well as, government records and publications.