Preserving the past, investing in the future

This week I have touched down in the world of professional archivists, people who preserve historical documents and artifacts for posterity. They work for museums, libraries and large organizations like universities and the national offices of church denominations. With thanks to my cousin Jon who is doing work for the National Archives I located this group's web site and signed up for their online discussion forum. I was looking for an efficient route towards developing some basic archival policies and procedures for The City Mission where I work.

One of my many roles at the Mission is to assist our contracted historian who is compiling a small book about our 100 years of service to Cleveland. (I locate documents and bits of information she needs to piece the puzzle together). Our organization has sent several boxes of materials to the Western Reserve Historical Society archives which we can rest assured are safely preserved. In the meantime, we continue to amass materials that will need to be archived in the future but we could benefit from having some guidelines in place now that will assure that important materials don't get lost or misplaced or mishandled in the shuffle of daily life in a busy organization. I posted a query on the discussion forum of the archivists late Friday afternoon and by Monday morning I had several helpful responses in my in-box, from archivists at places like Wheaton College, Dallas Theological Seminary and the national offices of the United Church of Christ which happens to be in Cleveland. I have a lunch date with someone who has offered to share some materials and pointers with me.

Meanwhile I have remained on their discussion forum so I get to hear their exchange of queries and answers. Most of them aren't of direct interest to me but this week someone decided to do an informal survey of the most unusual or strange items that had been donated to their institution. One person replied simply, "eye balls, with green irises and blue irises..." and that's all she wrote. Quickly others replied, were they real eye balls? Were they floating in liquid? She kept everyone in suspense awhile and finally replied they were glass eyeballs, marbles, from a collection of an optometrist. One person found in the basement of a university professor who had been at the Nuremberg trials, a brand new German pistol, still in the box with a swastika in it. It makes me curious as to what other interesting items might be tucked away in basements or attics around town. I guess the archivists all enjoyed the discussion as a diversion from their days filled primarily with handling important historical documents.

Thinking about all those folks who spend their days preserving the past, I was disappointed to hear this morning of a dismal future forecasted for Parma schools after having had a levy turned down for the third time in a row and by a very wide margin. The school system already has made significant cuts valued at millions of dollars. Meanwhile many other school levies in northeast Ohio passed. The new levy would have amounted to increased taxes of $168 a year (just $14 a month) for every $100,000 of property value. I wonder what we will sacrifice in the long run by not investing now in our greatest resource for the future, our children. As they say, you pay now or pay later and usually the "pay later" ends up being more costly.