Office of Missouri Secretary of State
– Jason Kander –
For Immediate Release: May 27, 2015
Contact: Stephanie Fleming, (573) 526-0949
Kander Marks 50th Anniversary of the Missouri State Archives and Records Management
Jefferson City, Mo. — Secretary of State Jason Kander today marked the 50th anniversary of the 1965 State Records Act, which established the Missouri State Archives and Records Management. These divisions are housed in the Office of the Secretary of State, and are responsible for managing both current and historical records of the state to ensure they’re accessible to all Missouri citizens.
“The Missouri State Archives and Records Management provide an invaluable resource to researchers around the world and Missourians here at home,” Kander said. “Whether you’re looking for family or state history, or want to keep your government officials accountable, the Missouri State Archives has a wealth of documents to assist your efforts.”
In 1963, a fire at the Jefferson State Office Building in Jefferson City, Mo., spurred the Missouri Legislature to review how the state managed its information and records. Then-state Rep. Alex Petrovic sponsored the State Records Act, creating the Records Management and Archives Service in 1965.
The goal of the service was to save the state money, time and space. Each agency in state government was required to submit inventories of their records by the end of 1965, and soon more than 12,000 square feet of records storage space in the Capitol had been converted to office space. In just the first year, then-Secretary of State James Kirkpatrick reported the new section saved the state approximately $500,000—more than $3.6 million in today’s dollars.
Today, the State Records Center stores over 391,000 boxes for more than 400 state agencies from across the state. Laid end to end, these boxes would stretch 74 miles—more than 1,300 football fields. The Imaging Section has scanned more than 2.6 million images and produced in excess of 4,000 rolls of microfilm. Thanks to modern digitization capabilities, three public databases have been placed online to aid researchers around the globe: Missouri Digital Heritage, the State Archives Death Certificate database and the Missouri State Penitentiary database.
The Local Records program was established in 1986 to improve long-term record keeping at the local level. Local Records has conducted projects and consulted in all 114 counties and the city of St. Louis. The program has generated more than 71,000 reels of microfilm—more than 122 million pages of records now preserved.
To learn more about the important work performed by the Missouri State Archives and Records Management, or to explore any of its online databases, please visit www.sos.mo.gov/records.
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Visit www.sos.mo.gov to learn more about the Office of the Missouri Secretary of State.
