Iowa is at a precipice of 'historic' proportions

The state of Iowa stands at a precipice that too few of its citizens realize. We are at risk of losing access to a substantial portion of the state's history that is richly documented in original diaries, letters, land ownership maps, photographs, the records of civic and religious organizations, oral histories, and countless other original sources, currently housed by the State Historical Society at its two branches, in Iowa City and Des Moines. This risk is being perpetrated, largely without public input, by state officials in the Department of Cultural Affairs and by consultants whose advice is misguided and ill-informed.

Access to our history has already been significantly degraded in recent years by state bureaucratic decisions to cut staff and hours at the Iowa City facility in the Society's Centennial Building. In the archives and library, only two professional staff members will remain of what was a staff of 20 librarians and archivists. The society is now only open three days a week compared to five full days in the recent past.

Why does this matter to us — citizens of this state? The history housed in the Society's archives and library represents our collective memory and our common heritage. Those records tell stories about who we are as a people and how this state came to embody the culture and values we have. They give life to our institutions and our communities. They make possible the reconstruction of the lives of ordinary people from the past, though those individuals may rarely have stood in the public spotlight. They are our grandparents and the generations that came before them. Their day-to-day work to improve their communities, to seek equity and fairness, and to leave a record, however fragmentary, of their work is a history we cherish.

Some argue, following current fashion, that all of this can be digitized and made accessible through the internet. Such a view betrays an ignorance and shortsightedness that reflects a fundamental lack of understanding of how historical investigation is done, whether by a community historian, a genealogist, or a student or faculty member at a college or university.

Primary documents have an inherent, tangible value in themselves. Their arrangement and description by a professional archivist or librarian make possible a qualitatively different kind of access than a "Google search" might enable. In a library or archive, it is possible to move easily, with the help of professional staff, from one kind of record to another — an immigration ship register, a manuscript census record, a plat or fire insurance map, a diary or scattered collection of correspondence, a photograph of a farmstead or workplace, a church or community hall. They provide threads and connections that permit the reconstruction of a life or a community that random digitized records, even with an appropriate "keyword" search, cannot begin to replicate. And digital records cannot produce the "affective learning" — the sense of personal connection and meaning that working with the original document can produce and what may be for a student or a senior a lifelong fascination with understanding the past.

The fad of digitization should not be allowed to distract from what must be an ongoing commitment to collecting, preserving and making accessible the rich history of this state. Our history did not stop in the 1970s or 1980s. Continuing to build our historical collections for the future is integral to what professional archivists and librarians do. They are working on our behalf. The mindless budget cutting that leads to proposals to reduce the hours and staff of the State Historical Society to the point where it is impossible to fulfill its mission — really our mission — must not be allowed to have its way. In the end, we are talking about a very small portion of the state's budget.

Write to your legislators and the Department of Cultural Affairs. Tell them to restore the cuts to staff and hours of these archives and libraries that have served the state so well.

Shelton Stromquist is professor emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Iowa.