For those who think they have ample closet space in their apartments, you ain’t got nothing on Glen Gildemeister.

Gildemeister, director of NIU’s Regional History Center and University Archivist for the past 25 years, oversees historical records from 18 counties, documents from local governments, manuscript collections and university records that go as far back as 1895. All said and done, Gildemeister oversees 7,000 linear shelf feet of records.

Where some people would see musty old documents, Gildemeister sees a past with thousands of interesting stories and people.

“Anywhere you go in those 7,000 feet, I could randomly stop and pull a box off the shelf and see the history of a person’s life, and that to me is interesting,” he said. “No matter who they were … a woman on a farm in 1930 keeping a diary or a civil war soldier. These are human beings. They are stories. The stories to me are fascinating, and that’s where history is the human condition.”

More than 3,000 researchers use the center each year, giving them access to over 700,000 photographic images, the largest Horatio Alger collection in the world, and everything from the first computer owned by NIU from the early 1970s to the hat the school president wore in the middle of a legendary NIU riot.

Gildemeister said such artifacts from the past are critical to understanding who and what we are.

“Well, if you didn’t have a memory, what would your life be like?” he asked. “If you couldn’t remember when you were a kid? Couldn’t remember what [position] you played in baseball? If you couldn’t remember anything? You would be lost. You would have no sense of mooring at all in life. Basically, the past is what we are.”

Vamshi Janga, re-designer of the center’s Web site, agrees and said that Gildemeister has done a wonderful job chronicling that past.

“He’s done great, important work for the center and university,” he said. “We can all learn a lot from him.”

The archives are located in the fourth floor of Founders Memorial Library.