It was 1981 when Francis Blouin assumed his role as the director of the University’s Bentley Historical Library. He was proud of the library’s collections — a repository of records from the University and the state of Michigan — but worried.

“I can’t imagine I’ll have any success in finding new collections for the library,” Blouin had thought in his first moments as director.

Just two weeks after his appointment, he received a call from a lawyer in Fryeburg, Maine, a town of 3,000. He informed Blouin that he had a deceased client who had a trunk full of records from a mid-nineteenth century Michigan governor.

“And I thought, ‘Well, maybe there’s still stuff out there to collect,’ ” he said, laughing.

After 32 years as director, Blouin is retiring from the director role to teach full time. He has been a professor in the Department of History and the School of Information since 1989.

“I’ve done the job for 32 years, so I thought this would be a good time to hand it off.”

Blouin is creating a 100-level history course that is designed to introduce students to archives as they learn the history of the University and the state of Michigan. He has taught a History colloquium course for concentrators and a graduate-level School of Information course called “Social Memory.”

To honor this transition, the Bentley Library hosted a two-day Visual Culture and Archives Symposium that involved a discussion among archivists, artists and other experts about visual media’s interaction with archives.

Nancy Bartlett, head of University Archives and Records Program, said the event was designed to honor Blouin's work.

“(Blouin) has been instrumental in his entire career in bringing together scholars and the archivist community together, so this seemed to be a perfect fit,” Bartlett said.

Information Associate Prof. Paul Conway was one such scholar. At the symposium, he presented his investigation of how researchers use digitized photographs, rather than the original print one might find at the Bentley Library. He found that digitized photos offer more flexibility in allowing researchers to zoom into high-res photos and discover details a paper copy may not.

“I’m seeing much more benefit, much more ability to see what’s inside of a photograph to see its context, to see its value to tell stories with photographs and to use photographs as sort of evidence of history and social change much more efficiently in its digital form,” Conway said.

Indeed, the encounter between the hypersonic nature of the digital world and the antique-store quality of the Bentley has been key in Blouin’s tenure. He says technology has transformed how the library is administered.

“We’re constantly thinking about technology, how we store digital objects, how digital records are created, what’s saved, what’s not saved, problems with e-mails as a historical record,” Blouin said. “That’s all technology.”

Brien Brothman, an archivist at the Rhode Island State Archives, discussed in the symposium’s final comments how archivists ought not to see electronic and paper formats of archives as contrasting entities.

“Maybe they are both right, just different,” Brothman said. “That is theme that really struck me strongly during discussion in the last two days.”

Blouin said the second, more fascinating change during his incumbency was the metamorphosis of what constitutes history. He said the collection previously never held documents about the LGBTQ community, environmental studies or race and gender issues.

“It broadens the frontiers of where we look to find collections,” he said. “In the old days, we would get records of German groups and Italian groups. Now, we’re focusing more on Arab Americans and Asian Americans.”

Angela Dillard, director of the Residential College, praised Blouin and the Bentley Library for documenting social change in Detroit.

“It’s about the ability to look it up,” Dillard said. “This document and others like it in this collection provide the clues to finding the answers I’ve been asking lately about the connection between white power and black faith.”

Despite the revolutions surrounding archiving, Blouin said the documents retain their magic.

“It creates a connectedness to the past because you’re working with a real thing,” Blouin said. “Working with original materials really forces students to think through how they want to tell their story or make their point.”