University Of Minnesota Immigration History Research Center

November 2, 2012

The Center does not limit its activities to acquiring, preserving, and cataloguing materials but is a very proactive organization. It develops teaching materials for school teachers and arranges for experts to meet with teachers, the media, and a variety of community groups. It provides fellowships to graduate students interested in migration and supports their preparation for teaching careers. Finally, in addition to a regular newsletter it occasionally publishes its own books.

The IHRC’s collection of Slovak (and equally Czech) materials is very extensive. It includes newspapers, the regular and occasional publications of numerous organizations, letters, and all manner of other written materials that document the immigrant experience. Much of this material has been microfilmed and is also in the process of being digitized.

The archives are freely accessible and the expert staff is extremely helpful. I used the collections of the IHRC extensively when I was conducting research on my grandfather Milan Hodža’s work during his years in the United States, and on public reactions to his death in 1944. The newspaper collections of the IHRC proved to be so valuable that I was even asked by scholars in Slovakia for copies of some of the articles I had found.

Look at the IHRC’s web site: http://www.ihrc.umn.edu/

For a listing of IHRC’s holdings of Slovak periodicals, go directly to:http://ihrc.umn.edu/research/periodicals/slovak.php