UW Libraries Help Make Historian’s Job More ‘Pleasant’

Pleasant Doll

Suppose you had been a child in rural Minnesota during the 1850s. What would have shaped and colored your days?

For one thing, you may well have seen a button accordion for sale in your local general store. How do we know that? Through exhaustive research undertaken at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Mills Music Library by Kathy Borkowski, historical researcher for Pleasant Company of Middleton.

The company produces the wildly popular American Girls Collection of historical fiction, characters, accessories and more. Borkowski will lecture March 19 on the intricacies of her job, as well as the integral role university resources play in insuring the historical accuracy on which Pleasant Company prides itself.

“If the UW–Madison libraries weren’t here, it would be very difficult for me to do my job,” she says. “We’ve used all the libraries on campus for one thing or another.”

Borkowski used the information about the button accordion in developing products for Kirsten, an American Girls fictional character who immigrated to rural Minnesota from Sweden in 1854. In addition to using Mills Music Library, Borkowski also drew extensively on primary resources — letters and diaries, for example — available in State Historical Society of Wisconsin archives.

“There’s such a wealth of information in the library system,” she says. A good thing: It’s usually not easy to discover the day-to-day texture of a long-ago child’s life.

“The history of childhood is hidden,” Borkowski says. “You make inferences based on what you find in other material.”

For example, Borkowski currently is working on a new character, an Hispanic girl growing up in the New Mexico of 1824. “I’ve been looking at images of wildflowers she would be familiar with, when they would have bloomed during the year and where in the region they would have grown,” Borkowski says. “We were able to find a perfect image in the Biology Library of the wildflower Tansy Mustard.”

Since this character would have lived before the widespread use of photography, Borkowski says UW–Madison’s Kohler Art Library also has been invaluable in providing drawn and painted images of that time and place. In addition, she points out human resources have aided immeasurably with the research.

Borkowski says William Cronon, Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History, Geography and Environmental Studies, “supplied names of colleagues familiar with what the New Mexican landscape would have been like in 1824.” Also quizzed recently for the new character was Sharon Drugan at the Mathematics Library for information about math symbols commonly used during the early 19th century.

A School of Library and Information Studies alumna, Borkowski will be speaking as part of the school’s colloquium series. Anne Lundin, assistant SLIS professor, is organizing this particular lecture. Lundin, a specialist in Victorian children’s literature, says it’s important to connect the power of literature to students’ lives and that Borkowski’s lecture will do precisely that.

“Students will be able to glean from this lecture what it is like to work for a publishing company, to be involved with meeting the research needs of writers, to sense the extraordinary makeup of a library — a mix of text and context, of literature, information and material culture,” Lundin says.

Although children (and their parents) often focus on the dolls and accessories, Borkowski says Pleasant Company believes the books it publishes are the foundation of the American Girls appeal.

“The stories about the characters give us a sense of what our past — where we came from — was really like,” she says. “The books open the door to history for a lot of people.”

Borkowski’s lecture will begin at 3:30 p.m. in the SLIS Commons, fourth floor, Helen C. White Hall. The talk is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the school at (608) 263-2900.