Minutes of the Ohio Historical Records Advisory Board Meeting
6 June 1997
The Youngstown Historical Center of Industry & Labor
Youngstown

Board members present:George Parkinson, Roland Baumann, Alice Cornell, Jonathan Dembo, Barbara Floyd, Dennis Harrison, Michael Lucas, James Oda, Carol Tomer

Board members not present:Gary Ness, Lynn Jacobs

Staff present:Matthew Benz, Randall Gooden

Assistant State Coordinator George Parkinson called the meeting to order at 10:08 a.m., and welcomed the board.

Parkinson introduced Randall Gooden, head of the Archives Library Department at Youngstown. Gooden gave a report on the facilities and collections of the Archives Library, as well as a brief history of the Youngstown Historical Center since its opening in 1992.

At this time, Roland Baumann moved to adopt the postponed minutes of the 23 January meeting and the minutes of the 21 March meeting. Dennis Harrison seconded. The motion passed.

Discussion followed on the board's decision to move ahead with a regrant. Parkinson opened the discussion with a report on the status of the NHPRC plan. The current plan calls for three strategic goals, as proposed by the NHPRC Executive Committee, 19 May, 1997:

* continuation of the founding fathers and institution editing projects now under progress;
* collaborate with State Historical Records Advisory Boards to jointly fund programs designed to expand the protection and accessibility of records;
* continuing to provide leadership in developing, appraising, preserving, and providing access to records in digital form
.

While this proposal has yet to be adopted by the NHPRC, Parkinson informed the board that plans calls for the NHPRC to spend 60% of grant money on the three priorities listed above; the remaining 40% will be used for grants that fall outside the scope of the three priorities, such as manuscript processing projects. Based on that, Parkinson recommended that OHRAB move ahead with a regrant that incorporates electronic records. It was also suggested that the board give some thought to building upon the network of online historical centers thus creating an extension to other agencies that are not yet linked. Such a regrant will not only extend online services to other agencies, but would help to establish an online "Ohio Digital Archives." This mechanism would allow other societies and historical facilities to tie materials into a statewide system. This would involve the processing and electronically reformatting records and materials.

Alice Cornell suggested that this regrant presented an opportunity for the board to focus on images, the preservation/access of which is very popular with the general public. The image collections could be viewed through the web or on a CD-ROM, either of which would be very impressive. James Oda suggested that the appeal of such a project is that it would give the public a taste of the many collections found in Ohio archival repositories. It might then bring people in to the institutions to see the complete collections.

It was mentioned that copyrights might be problematic when using images. This problem could be solved by using older photos and images with expired copyrights. This would of course limit the scope of an image-oriented project.

Barbara Floyd expressed some reservation with centering the regrant around images. Her concern is that any regrant should involve the processing of collections, as this is a major concern for the archival community. Dennis Harrison pointed out that such an enormous task would require large amounts of grant money. Concentrating on images might have a wider impact with less money. Parkinson suggested that perhaps the two concerns could addressed by dividing the regrant into two components: 1) the use of grant money to update descriptions of the collections to go online, and 2) locating and securing the use of images for the online collection.

Jonathan Dembo suggested that the board should find a proposal similar in scope and content to use as a model for this regrant. Parkinson said that the National Digital Library is one example of a project combining collection processing and images.

The discussion then centered around the need for a theme. Roland Baumann suggested that the theme should tie in with the Ohio Bicentennial in the year 2003. While no theme was settled upon, the consensus was that there is sufficient interest in moving forward with such a regrant proposal. A committee made up of board members Jonathan Dembo, Michael Lucas and James Oda was formed to organize the board's approach to this regrant. Dembo was named Chair.

Alice Cornell made a motion to appoint the subcommittee to develop the proposal for further discussion. The motion passed, all in favor.

Parkinson then reported on the Ohio Bicentennial Commission.

Matthew Benz reported on the recent completion of the Historical Records Repository Survey. Camille Maurer and staff of the OHS Data Processing Department finished the data entry and the results were sent to Vicky Walch, project coordinator. Walch sent out a status report on 22 May which confirmed that Ohio had returned 414 completed forms. OHS staff microfilmed these forms and they will be kept on file at OHS. Parkinson reported that Walch will present a full report at the NAGARA (National Association of Government Archives & Records Administrators) meeting in July. The board also discussed the possibility of mounting the survey results on the OHRAB web page.

As reported at the March meeting, NAGARA has expressed interest in holding its July 1999 meeting in Columbus. An invitation in OHRAB's name -along with a resolution of support- was sent to NAGARA. Parkinson stressed that OHRAB should be involved in the local arrangements for the NAGARA 1999 meeting.

Parkinson led the discussion on the board support proposal, which was submitted to the NHPRC before the 1 June deadline. This proposal will support the board meeting over the next two years, cover travel and meeting expenses, as well as pay for revisions and reprinting of The Ohio 2003 Plan. The board thanks OHS Society Relations Division Chief Jim Strider for his invaluable work on the proposal.

The board adjourned at 1:55.

Respectfully submitted,

George Parkinson
Deputy Coordinator