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Documenting Middletown
From the Lynds to the Middletown Digital Archives
JOHN B. STRAW
Fifteen years ago, Dwight Hoover, founding director of the Center for Middletown Studies at Ball State University, wrote that
Muncie, Indiana, under the pseudonym "Middletown," is one of the most studied communities in the United States. Since the initial research was begun in 1924, the community has learned to endure the probing of numerous investigators, whose many reports have reflected the tensions and concerns of the scholars searching for clues to the American urban experience. One might well trace the course of twentieth-century American studies through the Middletown experience.1
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Today, the results of all these investigations are evident in the collections of the Archives and Special Collections Research Center in the Ball State University Libraries, home of the Middletown Studies Collection. The Collection contains hundreds of articles, books, and other documentation on Middletown, as well as local history archival and manuscript collections that support Middletown research. In addition, the Archives recently launched the Middletown Digital Archives so that researchers can access resources anytime from anywhere. This article describes the documentation of Muncie, Indiana, as Middletown, and the transition of that documentation to the digital age. |
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The Archives and Special Collections Research Center | |
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The Center consists of five basic units: the University Archives; Rare Books and Manuscripts; the Stoeckel Archives of local history materials; and the Middletown Studies Collection. This article focuses on the last two. |
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While the Center for Middletown Studies and the Archives are separate entities, they work cooperatively. Researchers from the Center use the Archives' collections and facilities. The director of the Archives also serves as archivist for the Middletown Studies Collection and is an ex-officio member of the advisory board of the Center for Middletown Studies. In his capacity as a board member, he reports on the collections that have been added to support Middletown studies and on research that has been done in the collections; he also has the opportunity to meet with local citizens and to pursue additional collections through those contacts. |
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The Archives' Middletown collections fall into two categories: first, materials that come through the Center for Middletown Studies and scholarship that is generated on Middletown; and second, local history materials on Muncie that support Middletown research. |
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Records of Middletown Research | |
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The first category of records includes material generated by Middletown research, such as publications, writings, surveys, documentary films, and oral and video histories. The Archives maintains a large collection of articles, excerpts from monographs, research papers, student papers, dissertations, theses, bibliographies, books, and unpublished drafts. |
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