Documenting Middletown from the Lynds to the Middletown Digital Archives

Documenting Middletown From the Lynds to the Middletown Digital Archives

JOHN B. STRAW

ifteen years ago, Dwight Hoover, founding director of the Center for FMiddletown 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.’

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

John B. Straw is director of the Archives and Special Collections Research Center, Ball State University, Muncie. ‘Dwight W. Hoover, Middletown Revisited (Muncie, Ind., 1990), 1. INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY, 101 (September 2005) 0 2005, Trustees of Indiana University 268 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

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.

The Archives and Special Collections Research Center 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. While the Center for Middletown Studies and the Archives are sepa- rate 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. The Archives’ Middletown collections fall into two categories: first, materials that come through the Center for Middletown Studies and schol- arship that is generated on Middletown; and second, local history materials on Muncie that support Middletown research.

Records of Middletown Research 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, dis- sertations, theses, bibliographies, books, and unpublished drafts. While the Archives has a few items dating from the Lynds’ original studies (including a pair of letters from Robert Lynd and a copy of an original survey form completed by a local church), the papers of Robert and Helen Lynd are housed at the Library of Congress. Microfilm of the papers (8 reels) is available in the university libraries’ microforms area. The papers include correspondence (1923-67), writings (1895-1967), and biographical and genealogical materials (1918-68). A substantial amount of material in the collection relates to sociological research, especially on Middletown. Middletown materials in the writings section of the Lynd Papers include comments on the manuscript of the first book, correspondence, reviews, lectures, and research files on such topics as clubs, individual biographies, the Ku Klux Klan, leisure activities, the Ministerial Association, organized D 0 CUME N TI N G MID D LET0WN 269

One of the Lynds’ 1924 survey forms, filled out by a member of the men’s Bible class of the Jackson Street Christian Church. Middletown Studies Collection. Ball State Archives & Special Collections 270 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

labor, and working conditions. The papers also contain materials related to Middletown in Transition, including a corrected galley, correspondence, reviews, and lectures. The Archives holds the records of the Middletown 111 research, conducted in the late 1970s, that was the first major replication of the Lynds’ original studies.’ The three lead researchers were Theodore Caplow (University of Virginia), Howard Bahr, and Bruce Chadwick (both of Brigham Young University). These records include survey forms and notes, working papers, computer tapes (or data archives), problem-identification sheets, and coding forms. The surveys are divided into categories: American Family; Women; Government and Service; Getting a Living; Religion; Community; High School; and Black Middletown. From an archival viewpoint, one of the more challenging collections is related to the Middletown film series produced by Peter Davis for PBS in 1982. The series consisted of 6 episodes: “The Campaign” followed the 1980 Muncie Mayor’s race. “The Big Game,” not surprisingly for the state of Indiana, was about high school basketball. It traced the rivalry between Muncie Central’s Bearcats and the Anderson Indians. “Community of Praise” investigated a charismatic religious cult based in the Muncie area. “Family Business” examined a family’s problems as they attempted to save their Shakey’s pizza franchise. “Second Time Around” followed two divorced people as they courted and prepared to marry. The controversial “Seventeen” followed the lives of a racially mixed group of high school student^.^ The collection includes videotape copies of each program in the series, scripts and editors’ notes for each episode, and hundreds of reels of outtakes and original film footage that were shot in preparing the program^.^ Producer Peter Davis deposited all this film with the Archives, but for many years retained the rights, so that researchers who wanted to use the films

’For a description of the Middletown 111 project, see Hoover, Middletown Revisited, 24-35. ’For a description of the series, see Dwight W. Hoover, Middletown: The Making of a Documentary Series (Philadelphia, Pa., 1992). The book includes a discussion of the controver- sy surrounding the “Seventeen” episode. ‘No outtakes from the “Seventeen” episode are included in the Archives collection because the filmmakers for that part of the series, Joel DeMott and Jeff Keines, retained the internegative and all original film footage. For a full discussion of Seventeen, see Hoover, Middletown: The Making ofa Documentary, 93-130, 159-78. DOCUM EN TIN G MID DLETOWN 271

The Highland Cafe, 1948. Theodore Phillips, the cook, stands at the left; co-owners Thelma and John Bragg stand next to him. Researchers who followed after the Lynds in Muncie from the 1940s until the 1970s continued to ignore the city’s black residents. Orher Side of Mtddlerown Collection, Ball State Archives &I Special Collections

had to receive his written permission. The university recently acquired all rights to the outtakes, which will allow the Archives to move forward in seeking grant funding to preserve, digitize, and make this historical film footage more accessible. Critics have often cited the Lynds’ original work for neglecting Muncie’s minority population, especially the African American community. Ball State professor Luke Eric Lassiter has suggested otherwise: “one can almost excuse the Lynds for missing this, especially because, in recognizing their omissions of ‘racial change’ in lieu of their focus on the larger ‘base- line group,’ they acknowledged that they were ignoring significant hetero- geneities such as race and thus encouraged that ‘racial backgrounds may be studied by future workers.”’5During the last three decades, researchers have followed the Lynds’ advice and have attempted to correct their omissions. Recent efforts have produced new documentation on Middletown minori-

’Luke Eric Lassiter et al., eds., The Other Side of Middletown: Exploring Muncie’s African American Community (Walnut Creek, Calif., 2004), 3. 272 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

ties, with much of the work done through oral history projects that are now available in the Middletown Studies Collection. Beginning in 1971, Hurley Goodall and J. Paul Mitchell conducted the Black Muncie History Project, funded by a grant from the Muncie Human Rights Commission. The researchers interviewed 38 African Americans who had lived in Muncie in the early 1900s and also gathered information from pamphlets and newspapers. They published A History of Negroes in Muncie (1976) as a result of the project.6The project files include audio tapes of the interviews, transcripts, summaries, and research documentation. In 1981, researchers from the University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University conducted a “Black Middletown” study. The Archives holds the tapes and transcripts of their 33 interviews, as well as survey forms completed by more than 450 black residents. The surveys provide information in eight areas: social background; community and family relations; getting a living; making a home; training the young; leisure activities; religious activities; and racial issues.’ In 2003, Lassiter and his students, working with Goodall, developed “The Other Side of Middletown” project.8 This collaborative ethnography project on Muncie’s African American community included interviews with many black city residents. The tapes and transcripts are housed in the Middletown Studies Collection. In Middletown in Transition, the Lynds wrote that “the Jewish population of Middletown is so small as to be numerically negligible.”9 Dan Rottenberg, author of Middletown Jews: The Tenuous Survival of an American Jewish Community, commented of their studies that “virtually nothing about this typically American town escaped the Lynds’ notice-including, here and there, references to a miniscule and equally anonymous Jewish community.”lO The Jewish experience in Middletown is documented in two oral history collections in the Archives. A Muncie Jewish Oral History Project was

6HurleyGoodall and J. Paul Mitchell, A History of Negroes in Muncie (Muncie, Ind., 1976). 7The~etwo collections are briefly also described in John M. Glen, John B. Straw, and Thomas D. Hamm, “Indiana Archives: Archival Holdings in Eastern Indiana,” Indiana Magazine of History, 95 (September 1999), 294-95. 8Formore information on the “Other Side of Middletown” project, see Lassiter et al., eds., The Other Side of Middletown. ’Robert S. Lynd and Helen Menill Lynd, Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflicts (New York, 19371,462. loDan Rottenberg, ed., MiddletownJews The Tenuous Survival of an AmencanJewish Community (Bloomington, Ind., 1997), vii. DOCUMENTING MIDDLETOWN 273

Beth El Temple in 1937. The Lynds mentioned Muncie's Jewish population in their second book; a published collection of essays and two oral history projects, all from the 19905, have begun to document the experiences of Jewish city residents. Richard Greene Collection, Ball State Archives & Special Collections

conducted in 1979 under the sponsorship of Martin Schwartz, who com- missioned Ball State University professors C. Warren Vander Hill and Dwight Hoover to interview nineteen Jewish residents who had lived in Muncie in the 1920s and 1930s." In 2002 and 2003, Vander Hill completed a Middletown Jewish Oral History Project 11, again at the request of Schwartz, resulting in interviews with twenty-four members of the Muncie Beth El Temple congregation. Audio tapes and transcripts of both projects are available in the Archives' Middletown Studies Collection. Oral history collections in the Archives also document other Middletown subjects. "Working in Middletown" includes interviews and essays from a 1976 Indiana Committee for the Humanities project on

"Excerpts from these interviews were used in Rottenberg, ed., MiddletownJew. 274 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

“getting a living in Muncie, Indiana,” inspired by the Lynds’ studies and Studs Terkel’s Working. Other oral history collections document “Aging in Muncie” and “Women in World War 11.”12Tapes of Center for Middletown Studies lectures and programs are also available in the Archives.

Stoeckel Archives of Local History The local history collections in the Stoeckel Archives are the largest category of material to support Middletown research.13 The collections can be categorized in the same manner as the chapters in the Lynds’ original book: Getting a Living; Making a Home; Training the Young; Using Leisure; Engaging in Religious Practices; and Engaging in Community Activities.“ There is cross-over within the categories: for example, family papers that document “Getting a Living” also fall into the “Making a Home” category. But using these categories shows how the collections support Middletown research in the areas defined by the Lynds. Many of these collections were described in the September 1999 issue of the Indiana Magazine of History.15 The following provides only a brief explanation of the types of materials in each category and mentions a few examples of collections acquired primarily since 1999.16

Getting a Living Records of business and industry that document working in Muncie make up the bulk of this category. Since the gas boom of the late 1800s, manufacturing has been important to this part of Indiana. One recent addition to the Stoeckel Archives are the records of the McCormick Brothers Company. Founded in 1907 as a manufacturer of kitchen accessories, the company later expanded its electro-tin plating operation, produced mili- tary materials during World War 11, and contracted with U.S. Steel

”For discussion of these and other oral history collections, see Glen, Straw, Hamm, “Indiana Archives,“ 295. ”The local history collections in the Archives were named after Ball State history professor Althea Stoeckel by the board of trustees in 1979. Stoeckel was responsible for saving hundreds of Delaware County records from destruction in 1966. See Althea Lucille Stoeckel, Clio in the Attic (Muncie, Ind., 1970). ”For more on the categories established by the Lynds, see Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture (New York, 1929). ‘’Glen, Straw, Hamm, “Indiana Archives,” 284-301. 16See www.bsu.edu/library/collections/archivedstoeckelfor more detailed information, including finding aids to the collections. DOCUMENTING MI DD LET0W N 275

“Getting a Living”: A worker at Warner Gear Company. Otto Sellers Collection. Ball Stale Archives & Special Collections

Corporation to manufacture paving joints for construction of the interstate system. Despite the company’s diversification, its failure to modernize caused two devastating strikes in 1969 and 1971. The company officially closed on July 3, 1978. Its records, dating from 1900 to 1973, include correspondence, product design and advertisements, financial records, and photographs. The automotive industry played a significant role in the history of Muncie. Dwight Hoover’s unpublished manuscript “Automobility” provides a study of the significance of the automobile in the life and development of “Middletown,” as well as a history of the local automobile industry, including both manufacturers-General Motors, Warner GearBorg Warner, and Warner Machine Products-and organized labor.” The Warner Gear

”Dwight W. Hoover, “Automobility in Middletown,” unpublished manuscript in Archives and Special Collections Research Center, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana. 276 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

Division Collection, 1920-199 1, contains brochures, newspaper clippings, organizational charts, personnel lists, programs, publications, and photographs of the Warner Gear Division of the Borg Warner Corporation, a transmissions manufacturer. The Borg Warner Gear-0-Gram Collection, 1944-1972, contains a complete run of issues of the magazine “published for and by the employees of the Warner Gear Division.” The Ralph Satterlee Collection consists of photographs taken by Satterlee as photographer and editor of the Gear-0-Gram. The workers of the Warner Gear Division were chartered as Local 287 of the United Auto Workers in 1937. Their records, 1938-1986, include the founding agreement, constitutions, bylaws, and other documents. Of course, Muncie is synonymous with the Ball Brothers Company and glass jar manufacturing. While the Archives has information on the company and the family the official company records and family papers are housed at Minnetrista Cultural Center in Muncie.

Making a Home The Archives documents this category primarily through family and personal papers. These collections include letters, diaries, scrapbooks, and photographs. The Grace Arthur Papers, 1926-1932, contain a memory book of clippings, programs, dance cards, photographs, and other memorabilia of her family and school life. The H. Earl Browning Family Papers, 1923-198 1, include correspondence, clippings, farm records, scrapbooks, and photographs that document the lives of the members of a Delaware County family, especially during World War 11. The rural home life of area residents from 1926 to 1980 is recorded in the farm records of the Cecil Madill family. Munsyana Homes began in 1938 when the Federal Housing Authority issued money for low-income housing. In 2001, plans to redevelop the housing were initiated, and the Muncie Housing Authority decided to demolish the original structures and build new ones. The Munsyana Homes Redevelopment Proposal Records, 2001, provide documentation on the project, including photographs, maps, housing designs, and historical information on the homes. The Muncie Neighborhood Profile Records, 1993, contain a study and analysis of Muncie neighborhoods conducted by Ball State University students in the Department of Urban Planning. The study includes a housing survey, demographic analysis, and neighborhood perception surveys of residents of eighteen neighborhoods. Delaware County records, especially marriage records, are also useful for research in this area. DOCUMENTING MIDDLETOWN 277

“Training the Young”: Center Township, Delaware County, children on their school bus, 1938. Spurgeon-Greene Collection, Ball State Archives & Special Collections

Training the Young Records in this category include those of local elementary and second- ary schools, Ball State University (which began as a teacher’s college), and social and educational organizations.’*Recently, the Archives undertook a grant-funded project with the Center for Middletown Studies to collect and preserve photographs and other records of a defunct rural Delaware County school. The Center School Historical Collection, 1902-1965, contains issues

‘“or descriptions of the records of organizations such as the Young Women’s Christian Association, see Glen, Straw, Hamm, “Indiana Archives,” 290. For information on other educational groups, see the Stoeckel Archives Web site at www.bsu.edu/library/ collections/archivestoeckel. 278 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

“Using Leisure”: Members of Amvets taking polio victims to a performance of the Mills Brothers Circus, 1953. Spurgeon-Greene Collection, Ball State Archives & Special Collections

of the school newspaper, sports programs, photographs, and other material documenting this school from its one-room origins through consolidation in the 1960s. J. Wayne Storms, a retired education administrator, and his wife edited and printed The Golden Age Survivor newsletter for Muncie’s Burris High School classes from 1937 to 1957. His collection contains the newsletters, correspondence, photographs, and other documentation regarding Burris alumni and teachers, Ball State University, and Muncie. The Muncie Public Schools Records, 1874-1991, include annual reports, com- mencement information, newsletters, personnel directories, reports and proposals, and publications.

Using Leisure The ways that the residents of Muncie spent their leisure time over the years reflect the changing entertainment trends in society. These trends can be seen in the Middletown records of more than fifty clubs and social organizations that sponsored cultural, educational, social, and community- based activities. D 0 CU ME N T I N G MID D LET 0W N 279

The Muncie Chapter of the Kiwanis Club was formed in 1920 and has been deeply involved in community service ever since. The Kiwanis Club Records, 1950- 1984, include annual reports, correspondence, newsletters, clippings, and programs. The records of the Continental Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, which was chartered in 1962, include membership applications, newsletters, and the national organization’smagazine. The Reticule Circle Club was organized around 1915 as a sewing club and to encourage members’ self-improvement and civic activities. Their records, 1912-1997, contain the constitution and bylaws, correspondence, minutes, speeches, yearbooks, scrapbooks, and photographs. The records of the Delaware County Chapter of the International Travel-Study Club, which held its initial meeting on January 13, 1941, include minutes, memorabilia, correspondence, and programs from 1949 to 1995. Music has long been a favorite leisure activity. America’s Hometown Band was formed in 1985 as a not-for-profit organization to provide an opportunity for local professional musicians, educators, and amateurs to perform for their own and the community’s enjoyment. Their records, 1994- 2001, include programs and fliers for various performances, correspondence, and dance committee meeting minutes. The Muncie Symphony Orchestra Collection contains programs, publications, repertoires, sched- ules, histories, photographs, audio recordings, and videotapes. Additional material on the history of the orchestra is located in the Thomas A. Sargent Collection, 1950-1999, which contains research gathered by Sargent for his book The Muncie Symphony Orchestra: Fifty Seasons of Music (1998). The Archives has a wealth of information on local theatres, including programs of plays, as well as material on other types of recreational activities.

Engaging in Religious Practices In Middletown, the Lynds observed that there were “forty-odd build- ings throughout the city for religious ~eremonies.”’~Religion continues to play a powerful role in Muncie, and the Archives holds the records of several of the community’s churches.*ORiverside United Methodist Church began as a Sunday School class in 1900, then organized first as a United Brethren congregation, then as an Evangelical Church in 1946, and finally as a United Methodist Church in 1968. Their records include documentation of the church’s history, the congregation, and church functions. The Unitarian

”Lynd and Lynd, Middletown, 315 ’ODescriptions of many of the church collection were provided in Glen, Straw, Hamm, “Indiana Archives,” 287-88. 280 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

“Engaging in Religious Practices”: High Street United Methodist Church, c. 1927. Richard Greene Collection, Ball State Archives &I Special Collections

Universalist Church, known as the Universalist Church in the nineteenth century, was one of the earliest churches in Delaware County. Their records, 1859-1983, include minutes, annual reports, history files, membership records, Sunday School reports, scrapbooks, and photographs.” The first Jewish congregation in Muncie was formally organized in 1885 and took the name Beth El Congregation in 1891. The Temple Beth El Records, 1983- 1993, include annual reports, board minutes, correspondence, membership directories, newsletters, and reports. The St. Lawrence Circle #166 of the Daughters of Isabella, a Roman Catholic women’s organization, was founded in 1921. Their records include minutes, reports, publications, scrapbooks, and photographs relating to their meetings, conferences, and membership. The Christian Ministries of Delaware County was established in 1945 as the Delaware County Council of Churches and changed its name in 1972. This ecumenical organization

”Unitarian Universalist Church records were described by Nancy Turner in John Glen et al., “Indiana Archives: Indiana in the Civil War Era,” Indiana Magazine of Histoty, 92 (September 1996), 261-62. DOCUMENTING MIDDLETOWN 281

sought to encourage cooperative efforts among local churches. The organization’s records include correspondence, minutes, and reports.

Engaging in Community Activities For the Lynds’ final category, the Archives holds county and municipal government records, papers of politicians and city officials, and records of community organizations. The papers of U. S. Congressman Philip R. Sharp (D-Indiana) opened in 2002 to researchers. Sharp served the Second District (formerly the Tenth District prior to redistricting in 1982) of Indiana for 20 years, arriving in Washington, D.C., as part of the so-called “Watergate Democratic landslide” of 1974. When he decided not to seek another term in 1994, Sharp made arrangements to donate his congressional papers to Ball State University, where he had served as an assistant and associate professor of political science from 1969 to 1974. He also provided funds for political science students to organize his papers in the Archives. His papers include correspondence, reports, legislative issues subject files, town meeting materials, voter profiles, and other documentation that provide evidence of constituency concerns. On the national as well as local and state level, a large portion of the collection concerns energy policy in the 1970s and 1980s as documented in Sharp’s files as chair of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power.’* Among the other political collections in the Archives are the Marshall Hanley Papers, 1937-1969. Hanley served as U. S. District Attorney and as Muncie city attorney during the 1950s and 1960s. His papers include photographs of a visit to Muncie by John E Kennedy during the presidential campaign of 1960. The papers of Muncie Mayor Paul Cooley, 1960-1995, contain correspondence, reports, publications, and other documentation primarily concerning governmental and community issues during Cooley’s terms as mayor from 1967 to 1975. Another collection documents the political career of J. Roberts Dailey. His papers cover the years 1949 to 1991, and contain documentation from his career on the Delaware County Council (1958-1978), as county finance chairman (1963-1978), and in the Indiana House of Representatives (1976-1986), where he also served for a time as Speaker of the House. The Hurley Goodall Papers, 1946-1999, have received some notable additions since they were first described in the IMH.’3 Goodall was one of

3ee www.bsu.edu/library/collections/archives/arcfahilshaprg for a finding aid to the Sharp papers. “Glen, Straw, Hamm, “Indiana Archives,” 292. 282 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

Children at the annual Kiwanis Christmas tree sale, 1957. This photograph and most of the illustrations in this issue come from the Ball State Archives’ photographic collections, which document life in Middletown over the span of the twentieth century. Spurgeon-Green? Collection, Ball State Archives & Special Collections

the first two African American firemen in Muncie (1958-1978), and the first African American to serve on the Muncie Community Schools Board of Education (1970-1978). He was active in many community organizations, including the Muncie Human Rights Commission (1961-1967). Goodall was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives in 1978, served until 1992, and was active in the Indiana Legislative Black Caucus. New additions to his papers include files on his school board involvement and other community activities. Community organization records in the Archives include those of the Human Relations Council of Delaware County, 1962-1984; Muncie Area Chapter of the American Red Cross, 1918-1997; United Way of Delaware County, 1925-1993; Muncie Peace Activities Collection, 1970-1983; and the Muncie Common Council, 1983-1991.

Photographs and the Middletown Digital Archives Many of the collections fit into more than one category, but one area of collections supports all the categories. The Archives’ photograph collections DOCUMENTING MIDDLETOWN 283

are perhaps the materials used most heavily by researchers, students, and the media. Several strong collections, containing over 30,000 photographs in all, document the history of Muncie/Middletown and life in a typical American community for most of the twentieth century. Three that merit particular mention are the Otto Sellers, W. A. Swift, and Spurgeon-Greene collections, which contain over 5,000 images of life in Muncie. These three collections were described in the 1999 issue of the IMH,24but since then, the photographs have been digitized and are available in the Middletown Digital Archives as part of the university’s Digital Library Initiati~e.~~ The Archives recently acquired “The Other Side of Middletown” digital photograph collection, depicting African American life and history in Muncie and Delaware County. Goodall and others, with the support of the Muncie Commission on the Social Status of Black Males and the Community Foundation of Muncie and Delaware County, worked with members of the local African American community, who allowed their personal photographs to be copied and scanned. Over 150 digital photographs in the collection are available as part of the Middletown Digital Archives.26 Many other photographs will be added to the Middletown Digital Archives in the future, including the recently acquired collection of glass negatives of Ms. Emma Pittenger, an early Delaware County ph~tographer.~~ The purpose of these digital archives is to make Middletown resources constantly available for students, faculty, and researchers anywhere in the world. As part of the Digital Library Initiative, the Archives uses a digital content management system that allows for searching, browsing, displaying, downloading, and worldwide access. The vision of the Digital Library Initiative is to provide a centralized, user-focused resource, bringing together the digital collections and activities of the Ball State University Libraries in a cohesive and Web-accessible environment that also provides access to external digital resources to support educational and research processes. The Middletown Digital Archives is one of the first collections to be a part of this initiative.

”Ibid., 295 ”The Middletown Digital Archives Web site is at www.bsu.edu/library/archives; for the Digital Library Initiative, see http://libx.bsu.edu. %Copies of the photographs are on permanent display at Faulkner’s Mortuary, 915 East Willard Street, Muncie. ”The Emma Pittenger glass negatives are part of the collection of the late Richard Ware, a photographer and professor of journalism at Ball State University. The collection was donated by his wife, Sharon Ware. 284 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

The Middletown Digital Archives also holds other types of documentation. An audio recording and transcript of a 1959 speech in Muncie by Eleanor Roosevelt can be heard and read on the website. Audio, video, and photographs of a speech by Robert E Kennedy given at Ball State on April 4, 1968, the day that Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot, are available on the site, as is the story of Kennedy’s visit. A searchable electronic version of the 1988 annotated bibliography on Middletown by David C. Tambo, Dwight W. Hoover, and John D. Hewitt can also be found on the site.28Several of the oral history collections described earlier in this article will be added soon, as will articles and documents.

Promoting Middletown Research The Archives is also using new technologies, especially the Web, to promote the Middletown Studies Collection. For example, “virtual exhibits,” including “75 Years of Middletown,” are available on the Archives’ website. The Archives’ practice has been to develop in-house exhibits and then create a virtual version of each that includes samplings. These virtual exhibits increase the life span of the exhibits and also provide a means to reach a much larger audience.z9 Streaming video is being used to promote the collections and help researchers use them through the “Inside the Archives” video series, also available on the ~ebsite.~~Videos are being prepared on each of the Archives’ collection areas: the first was on rare books and manuscripts, the second on the Middletown Studies Collection. In the videos, the director for the Archives is joined by expert guests to talk about the subject area and the research resources. The video on Middletown features Dr. James Connolly, the current director of the Center for Middletown Studies, and Dr. E. Bruce Geelhoed, the immediate past director and current chair of the Ball State History Department. The next in the series will highlight the Stoeckel Archives. Future videos will deal with specific subject areas in the Middletown Collection and the Stoeckel Archives.

The Future of Middletown Research and Documentation Perhaps evidence of the future of Middletown research and documentation is found in Middletown’s past. The rich and varied subjects that have

’5ee David Tambo, Dwight W. Hoover, and John D. Hewitt, Middletown: An Annotated Bibliography (New York, 1988). ’5ee www.bsu.edu/library/collections/archives/exhibits ’Osee w.bsu.edu/library/collections/archives/inthearchives D 0CUM E N T I N G MID DLET 0W N 285

been explored by researchers and the vast collections that have been put together to serve their needs provide a strong foundation for future exploration. When Ben Wattenberg visited the Archives for the First Measured Century documentary, he asked a question that others have asked: Is Muncie still Middletown? It is the domain of scholars to do the research required to answer that question. Whether Muncie is, or ever was, Middletown may be beside the point. The city and its residents have kept researchers coming back to the soil that the Lynds cultivated seventy-five years ago. The fact that so much historical data exists to cite, examine, interpret, and compare with new data ensures that there will be a future for Middletown. As long as the researchers keep coming, the Archives and Special Collections Research Center will strive to provide the resources needed to aid them in their research. New technology offers the opportunity to expand access for research through the Middletown Digital Archives and the Digital Library Initiative, to reach out and serve the needs of students, faculty, and scholars anytime and anywhere, transforming the world of Middletown research.