Eroding Our Heritage

Old reels of microfilmed newspapers

(image from the Manchester Library of New Hampshire)

Last year, as the terrorist group Daesh expanded the territory under their control, they made a great show of destroying artifacts and sites of historic value in their wake. They were only the latest in a long line of similarly fundamentalist groups that took pride in working to erase our history--the Taliban notoriously demolished ancient statues of the Buddha in Afghanistan, and Malian rebels torched hundreds of manuscripts before they abandoned Timbuktu, to name just two examples. But you don't have to burn books or pick up a hammer to destroy history. While it is not spectacular enough to attract headlines, benign neglect has destroyed enough of the historical record to warrant notice as well, thanks in part to the underfunding of libraries and historical societies. It doesn't generate the same outpouring of outrage and emotion that the deliberate destruction of our past does, but it should generate outrage just the same. 

My first professional job was as a reference librarian for a small local history and genealogy collection, housed in a public library, where I began to see the effects of this under-investment firsthand. While we did what we could to preserve the historic resources in our care--storing materials in archive-quality boxes to lengthen their life and digitally photographing other resources to create a perpetual record that would outlast the materials themselves--lack of adequate funding undermined this effort, and undermined the services that we could provide to researchers. I will never be able to forget working with materials that were nearing the end; old ledgers from the local poor house whose bindings were slowly disintegrating, brittle microfilm in need of digitization to preserve a unique record, and works of local genealogy and history printed on yellowing, acidic paper. Even the equipment we had was antiquated--parts were no longer produced for the microfilm readers we used, and pieces for repair had to be sought on Ebay or other similar sites. Protection of these irreplaceable materials should have been simple, save for lack of funding. A new microfilm reader that would have allowed in-house digitization of microfilmed tax records and local newspapers cost around ten thousand dollars. Sending the resources away for digitization by an outside company would have cost many tens of thousands more. Neither option was within the realm of possibility for a medium-sized public library in the state of Pennsylvania. 

I had little idea at the time that such a collection is likely one of the more fortunate ones in the state. The next library I worked in shared our building with the local historical society, and I came to know a number of those who volunteered for the organization. Consisting of only a handful of dedicated volunteers, and subsisting entirely off of donations from local members, the historical society worked to preserve a record of the history of the county. They once had received funding from the state to aid in this effort, but the same round of cuts that devastated libraries nearly a decade ago saw the complete elimination of their funding. With equipment even older than those at my first library, and few resources to invest in preservation, the resources in their collection continue to age, with little hope that anything remotely like digitization will ever be possible.

Both of these examples say little about the material of value that exists outside of historical societies and dedicated local collections. While at my first library, we worked to preserve the resources under our care, but we were also well aware of some of the resources we could not protect. Tax records from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, in their original form, were poorly stored in a basement at the county office. No other copies existed in print, microfilm, or digitally, and the lack of interest on the part of county government in their preservation will likely ensure that this valuable window into our past is eventually lost. Microfilming, like digitization, is an expensive process, and not a priority for any organization that is working hard just to balance their budget, much less take on new projects. Many libraries and other institutions still have oral histories and recordings of local events on cassette or video tapes; if these aren't transferred to more current media within the next few years, this information will likely be lost. 

Beyond the local level, decreasing funding to the State Library, the guardian of much of our state's history, puts our past in peril. Even as funding was increased to schools and libraries in the most recent state budget, funding to this resource library was cut yet again. This irresponsible act was particularly ill-timed, as the State Library unveiled a new initiative last year, with mobile scanners available for loan to any library or historical society. This will allow for the digitization of local history materials that would then be uploaded to the Internet Archive, preserving the information contained therein. The most recent funding cut will surely hinder this effort. 

There are certainly those who would loudly protest this assessment, asserting the tired line that throwing money at the problem won't solve anything. But this argument by self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives is disingenuous. Digitization and other means of preservation are not inexpensive, and without adequate funding these efforts, even in-house ones, will come to a halt. A sufficient, reliable level of funding is essential, and efforts to preserve historic resources need to be given priority. If we do not, we will ensure that more of our history will be lost. The materials that contain our heritage continue to age and decay, and with each passing year more of these become too fragile to handle, too far gone to preserve or digitize. The gaps in the record continue to grow wider, pauperizing our knowledge of the past.