Notes & Comments

Prospectus: The Northeast Ohio Consortium

By: Kevin Kern, The University of Akron

Purpose

Northeast Ohio is exceptionally rich in important historical resources and collections among its major universities, libraries, and museums. Among the most notable of these are the Cleveland Public Library (one of the nation’s largest and with ready access to the city’s municipal records), Cleveland State University (housing a number of archival and archaeological resources including the Cleveland Press Collection), the Cleveland Visiting Nurse Association, the Western Reserve Historical Society (boasting scores of important regional collections), and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History (housing the Hamann-Todd osteological collection--the largest of its kind anywhere in the world). Some of these collections have already produced significant scholarly work, while others have only begun to be tapped by serious investigators.

As valuable as these resources are individually, however, there is even greater potential for innovative and interdisciplinary use of these materials. For example, using the municipal records of the Public Library, the health records of the Visiting Nurse Association and the Hamann-Todd collection, the osteological collections of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the archaeological and newspaper records at Cleveland State, and the personal papers of early twentieth-century Clevelanders at the Western Reserve Historical society; it would be possible for a determined group of researchers to create an in-depth historical analysis of urban life in Northeast Ohio. Combining history, biology, and archaeology, such a project would produce a comprehensive insight into early twentieth century life unprecedented in its scope for any region in the nation.

The key to such an innovative program would be the formation of collaborative linkages between institutions and disciplines. Piecing together the complicated patchwork that was life in Northeast Ohio necessitates historians, archaeologists, and biological anthropologists sharing their expertise and methodological approaches with each other to a degree never before attempted. The potential avenues of research inherent in such a program are virtually limitless. For example, a pilot study currently underway at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History is studying the effect that industrialization had on Lake Erie and the surrounding area by examining the levels of lead (and other heavy metals) in the teeth of lakeshore residents from prehistoric times to the present. Using archaeological, biological, and municipal records, this study is the first diachronic investigation of its kind, but is necessarily limited by factors including expense and numbers of investigators trained to interpret the collections and records being used.

Ironically, while such potentially extraordinary research opportunities await only the attention of dedicated researchers, many undergraduate and graduate students at Northeast Ohio universities acquire little or no experience in primary-source work in Ohio history, and even fewer opportunities to publish their research in refereed journals. These students are at a competitive disadvantage in an increasingly difficult market for professional historians and archaeologists.

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