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The Danish American Archive and Library's Digital Archive

NOTICE: This site is in the process of moving to a new version which will include the content already here plus other collections at the DAAL. The new site, still in progress, may be viewed here.

 
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 three collections placed on the site are the papers of Einar Vig, the P C Jensen files (Lutheran pastors' information) and additional pastor information from other sources.

  • 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 P C Jensen files contain biographical information about pastors of the UELC (United Evangelical Lutheran Church). Additional supplemental information about the pastors, although not part of the P C Jensen files, is also being added.
  • The latest (and ongoing) addition to the Digital Archive is the collection of Dana College Yearbooks. This is the first of our extensive collection from the college, and additions can be expected as scanning continues.

The DAAL also maintains a second Digital Repository that is available only at the DAAL's office in Blair, Nebraska. Holdings in that system are of interest mainly to researchers, although it contains other items such as digitized recordings and records from Dana College. Some of these will be listed and described here for those interested in visiting the office to access them. View the current list of available items here.

    Using this site...

    Images may be browsed by selecting from among the Digitized Collections at the left or using the "Collections" menu to the left (or tab above). 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 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.

    If you use the Vig Collection, you may want to look through the help files here. Also keep in mind that some Danish names have letters not used in English (Æ, Ø and Ä) which come after Z when sorted in alphabetical order.