The Danish American Archive and Library's Digital Archive

Welcome to the Digital Archive
[The original version of the Digital Archive is here.]
The Collections menu above provides easy access to some of our larger collections, although they can also be found by using the Repository menu.
Here you will find an expanding selection of digitized versions of our collections, many of which will be of interest to historians and genealogists. These are the result of a project intended to preserve some of our unique and aging materials in a format that can be easily made available to the public.
 

The first of the large collections placed on the site were the papers of (Lars) Einar Vig and the P C Jensen files (Lutheran pastors' information).

  • The Vig papers are of special interest to descendants of former inhabitants of Washington County, Nebraska. Although some portions of this collection focus on persons of Danish descent, most sections deal with Washington County residents of all backgrounds. Very useful for genealogists, these documents summarize information about each family, including references to articles in local newspapers which can be found at the Blair Public Library or the Nebraska State Historical Society (often at the Omaha Public Library, too). The large collection of historical and genealogical records was created by Lars Einar Vig, a son of P. S. Vig who was one of the founders of Trinity Seminary and Dana College in Blair.
  • The P C Jensen files contain biographical information about pastors of the UELC (United Evangelical Lutheran Church).
  • The archive also contains several collections related to Dana College. These include the Dana College Yearbooks. The scans are available as JPG files of individual pages and a PDF file for each publication year. This collection also now includes other Dana College publications as well as audio and video of various college events.
  • The Repository -> Archive menu item above provides access to three other large collections, some of which are open for public view. These are:
    • Collections In The Stacks which contains digitized materials from the large collection boxes that literally "in the stacks" at the DAAL. These represent individuals, family or institutions such as churches or associations.
    • Collections - Digital Only. These materials, generally dealing with just individuals or small family units, contain information that was provided to us in digital form only.
    • Family Files are similar to the Collections In The Stacks but represent smaller sets of material which are physically stored in single file folders. The typically deal with individuals or small family groups.

The availability of these materials is governed by the wishes of the donor(s) of those items as well as the need to protect the privacy of living individuals.

The DAAL also other databases and repositories of digitized information that are available only at the DAAL's office in Blair, Nebraska. Holdings in that system are of interest mainly to researchers. These include such topics as the Danish Brotherhood, lists of Dana College students and faculty members, recordings (commercial and non-commercial) in the DAAL's collections, obituaries, and periodicals in English and/or Danish held by the DAAL.

    Using this site...

    Images may be browsed by selecting from among the links at the left or using the "Repository" menu above. Larger and more frequently used items can be found in the "Collections" menu.

    If you are looking for a specific person or family, the name can be entered in the Search box at the upper right of the window. Please keep in mind that the images are titled according to content: some will have a title consisting of a person's name; others may be titled by location or date (some cemetery entries).

    A useful search strategy might consist of finding what is available by searching for a person's name (full name or surname only), then using date or location information to find death, estate or cemetery records, as desired. Please note that the site does not contain full transcriptions of the documents.Typically, pages dealing with specific individuals or families are indexed by only the name of the head-of-household (not other members of the household).

    If you wish to download an image to your own computer, you should first click on the found image (actually a thumbnail version) to bring up the full-size image. You can then right-click on that image and select the option to save it to your own computer. For PDF files, clicking on the link will cause the file to be downloaded to your computer and may also display it (depending upon your browser and its settings).

    Also keep in mind that some Danish names have letters not used in English (Æ æ, Ø ø and Ä ä) which come after Z when sorted in alphabetical order and that use of the -sen surname endings are not always consistent and may have been changed at some time to -son instead; the -datter ending for females was sometimes inconsistently applied and may have been replaced with -sen.