Ohio History Journal

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Annual Report of the Society for 1960

Annual Report of the Society for 1960

 

 

 

AFTER LAST YEAR'S extensive report of the Society's development

through its seventy-five years, we shall offer but a simple review of the

activities for 1960.* At the end of each year the heads of the divisions

and the departments prepare annual reports, which are submitted to the

director. These statements supply most of the information from which

the Society's annual report is compiled.

The work of the Society is, after all, primarily the work of its staff of

nearly ninety full-time and over eighty seasonal and part-time employees.

Among them, at the headquarters at the Ohio State Museum and at

certain of our other properties, are a splendid group of professionals in

history, archaeology, and natural history. These are the technicians who

guide the operations in the Society's three principal fields of endeavor.

They collect and preserve the antiques, artifacts, and animals and plants

that help to enlarge our understanding of the lives of Ohio's peoples--

historic and prehistoric--and of their natural surroundings. They are

the researchers who analyze the collections, as well as the printed and

manuscript records, to explain and relate the past to the present. They

build the exhibits and provide their interpretation, supply the data for

restorations and reconstructions of historic houses and prehistoric earth-

works, and guide the presentation of the State Memorials.

There are the librarians, trained in the science of library work and

also in history, whose responsibility is to save the written record, and

the archivists, whose assignment is to secure the documents of our state

and local governments. Their task also involves making their valuable

resources available for use. There are the editors--who are historians,

too--trained and experienced in a complex and technical endeavor, who

publish books and articles whose purpose is to enlarge the knowledge of

our state and her people, and other printed materials designed to carry

this knowledge to the general reading public. There are the teachers,

who instruct students in the Ohio State Museum and guide the program

to develop an interest in history among our youth. There are also the

 

* The report was read by the Society's director, Erwin C. Zepp, at the business

session of the seventy-sixth annual meeting, April 28, 1961.