Anita Taylor Doering & Muriel Fuller
(written by Jenny DeRocher, Archives staff)
Anita Taylor Doering (left) and Muriel Fuller (right), both at their desks at the La Crosse Public Library about 70 years apart from one another.
Anita Taylor Doering, Manager & Senior Archivist at the La Crosse Public Library Archives, is the recipient of the 2024 Wisconsin Library Association (WLA) Muriel Fuller Award. The award description reads:
Muriel Fuller was a mentor and an inspiration for Wisconsin librarians. This award, named in her honor, is conferred upon a library professional or paraprofessional in recognition of outstanding accomplishments which have significantly improved and benefited library services. These achievements may include improving community access to library resources; extension or promotion of library services through cooperative ventures with local agencies or groups such as schools, businesses, or clubs; development of library facilities or collections; or contributions to any area of library services which ultimately benefit the library users. An employee in any type or size of library organization, is eligible for consideration. The nominee must be a current member of the WLA and employed in a Wisconsin library. The award may be given for a single achievement or for a record of achievements over a period of years. The award is intended for practitioners who have focused on improving library services in the library organization in which they are employed, unlike the Librarian of the Year Award which also recognizes contributions at regional, state and national levels.
Muriel Fuller, coincidentally, was a librarian at the La Crosse Public Library from 1943-1953, serving as director from 1947-1953. She was born in 1912 in Holmen, Wisconsin. She received her Bachelor’s of Education from the Wisconsin State Teachers College (UW-La Crosse) in 1935. She worked as a teacher in the La Crosse and West Salem area for a number of years before attending the University of Wisconsin Library School (UW-Madison). In 1943, she moved back to La Crosse and started her career as a librarian at the La Crosse Public Library.
After leaving La Crosse in 1953, Fuller worked with the Michigan State Library Commission. In 1962, she moved to Madison and joined the faculty of the UW-Madison Library School. She also ran the UW-Extension continuing education programs for librarians in Wisconsin during this time. From 1968-1969, she served as WLA President, and received the WLA’s Citation of Merit in 1972.
Muriel Fuller in Madison, 1964. Image courtesy of the UW-Madison School of Library and Information Studies and the Wisconsin Historical Society.
Muriel Fuller tragically died in 1978 in Pomona, Kansas when the dinner theater showboat she was on capsized as a tornado ripped through the area. She was one of 15 people who died in this disaster. She was teaching summer school at the Emporia State University Library School at the time. She is buried in Mindoro.
In 1991, WLA established the Muriel Fuller Award in her honor.
Career of Anita Taylor Doering
Anita Taylor Doering was hired by the La Crosse Public Library (LPL) in 1989 as an Archivist. Today, she serves as Senior Archivist and Archives Department Manager at LPL.
Anita at the Archives service desk, circa 1990
The LPL Archives & Local History Department (LPLA) was established in 1980, but did not actively grow manuscript collections and use professional archival preservation standards until the 1990s. Anita was the first archivist at LPLA to go out and make connections in the community. She got La Crosse residents, local businesses, and nonprofits to donate manuscript collections and personal records. She researched local historic health institutions, public health, churches, and educational institutions in order to help patrons and LPLA staff understand under-researched areas in local history. In each and every one of her projects, it is clear that Anita’s core value of librarianship revolves purely around public access to the records that document our community’s cultural heritage.
Anita at a computer, cica 1990s. Photographer of this image is David Joseph Marcou.
In her 35+ years at LPLA, Anita has worked to make history and genealogy research accessible for patrons in innovative ways. In the 1990s, Anita led a massive study of historic La Crosse residents. She formed a team of volunteers who sifted through microfilmed newspapers (1853-present) and indexed every obituary possible. Anita and her team also visited every cemetery in La Crosse County and indexed all graves with readable headstones. These two extensive indexes turned into a searchable online database in 1998, far ahead of most U.S. communities thanks to Anita’s community-focused vision.
Anita was among the first archivists in the nation to understand the importance of and put into practice online resource distribution. In the early 2000s, Anita worked each night in her home basement, hand-coding databases and maps to make genealogy materials accessible. In 2003, she digitized materials and distributed them on La Crosse History Unbound, a website that was among the first of its kind in the U.S. It features digitized content from local archival repositories.
Footsteps tour guided in 2010 by Eric Wheeler in the 10th & Cass St. Neighborhood
In 2009, Anita launched Footsteps of La Crosse, a website with 10 historic walking tours funded by PBS Wisconsin. LPLA staff continue to guide Footsteps tours twice a year from this collaboration. In 2012, Anita created Dark La Crosse, a walking tour about La Crosse’s seedier side, which quickly evolved into a stage show that ran through 2019. Today, this program exists as the video series/podcast Dark La Crosse Stories, which educates listeners on the real lives and struggles of La Crosse individuals within the national and global context. In 2013, Anita launched Our Stories, a blog series that highlights events, people, and stories overlooked by La Crosse’s historical institutions. LPLA staff and volunteers continue to publish blogs on this platform biweekly.
In 2005, Anita worked with the City of La Crosse to make LPLA the repository of the historic City records. Patrons now have immediate access to something few communities in the U.S. do: their public records. This includes tax records, which allow LPLA staff to do property history research requests for local residents and business owners, Parks & Recreation records that track the history of how public spaces have been used since the 1800s, Health Department records that allow use to understand the 1918 pandemic, and Fire Department records that show us how our built environment has changed because of fires in our city.
The transfer of the tax records from UWL Murphy Library Area Research Center to LPL Archives in April 2005. Pictured LPL Maintenance team members Dennis Coughlin (left) and Russ McClintock (middle), and UWL Librarian Paul Beck (right).
In the 2010s, Anita and a team of LPL librarians built relationships with local educators to host visits for K-12 students to learn library resources and archival research instruction. Because of this early outreach, since March 2023 alone, LPLA has hosted 423 K-16 students for archives research instruction, 300 students have visited for local history scavenger hunt events, and 45 undergraduate students have completed semester-long research projects using LPLA records, including 20 projects examining a 100-year period of La Crosse’s economic growth, and five new walking/trolley tours that bring to light histories from La Crosse’s North Side. All because of Anita’s dedication to local educators and students.
Anita showing maps to a UW-La Crosse undergraduate class during an archival research instruction visit, 2018
On top of all her hard work making La Crosse's history accessible, Anita also serves the library and archives field by being an outstanding mentor to her colleagues and peers. Many local institutions, including UW-La Crosse, the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, Gundersen Health System, and even Kwik Trip have come to Anita for mentorship in building or maintaining their archives and records repositories. Anita consistently mentors her colleagues, employees, volunteers, and student interns, forever shaping the future of the profession. She not only teaches young professionals how to do the work, but she prepares them for the internal and external politics of working in public institutions, the constant advocacy needed in today’s political world as libraries and archives face defunding, building relationships with donors and networking, and how to avoid burnout while facing the responsibility of keeping archival collections and cultural heritage safe for our community’s future generations who deserve access to their history.
In February 2025, Anita will retire from the La Crosse Public Library. She will have served our community for over 36 years. Please extend congratulations, as well as gratitude, if you see her.