Random Florida Fact: Where does Florida keep its memorabilia? Take a look inside the state archives building

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Note: This story is originally a special episode of the News 6 podcast Your Florida Daily. Tap the player above to listen or tap here.

Let’s talk about your junk drawer.

Is it a kitchen drawer with sauce packets and spare batteries or a shelf in a closet where you keep the box your iPhone came in?

Either way, most of us are collecting and accumulating items with sentimental or historical value — including the government of Florida.

Preserving the history of an entire state is no simple feat.

It first became someone’s job in 1845 when Florida formed an institution called the State Library and Archives.

So, let’s explore Florida’s extremely organized, climate-controlled, professionally curated junk drawer.

Where Florida collects its records

The State Archives are located in Tallahassee just a short walk from Capitol Hill in a big white building with tall concrete pillars.

I arranged to meet up with Matthew Storey, the archives historian at the State Archives.

On the fourth floor, we arrive in a room with no windows and a musty library smell. Row upon row of shelves filled with old notebooks and boxes stretch as far as I can see.

These are called the ‘stacks’.

“The State Archives of Florida has more than 50,000 cubic feet of historical records. So this floor you’re on right now is one of five just like this,” Storey says.

Most of the shelves on this floor are lined with things like state government records, legal memos and legislative notes — some going back as far as 1589.

“We’re primarily the repository for state government records but we’ve got things from county and local governments. We’ve got things from even private individuals,” Storey says.

“One of my favorites we have is circa 1890. [It’s] a doctor’s prescription book with, you know, whatever ailment and whatever compound you would need to mix up to treat it. It’s just a little pocket size book. You could tell they traveled a lot it was used quite often.”

The State Archives won’t just take anything.

They have a lengthy policy outlining how to decide whether an item is right for their collections, but sometimes it’s not what you’d think.

Storey pulled out a manila folder with at least a dozen hand-drawn Florida license plates from an elementary school art competition 20 years ago.

Matthew and the other archivists felt it was important to preserve a kid’s perspective of Florida.

Digitizing memorabilia with Florida Memory

Long before the state archives building, most of the books, maps and other records were stashed in the basement of the Capitol building — uncatalogued and damp.

It wasn’t until the late 1960s and 1970s that the collection was officially established and moved to its current location.

Back then, getting your hands on an old document, film or photo negative from the archives was completely analog.

But the internet changed all of that.

Florida Memory is a growing digital repository that gives free public access to hundreds of thousands of these archived items.

Storey walks over to a cubicle where a college student, named Isabella, is sitting in front of a computer and a scanner.

“It’s really just a great big camera mounted on an arm,” Storey explained.

Isabella places an old homestead document from 1881 on the glass surface, sharpening the focus of the camera on the computer.

After a quick flash, the camera snaps an ultra-high resolution picture of the paper.

The document later cataloged and indexed before being uploaded to Florida Memory for anyone to find, perhaps, someone looking for a Florida ancestor’s homestead records.

As for the original paper, it goes back on the shelf.

Florida Memory is not meant to replace the physical archives. It’s a way to share these historic gems with the world with just a few clicks.

Reviving old Florida films and audio recordings

Technology changes a lot.

Think about all of the old computers and cameras you have thrown away over the years.

Only a few decades ago, audio and film were reel-to-reel before VCRs and cassette tapes took over. Florida collects thousands of these reels and loads them into a stack of beige-colored players.

The players are hooked up to modern-day Mac computers where Mark Nicolou, the director of Florida Memory, turns VHS tapes into a digital file.

“Some of these were transferred from film onto these tapes in the early days. But now we’re trying to get everything from here to digital,” Nicolou says.

As technology changes, historians at the state archives adapt.