Essay and Comment
OHIO NETWORK OF AMERICAN HISTORY
RESEARCH CENTERS: A PROPOSAL
A general characteristic of Americans
has always been the overemphasis on quan-
tity and competition to the point of
blurring a full consideration of the advantages
of quality and cooperation. The rapid
changes of the twentieth century resulting
in the formation of a complex of
ever-increasing interwoven relationships between
people and their institutions
necessitates the redirection of traditional patterns of
behavior. The effect of the prevailing
competitive mood on the historical profes-
sion, especially in Ohio, in the field
of library and archives has been to encourage
major research centers--usually graduate
universities, state and municipal histori-
cal societies, and private libraries--to
operate as introspective units justifying their
existence solely on their own
accomplishments rather than in terms of their role
in the overall historical collection
process. This egocentric attitude must be aban-
doned or collections in the research
institutions will become so proliferated by the
last quarter of this century that both
quality of service and the possibility of coop-
eration between centers will be in
jeopardy.
Ohio has the greatest need of the
nation's large, industrial urban states to break
through the shibboleths of the past and
devise an uniform statewide formula that
will insure the preservation of
historically important materials within the state. The
key element making Ohio different from
other states is the decentralization of its
population and educational centers.
Rather than having the population polarized
in one or two areas, Ohio has six major
metropolitan regions.1 The political and
economic power bases in the state are
also in these areas. Higher education in
Ohio reflects this division as the state
has developed a series of twelve regional
state-supported schools, and all but
Central State University are now offering grad-
uate degrees. Higher education is
centered in the six major urban areas: nine of
the twelve schools are in the six
metropolitan areas, and the four private graduate
universities--Case Western Reserve
University, John Carroll University, Xavier
University, and University of Dayton--are
located in large cities.
The growth of graduate programs has been
developed on the local levels with-
out benefit of a statewide plan.
Proliferation of advanced degree-granting institu-
tions is seen in the dramatic surge of
history graduate programs from two Ph.D.
programs in 1960 to seven in 1970 and
another two ready to begin in a year or
two, and in a similar rise in M.A.
programs from eight in 1960 to sixteen today.2
Once again Ohio appears to have achieved
a noble record of quantity without
building at least one graduate history
program up to the quality level of such tra-
ditionally strong midwestern schools at
the universities of Wisconsin, Michigan,
and Chicago.3 This emphasis
on expansion of centers of higher education in Ohio
will have far-reaching consequences for
history research centers. The presence of
1. Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus,
Dayton, Toledo, and Akron in order of population.
2. The Ph.D. degree granting
universities are: Akron, Case Western Reserve, Cincinnati, Kent
State, Miami, Ohio State, and Toledo.
Two schools, Ohio University and Bowling Green State Uni-
versity have Regent approved programs
about ready to begin. In addition to these nine schools, all of
which grant master's degrees, are six
others that grant only the master's and not the Ph.D. degree:
Cleveland State, Dayton, John Carroll,
Wright State, Xavier, and Youngstown State.
3. In the most recent rating of graduate
schools by department, not one Ohio history department
placed in the top twenty schools, yet
Ohio is fifth in the nation in population and fourth in wealth.
See American Council on Education, An Assessment of
Quality in Graduate Education (Washington,
D.C., 1966), 38-39.
Essay and Comment 63
a growing, dynamic community of history
scholars and graduate students will
require more library-archives materials,
and also it will make increasing demands
on existing facilities. This demand will
have to be met in a coordinated conscious
fashion, or collection and research
centers will soon become independently ineffec-
tive due to overlapping programs and
lack of necessary funds. To take advantage
of the existing regional divisions in
the state, effort must be made to designate
areas of jurisdiction for the best use
of facilities and materials.
For the purpose of providing a reference
scale for this proposal for the Ohio
Network of American History Research Centers,
I define the three aspects of a
"research center" as follows:
(1) The "collecting area" is a combined archives-
library program that collections the
four general areas of research materials--printed
materials, newspapers, special
collections, and archives--with special attention to
nationwide coverage in secondary source
materials and with a detailed regional
scope for original source materials
within its multi-county Ohio district. (2) "Sep-
arate identity" indicates the
research center as a separate unit within the parent
institution's organizational structure.
For example, in the historical societies the
archives-library function might be a
separate division while in the universities the
research center might be a part of the
library or a unit reporting directly to the
vice-president for academic affairs.
Physically, it should have its own area with
reading room, work space, offices, and
stacks. (3) The "staff and budget" are the
personnel and money required to maintain
a research center. To provide service
according to best professional
standards, each center would need at least four on
its staff: an administrator with a M.A.
or Ph.D. in American history, an archivist,
a librarian, and a clerk. The operating
budget, used for salaries, supplies, equip-
ment, travel, and purchases, should
total between $25,000 to $50,000 after the
research center is fully operative.
There are at present five American
history research centers in Ohio that meet
the three requirements listed above:
three historical societies, Cincinnati Historical
Society, Ohio Historical Society, and
Western Reserve Historical Society; and two
topical repositories, the American
Jewish Archives and the Rutherford B. Hayes
Library. The network I am proposing
would consist of repositories that would col-
lect general Americana and specific
state and local materials for all periods of
American and Ohio history, with
representative collections in all fields. The two
topical repositories listed are of such
a specialized nature that they would not be
dependent on the network, although they
would be willing to cooperate on special
projects that might be of mutual
interest.
Of the seven proposed regions of the
network, three are now covered by the
existing historical societies. The other
four do not now have any strong collecting
agency which is assuming responsibility
for the region. Even though there are at
least one hundred academic, special, and
public libraries that have reference ma-
terials on Ohio (usually books and local
newspapers, and over fifty institutions
holding at least one major manuscripts
collection), none of these institutions has
a separate research unit staffed with
professional archivists and librarians for the
purpose of collecting materials on
national and state history.
The Ohio Historical Society is charged
by its charter to insure the preserva-
tion of Ohio's historical heritage, both
the documentary record and the three di-
mensional object. Recognizing that four
regions of the state have no active
collecting centers, the Society has the
options of maintaining the status quo, of
centralizing all local and state
materials (except for Cleveland and Cincinnati) in
64
OHIO HISTORY
Columbus, of setting up separate
libraries in the four areas, or of working with
existing institutions to create new
independent research centers where they are
needed. During the past three years
since the idea for regional research centers
was first publicly discussed,4 I
have had a number of meetings with members of
the academic community, librarians,
archivists, and administrators concerning the
proposal and its implementation. On the
basis of these conversations and after
considerable field travel in Ohio, my
conclusion is that the option of working
within existing centers to form a
federation of institutions is the best way to meet
Ohio's history collection and research
needs.
The underlying assumption for this plan
is that unless a specified number of
research centers are selected and
mutually supported, the growing number of grad-
uate programs in history will generate
twenty or thirty collection centers, mostly in
universities, that will compete in the
collection of primary source material. None of
these new centers could be expected to
reach the point independently of building
their "area,"
"identity," or staff and budget to the level needed to sustain a
quality
program. At the present time, no
university in Ohio has sponsored a program in
archives-library that demonstrates a
full commitment to the research center idea.5
Now is the time, in my opinion, to
select one institution in each of the four regions
lacking a center that will win approval
of the other three. Further, in the three
active regions, every effort should be
made to encourage Case Western Reserve Uni-
versity, Cleveland State University, and
John Carroll University to cooperate with
the Western Reserve Historical Society;
for Ohio State University to continue its
agreement of 1956 with the Ohio
Historical Society not to collect "material relating
primarily to Ohio"; and for the
University of Cincinnati, Miami University, and
Xavier University to help the Cincinnati
Historical Society begin comprehensive
collecting of twentieth century
materials. All these graduate schools that are neigh-
bors of the three historical societies
should be represented on the board of trustees
and on advisory committees so that they
play a positive role in making policies for
the library-archives programs of the
research centers.
In Ohio, a research center, I believe,
needs to be part of a metropolitan or state
historical society, or part of a
university complex that offers graduate degrees in
history and related disciplines. In
short, it must be part of a parent institution
sharing in its prestige and financial
resources to adequately support the endeavor.
Further, it must be identified in that
region as the official repository so that the
other institutions in the region will
not have competing programs, but rather will
cooperate in building up the one
regional center. Obviously the network members
will have no punitive means of
preventing other repositories from developing com-
peting collections. However, under a
smoothly running network, any non-network
member would operate in a number of key
areas at a disadvantage relative to the
network members.
4. In a speech by the author to the Ohio
Academy of History in April 1967. For a summary of
the speech, see the Ohio
Historical Society, Echoes, June 7, 1967. [2].
5. Two universities have recently made
commendable starts. The University of Akron library has
supported the flourishing "Archives
of the History of American Psychology" and a university archives.
If it would set up a regional history
collection for central northeast Ohio and combine the three
research sections into one unit as the
"Social Science Research Center" under one professional archiv-
ist, it would reach research center
scope. Bowling Green State University has recently forged ahead
under the leadership of history
professor Richard Wright to form the "Great Lakes-Northwest Ohio
Research Center." The program has
the active support of the administration and several depart-
ments. The directions this center might
take will be seen as collecting activities get underway.
A prime reason for constructing a network at this time is that there is an accel- erated interest in local materials. The influence of behaviorism, particularly from sociology and political science, has led to new directions in historical methodology. Much more emphasis is being placed on testing long-held generalizations about local situations and on the development of urban and ethnic-group studies atten- dant to this movement. Since Ohio has six large metropolitan areas that can be used as models for urban research, the pressing need for a cooperative network becomes all the more apparent. Historians and social scientists need broader and varied types of source materials--county and municipal records, oral history tran- scripts, machine readable data, maps and photographs, public opinion surveys-to do research employing the newer techniques. The proposed network would pro- vide the facilities to develop the expertise necessary to supply these research materials and to furnish a base so that such an expansion would be possible on a statewide scale. The network should be implemented in 1970 by bringing together the three his- torical societies and four state universities. In two of the four potential regions the choice of repositories is clear. In southeast Ohio only Ohio University has the fa- cilities to properly develop a research center. Ohio University should immediately consider setting up within the library an "Appalachia Research Center" to pull together existing information collecting programs with support from Federal and |
66 OHIO HISTORY
university sources. Similarly, in the
central southwest region Wright State Univer-
sity, as a new school, has the
opportunity to build a Social Science Research
Center within its area.6 The
other two potential regions, northwest Ohio and cen-
tral northeast Ohio, are alike in that
each has a pair of large, well established
universities which offer history
graduate degrees. The ideal arrangement would be
for jointly-sponsored research centers
to be established either at Bowling Green
State University or the University of
Toledo in region four, and at Kent State
University or the University of Akron in
region two.
The thrust of the network will be to
administer collecting programs of local
materials within the geographical
districts. The Ohio Historical Society would be
the headquarters of the network with
statewide responsibility for coordinating in-
formation, providing consultative
service, and administering special-project monies.
In addition, the Ohio Historical Society
would have a local collecting function in
central Ohio. The result would be a
statewide three-layer hierarchy composed of
one statewide coordinating agency, seven
local collecting repositories, and a num-
ber of small repositories within each
region. The network will have as its goal the
systematic collection, cataloging, and
referencing of all historically important
materials, in whatever form, for the
entire state. The network, in my opinion,
should be set up from the start with
centers designated in all seven regions. This
means that one repository should be
selected in each of the four regions lacking
a center as soon as possible. The head
administrator at each institution should be
the official representative although he
could appoint one of his staff to represent
the institution in the network.
The legal basis for the network should
be a simple contract agreement pledg-
ing each institution to meet on a
regular schedule with the other network mem-
bers to discuss existing programs of
cooperation and plan for new projects. The
mechanism for reaching consensus for
specific areas of cooperative effort would
be the passage of guidelines by a vote
of the network members. Some of the pos-
sible areas of cooperation that might be
considered by network members for incor-
poration into guidelines are as follows:
PRINTED MATERIALS (books, pamphlets, periodicals, government
documents)--sale
or exchange of duplicate copies on a
preferential basis to other network mem-
bers, photoduplication of rare items,
serve as cooperating libraries for the union
bibliography of printed state documents,
share microfilm responsibilities for key
periodicals, maintain a union card
catalog in machine readable format.
NEWSPAPERS (daily and weekly general press, specialized
press)--acquisition pro-
gram to locate runs of all Ohio
newspapers, preparation of a union guide to
newspapers in Ohio, exchange of
microfilm, indexing of selected papers.
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS (iconography: maps, photographs, prints, broadsides;
and
audio-visuals: tape recordings,
phonograph records, movie film)--consultation in
bidding from dealers, duplicate any
iconography and audio-visuals that pertain
to another region, share specialized
photographic and recording equipment,
compile guides to maps and photographs.
ARCHIVES (government records, private manuscripts, oral history, data archives)--
inter-library loan of original
collections, shared use of the restoration laboratory
6. A team of three history professors,
Jacob Dorn, Paul Merriam, and Carl Becker received recently
a large National Science Foundation
grant to prepare an inventory of research materials for the city
of Dayton. The results of this project
would provide the data base for a collecting program by Wright
State University.
Essay and Comment 67
at the new Ohio Historical Center, serve
as official repositories for county and
municipal records, jointly sponsor oral
history interview series, central computer
facilities for data archives with
terminals at each network center.
The network boundaries will work well in
regard to unique source material that
can be identified only with a particular
region. The one overlapping area where
competition would still exist would be
for collections of state and national impor-
tance that also have local origin
significance. However, the formal mechanism of
the network will partly alleviate this
difficulty by the provisions for inter-library
loan and photocopy of materials.
While most of the guidelines will be
implemented by the network centers out
of their own operating budgets, careful
attention should be given to soliciting private
and governmental funds for
inter-institutional statewide programs. The first attempt
to secure common funding for the network
should be attempted in the 1971-1973
biennial state budget request of the
Ohio Historical Society. While the Society
could probably not provide operating
fund allotments to the other six network
members, it can contract with them for
specific projects. Two projects the Ohio
Historical Society should propose is a
county and municipal records project and a
newspaper project.
The local records project should aim to
put all county and municipal records on
schedule, with noncurrent records either
cared for in the office of origin or in a
regional network center; or if the
records have no historical, administrative, legal,
or fiscal value, they should be
destroyed to avoid the overcrowded conditions facing
almost all of Ohio's city halls and
county courthouses. Included in the project
would be the publication of a county and
a municipal manual for use by public
officials; and a microfilm program to
secure positive copies of film for network
centers. The newspaper project would be
a two year statewide program on Ohio
newspapers, involving collecting
original papers, particularly the special interest
press, like business, labor,
organizations; microfilming papers not already filmed
by commercial companies or by other
research institutions; preparing computer
indexes on a selective basis for state
and local news items in one paper for each
region; and compile a second edition to
the Union Guide to Newspapers in Ohio.
The allocation of money by the state
legislature for one or both of these proj-
ects, along with the immediate passage
of five to ten of the items in the guide-
lines, would give the network a solid
core of cooperative projects for the next
three to five years. By the middle of
the decade the working relationships and
procedures will be established and a new
round of projects will have begun.
This network proposal, I believe, offers
the best solution to insuring an orderly
growth of American history research
centers in Ohio. The alternative, it seems to
me, would be to have fifteen to twenty
research centers, all except three or four
poorly supported, resulting in large
geographical areas of the state unserviced and
types of materials needed for urban
studies unaccessioned. Since five of the seven
institutions are state supported, the
network seems to be a good vehicle for expend-
ing state funds and expanding public
support. It also would provide a strong base
on which to build statewide projects
funded by special project grants. If the net-
work should be established and should
prove successful. I believe it would push
Ohio into the front ranks nationally in
the preservation of local, state, and national
source materials for research.
DAVID R. LARSON, Chief,
Archives and Manuscripts Division, Ohio
Historical Society