State Historical Society is in jeopardy

I join the rising voices of Iowans concerned about the misguided detour from its mission that the Department of Cultural Affairs is taking with respect to the State Historical Society of Iowa.

Reductions in staff, public research hours and overall funding for facilities and collections clearly seem to be the methods the DCA executives and their out-of-state consultants have chosen to ultimately close the Iowa City office and severely alter the mission of the larger Des Moines facility. In doing so, the damage to present and future Iowans is incalculable.

As an academically-trained historian working outside a university setting, I use the collections of the State Historical Society on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis. I am most familiar with the Iowa City office, where I can find relevant maps, photographs, architectural plans, labor history transcripts, 19th century family diaries and business papers, as well as newspapers that are not available through online subscription services. The staff and records at the historic preservation division within the Des Moines facility are critical to my professional work.

History is more than simple nostalgia to indulge in as we age, or fodder for college students' research papers. It has an economic value to Iowa residents that might not be well understood but would be severely affected by the present trajectory of DCA administrators, who are not themselves historians.

Abandoned schools all over the state are being repurposed as residential apartments, typically for moderate- or low-income families, with historic preservation tax credits. Likewise, downtown commercial buildings in every part of Iowa, from small towns to large cities, are rejuvenated using the same tax credit programs. Such buildings given new life through tax credits don't end up in the local landfill and their communities don't end up with gap-tooth Main Streets with missing buildings. Renters, shop keepers, builders, contractors, developers and Iowa communities in general all benefit from the economic activity.

But building owners cannot use tax credits unless a historian first writes the narrative of the building's significance, which justifies spending the tax dollars. And that historian simply cannot rely on digitized, online resources, helpful as they might be. Online sources have become integral to historical research, but they only augment the physical collections of the State Historical Society, not eliminate the need for them. The research clues gleaned from actually handling a document, for example a crease or fold line in an odd place, or an erasure that left faint letters, are all lost in the digital process.

It would be an enormous disservice to Iowans if the current administrators at the DCA - who, after all, are only the temporary caretakers of the State Historical Society - were permitted to dismantle what generations of Iowans have built, benefited from, and valued so highly. DCA executives' misunderstanding of the historian's research process is profound and their attitude toward the Historical Society's long-term mission breathtakingly shortsighted. I ask Iowans to write Governor Branstad and their legislative representatives. Urge them to protect the State Historical Society and its collections at both locations.

' Jan Olive Full is a historian who works throughout Iowa and lives in Iowa City. janolivefull@gmail.com