Which says the records were burned because they were full of mold, a health hazard, and had already been designated for destruction in 1964.
This wasn't a nifty little storage room full of rare old materials, it was pile of boxes in a basement with a leaky pipe.
It's sad for sure that a few really cool documents were lost, but they needed to be destroyed to remove the mold threat -- I doubt it was economically feasible to clean or restore the lot of them, and it'd have been dangerous to have folks rummage through them to find things worth restoration (can you remove mold from a ledger book?).
Mold threat?! Hahahahaha, this is what archivists do. We rescue and restore shit. We fumigate books with bugs living in the pages. We are to this day still piecing together charcoal smudges from the infamous 1973 St. Louis fire, to reconstruct scraps of salvageable information from WWI military records. We fight with archives in Eastern Europe that are staffed to this day with corrupt former KGB members who would rather stonewall you than give you your great-grandfather's shtetl records even when you are willing to pay them for access.
Even in the very worst case scenario, all we need is a hazmat suit and a digital camera and a couple of hours so the data isn't 100% lost -- as it was lost in Franklin county.
So, cool, of course materials can be rescued and restored. Should have been obvious. Thanks for the synopsis of your job!
"How much does it cost to rescue and restore" could be a relevant question. Especially considering that the state tagged all of it for destruction 50 years ago, I doubt they were keen to spend money on hiring a team of archivists to swoop down and resurrect ledgers of old tax receipts.
Moldy old books generally get thrown away or burned. Doesn't mean there's some great conspiracy to cover up land grabs and political intrigue, as was the supposition I was providing counterpoint to.
"Moldy old books" THAT ARE PUBLIC DOCUMENTS, CREATED WITH PUBLIC FUNDS BY PUBLIC OFFICIALS AND STORED IN PUBLIC BUILDINGS do not "generally get thrown away or burned". (Fascist and communist states excepted.) They get restored, preserved, indexed, and hopefully digitized.
I mean, if only there were some national umbrella group of archives that had entire departments of people devoted to techniques for preventing and restoring damaged materials, who published their findings on paper and online for free, who hold regular disaster planning and archives management conferences, who promote best practices, who are extremely active on social media and could have helped if only the state had bothered to ask them about the mold situation OH WAIT THERE IS http://www.archives.gov/preservation/emergency-prep/disaster...
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(All that being said, I do agree that the key factor in this travesty was probably ignorance rather than malice, as it is in so many situations. But given the state's history and the unusualness of this act, the blogger's skepticism is definitely warranted. And just to reiterate, the Heritage Society was willing to take the records in for free. They were the initial volunteers cleaning out that yucky basement, too. I don't think even the state is trying to play the "expensive" card.)
They were marked for destruction 50 years ago by those publicly funded officials. That they remained is something in itself.
The blog post says they'd secured space and funding for restoration; it's curious then why they left everything in the basement if they had the space set up. And, calling the state archivists (knowing they were out of their league) suggests they were far out enough that reading SOPs and tweeting folks wasn't going to cut it.
I can certainly see a case where the state group, with what can't be unlimited funds, did a cost-benefit analysis and determined that it wasn't worth it. That makes sense to me -- maybe I'm not intimate enough with the industry to know what really happens.
I'm surprised with the hostility here; I acknowledge that your profession is very important to you, but seriously, this isn't an attack.
> "How much does it cost to rescue and restore" could be a relevant question
Nope, it's purely a FUD question. Considering questions like this may be part of balanced reasoning, but you need to ask them to yourself first and spend a modicum of time thinking lest you just help derail the truth over a non-concern.
How much does it cost? Camera + N99 mask + shower -> $100 total
Although you'd probably want to opt for the deluxe package - scanner + cartridge respirator + long hot shower -> $300 total
I'm sure multiple members of an "archival society" would have individually come up with these resources if that's what was required. And I'm sure Google would have happily hauled, scanned, and properly disposed of the records just to put them behind their adwall.
And to the extent that there was a higher figure for institutional overhead, then before just being destroyed, there should have been a period of public notice and access for a volunteer can-do team to take the simple approach.
the records were burned because they were full of mold, a health hazard
This sounds exactly like the perfect kind of lie that the general public would believe. A plausible sounding health/safety reason. I'm not an expert, maybe it's true, but it rings false to me.
Surely historians, librarians and archaeologists have faced mold before and have methods to deal with it.
Sadly in this litigious world where states and companies have suffered huge financial claims related to mold it's not hard to understand a mid tier local government official panicking after talking with a local attorney.
"Designation for destruction in 1964" is a textbook example of how discrimination is still perpetuated here. We try so hard to be a progressive state (ex: RTP) but the fact is our heritage includes the enslavement of a race, and individuals today still say things that make Don Yelton look tame.
The blogger does claim inventory was incomplete, so some of the documents may not have or should not have been designated for destruction. She also claims that some materials were salvageable and that there were inconsistencies with the assessment of the mold's danger.
The procedure moved along a bit too efficiently to really satisfy the basis of either side of the story.
It's sad for sure that a few really cool documents were lost, but they needed to be destroyed to remove the mold threat.
The "mold threat" argument is so utterly vacuous -- it's hard to imagine that anyone making it can really be taking themselves seriously. And this pooh-poohing of the documents as being merely "cool" reflects a staggering degree of ignorance about the value of primary documents in historical (and legal) research.
At the same time... it's not hard to imagine county bureaucrats thinking pretty much exactly in these terms. "Wha, a buncha photographs? Old title papers? Whoze goona be innersted in that? Someones gonna get SICK from all that ICKY mold and we might get SUED!"
Yep -- that must have been exactly what they were thinking.
Your third paragraph is the thesis of my argument.
As is obvious from the archivist who has gleefully and thoroughly lambasted me upon her holy pike of preservation persecution, the layman may know painfully little about the costs and logistics involved in preserving such materials.
Which says the records were burned because they were full of mold, a health hazard, and had already been designated for destruction in 1964.
This wasn't a nifty little storage room full of rare old materials, it was pile of boxes in a basement with a leaky pipe.
It's sad for sure that a few really cool documents were lost, but they needed to be destroyed to remove the mold threat -- I doubt it was economically feasible to clean or restore the lot of them, and it'd have been dangerous to have folks rummage through them to find things worth restoration (can you remove mold from a ledger book?).