ANNALS OF IOWA.

VOL. VII, No. 8. DES MOINES, IOWA, JANUARY, 1907.

3D SERIES.

A REPORT ON THE PUBLIC ARCHIVES.1

BY BENJAMIN F. SHAMBAUGH.

I.

GENERAL INFORMATION.

It is a notorious fact that England and the European governments have given far more attention to the care and preservation of Public Archives and expended much larger sums for this and other historical purposes than have the National and State governments of the United States. Indeed, the condition of the Public Archives of the National and State governments of the United States has been (with some few exceptions) one of neglect rather than of care, of disorder rather than of systematic arrangement. Even Canada has taken steps in advance of the United States. Fortunately, however, within the last decade there has been evidenced a larger interest in American Public Archives, which in considerable measure has been inspired by and through the American Historical Association.

It was at the Washington meeting of the American Historical Association (in 1891) that Prof. J. Franklin Jameson read a paper on The Expenditures of Foreign Governments

1 Iowa City, Iowa, September 18, 1906.

To the Trustees of the State Library and Historical Department of Iowa. Gentlemen: Complying with your reque t for information and suggestions relative to the care and preservation of Public Archives and, more specifically, for recommendations relative to the installation of a Hall of Public Archives in Iowa under the provisions of "An Act providing for the care and permanent preservation of the public archives, and making an appropriation therefor,'' enacted by the Thirty first General Assembly and approved April 10, 1906, I have the honor to submit herewith a report with recommendations.

Very respectfully,

BENJ. F. SHAMBAUGH.

2 The Expenditures of Foreign Governments in Behalf of History, in the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1891, p. 33.

in Behalf of History in which the attention of students and the government was called to what was not being done in the United States by a discussion of what was being accomplished elsewhere. At a meeting of this same Association, which was held at Chicago in December, 1893, Mrs. Ellen Hardin Walworth's paper on The Value of National Archives (which, after referring to the attitude of other Nations, deplored the neglect of Archives in America) provoked a general discussion which led to the appointment of a committee of nine to memorialize Congress on the establishment of a Department of Archives.1

In reporting the discussion of Mrs. Walworth's paper, Dr. W. F. Poole said in The Independent: "The historical papers in the State Department are not accessible to the historical student except as a special favor, and they are not arranged, classified, and calendared. The State Department has no space for historical archives and no archivist who understands their management or has time to give to the needs of historical investigators. Indeed, these are not the functions of the State Department. At Ottawa, however, Canada has a department of archives; it is an excellent one, and under the charge of a most competent archivist. American historians, when they need to consult the original documents relating to our own history, often go to Ottawa to see papers which should be in Washington."

It was to correct such popular misapprehensions as those entertained by Dr. Poole that Mr. Andrew Hussey Allen. Chief of the Bureau of Rolls and Library (Department of State, Washington, D. C.), presented, at the meeting of the American Historical Association in 1894, a paper on The Historical Archives of the Department of State.2

These papers and the discussions which they provoked bore fruit when on December 27, 1895, the American Historical Association established an Historical Manuscripts Commission "charged to collect information regarding manuscript materials relating to American history, especially those which

1 Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1893, pp. 4, 27. 2 Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1894, p. 281.