From Woody's Couch

(In celebration of the University Archives’ upcoming 50th Anniversary in 2015, we bring you “The Twelve Days of Buckeyes”. This is day five in a series of 12 blog posts highlighting the people who were instrumental in the creation and growth of the Archives.)

Harding and an unidentified staff person at the Archives, 1965

You may not know this but the University has an Operating Manual, which is nothing like the owner’s manual you receive with a new car, but instead is a compilation of policies, procedures and guidelines that help determine how OSU conducts business.

Inside, thanks to Bruce Harding, is a section that makes the Archives the official repository of University materials of permanent value, and gives it the authority to decide on the disposition of all of the University’s records.

Sounds pretty cool, huh?

Page from the operating manual

Fine, it might not sound very cool, but it is, in fact, very important. Without that designation and authority, the University’s history might be spread willy-nilly all over campus or, heaven forbid, disposed of without a thought or care. Imagine the first registrar’s book – the only record of the first students who attended OSU – being tossed in the trash. Unthinkable, isn’t it? But without the Archives being the official developer of individual departments’ and other units’ records retention policies, important historical materials might be lost forever.

With its place in the Operating Manual, the Archives has an official role in preserving OSU’s historical record, and it was because of Bruce Harding that it’s there. As the first official archivist appointed to that role in 1965, Harding worked to get guidelines on records disposition into the Operating Manual as early as 1969.

Harding, 1967

Harding had been hired in 1965 from Michigan’s state archives, and he had previously worked at the Ohio Historical Society. He was the University’s first professional archivist – he had certificates in archives management and preservation administration from Harvard and American universities, respectively – but he left in 1969, saying the archives was still low on OSU’s priority list and that funds were insufficient. “Of course, the University’s primary responsibility is to teach, and the archives is naturally of far less importance,” he told The Lantern in February 1969.

It couldn’t have helped that while he was archivist, the Archives moved three times, from the top floor of Thompson Library to the law school’s basement and Hitchcock Hall. Harding subsequently worked for the National Archives and Records Service in Chicago as a field regional archivist responsible for much of the Midwest.