Story posted Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Man Of The Past
Des Plaines Native Honoring Anniversary Of State Archives
By DENISE FLEISCHER Lifestyle Editor
Looking at the past is what Mark Sorensen does best. While all others are looking to the future, the former Des Plaines resident has created exhibits commemorating Illinois State Archives 50th anniversary. He's dug deep to locate early state data and helped validate local government records.
Not bad for a kid who played baseball in neighborhood parks and attended Friday Night dances at Rand Park. He can even remember being senior class president at Maine West in 1965.
"Back then we didn't do community service projects as a group so the most pressing issues were trying to out do previous classes in putting on the best Senior Prom and then having to write a speech for Commencement, which was held at Maine East Fieldhouse," stated Sorensen.
He even remembers being featured on the front page of the Journal back in 1964 after winning a regional baking contest in an attempt to get a $2,000 college scholarship.
Sorensen made his way down the educational path with a Bachelor's degree in Education at Eastern Illinois University, a Master's degree in History at the University of Illinois, Springfield and a Master's in Library and Information Science at UI, Urbana. He married his high school classmate, Kathy Owen, in Des Plaines on July 4, 1969 and they have lived in Decatur for 40 years. For 13 years, he taught history and English in the Decatur public schools.
After 13 years of teaching, he learned about a job opening at the Illinois State Archives. He did research there during his graduate work in history.
In 1982, Sorensen became supervisor of the state and local government records management programs at the Illinois State Archives in Springfield.
"This program set the retentions for all Illinois government records and regulated the legal disposal of such," he stated.
It was at this time, he found the first record of the town of Chicago (1833) in a Chicago warehouse; uncovered the records created by the Chicago Board of Education during the week following the Chicago Fire (1871) and helped recover several stolen Lincoln documents from the time that Lincoln served in the Illinois General Assembly.
He then earned his library degree, which has helped him land consulting jobs.
"I supervised about 16-20 employees in the Springfield office and around the state whose job it was to inventory state and local government records in order to set retentions for how long each type of record needed to be kept," he said.
Sorensen coordinated the setting of these retentions with state-mandated commissions in Springfield and Chicago and then oversaw the procedures that allowed government agencies to legally dispose of records that had exceeded their retentions. He helped validate local government records from 1814 that showed that future President Zachary Taylor was indicted for assault in Illinois. He put together the State Records Management Manual and wrote the history of the Illinois State Library for Illinois Libraries magazine.
His first exhibit commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Illinois State Archives in 1986. "Documenting 200 years of Illinois History" consisted of nearly 60 documents and photos. It traveled around the state for five years.
"I did a 'temporary' exhibit about the construction and history of the current State Capitol in 1988 for the 100th anniversary of its completion," Sorensen stated. It still is on display outside the governor's office today, 22 years after creation.
He made a traveling exhibit about the history of Women's suffrage in Illinois and presented lectures around the state on the subject. Smaller exhibits focused on the Women's Baseball League during the 1940s and another on Abraham Lincoln's life in Illinois.
In April 2009, he began serving a two-year term as president of the Illinois State Historical Society. "My emphasis during my first year is to gain more members through direct mail campaigns to targeted audiences and for me to try to get as much publicity as possible for our programs by doing interviews, public speaking and networking with state-wide connections that I have made over the past 30 years," stated Sorensen.
The average day on the job for him and his staff includes working hard to get publications edited, printed and distributed, as well as helping get new members, directing reference requests to the right agencies and coordinating all of the programs, such as putting up historical markers, honoring historic businesses, and having symposia. "I've been working with the society for over 25 years," he stated. "What you quickly learn is that every community, no matter how large or small, takes pride in their heritage and would like others to know about their history.
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