Week 3 - The History of Indian Students at IU, Reference, and Informational Value

This past week, I spent a good deal of my time at the IU Archives working to answer a challenging but interesting reference question.  While the idea of spending hours on a reference may sound tedious to some, it can actually be an interesting process with the desire to find the right answer serving as a source of motivation and excitement.  Many reference questions that patrons ask archivists are factual ones (as opposed to ones asking for a recommendation of a resource), so there certainly exists a sense of satisfaction in being able to track down the specific fact that the patron needs.

The particular question that I was researching was a question about students from India at Indiana University in the first half of the 20th century.  The patron was interested in any documentation of or records about Indian students during  this time, and also wanted to know the name of the first Indian student to earn a degree from IU. 

I started off by searching through our subject files related to international students.  These subject files typically contain clippings, news releases, and basic information about specific topics, organizations, and events, and are generally used to answer reference questions or for patrons interested in basic-level research.  While I was able to find some information about Indian students, I was unable to find any reference to the first Indian student.  Similarly, I consulted the records of the Indiana University Cosmopolitan Club and found some interesting clippings, but again, no reference to the first Indian student.

Next, I consulted our collection of historical issues of the Indiana University Bulletin, which contained a lists of all matriculating for each year.  The lists provided each student's name, hometown, academic program, and year.  Thankfully, most editions included a table at the end of the list with a geographic breakdown of students' hometowns.  Using these publications, I was able to find an answer for our patron. 

As for the answer, according to our records, the first student from India to attend IU was Ranjit Roy from Calcutta, who was enrolled in the School of Dentistry from September 1925 to May of 1928 but did not earn a degree.  The first Indian student to earn a degree from IU was Konigapogu Joseph Devadanam, who entered IU in October of 1928 and earned a BA in psychology in November of 1930.  Records list his place of birth as Kavalo, Nellore, India and his hometown as Lucknow, India. 

Answering this reference question further reinforced my understanding of the importance of preserving collections that have great informational value for a repository.  According the the SAA Glossary, informational value is defined as "the usefulness or significance of materials based on their content, independent of any intrinsic or evidential value."  So, a record or collection has high informational value if it can provide a lot of information about something other then the agency or person that created it.  In this case, these catalogs had a very high degree of informational value because they provided a great deal of demographic information about IU's student body over the years.  While records like these that provide critical information do not often generate the same "wow" factor as manuscript collections from respected scholars, artists, politicians, and other societal contributors, they are essential in documenting an institution's history and are often the most valuable records for answering reference questions.