Ohio History Journal

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Preface

Preface

 

With the publication of Volume 96 Ohio History marks its 100th

year of publication. The oldest ongoing program of the Ohio Histori-

cal Society, the journal was during the early decades of the Society's

existence synonymous with the institution. Early issues contained

the scholarly articles, documents, and book notes which constitute

our present fare, as well as papers and proceedings of Society meet-

ings, and lists of notable collection acquisitions.

Issued quarterly 1887-1981 (Volumes 1-90), annually 1982 and 1983

(Volumes 91 and 92), and biannually since 1984 (Volumes 93-present),

the journal has had four title changes and eleven editors during its

hundred-year history. Appearing as the Ohio Archaeological and

Historical Quarterly (1887-1934), The Ohio State Archaeological and

Historical Quarterly (1935-1954), and The Ohio Historical Quarterly

(1955-1961), the journal assumed its present title of Ohio History in

1962.

Readers might be puzzled that while the journal celebrates its

100th year of publication, the volume number reads number ninety-

six. This confusion is due to the fact that although the journal was is-

sued as a quarterly during 1887-1902, volume numbers were not as-

signed it until enough pages (roughly 300-500 pages) had been

printed to constitute a full, bound volume. Attempts were made to

regularize volume numbers and pagination in 1897, but it was not until

Volume 12 (1903) that the journal instituted a system which confined

the volume number to a single year. Further confusing the question of

pagination and volume number in these early volumes is the fact that

the Ohio General Assembly, recognizing the importance of the arti-

cles printed in the journal, reprinted special bound sets of the entire

run at least three times during the years 1887 and 1903.

In an era of dwindling scholastic journals, Ohio History has sur-

vived and flourished as an important repository for those intellectual

issues which contribute to the understanding of history. The Ohio

Historical Society was established as an organization to preserve and

study the unusual richness of archaeological and historical treasures

found in Ohio and the Middle West, and the journal was a natural

outgrowth of that commitment. As an early edition of the journal stat-

ed:

The Society can do a great work, as can no individual or group of individuals

elsewhere, in encouraging investigators, by affording them a hearing for the

results of their study . . . still if these studies are worth pursuing, if their re-