Records Management History

Part 1:    The Early Days: UC’s Predecessor Schools

Part 2:    Documenting A University

“I therefore give, devise and bequeath to The City Of Cincinnati, and to its successors, for the purpose of building, establishing and maintaining as soon as practicable, after my decease, two Colleges for the education of white Boys and Girls, all the following real and personal estate, In Trust Forever, to wit:”

So says the single record that started it all, the twenty-one page Will of Charles McMicken, signed by McMicken and his witnesses on September 22, 1855 and filed in the probate court at Philadelphia. After McMicken’s death on March 30, 1858, the will was presented on April 2 and probated on June 10 in the probate court of Cincinnati, Ohio.

The 1859 City ordinance that gave Cincinnati the entitlement to act on McMicken’s will and establish “The McMicken University of Cincinnati” outlined the first requirements for records creation and management for the University. It ordered that the board of directors of the University:

shall cause a full record of their acts and proceedings, and accounts of the property and funds of the estate, and of receipts, disbursements, use and management thereof; also, full and exact statements of the number of Professors and others employed, and pupils enrolled as attending in said University, to be carefully kept in proper books…

Those books are in the UC Archives & Rare Books Library today.

McMicken’s estate was in litigation for several years and was not settled until after the Civil War. The University of Cincinnati was established in 1870. The 1871 Bylaws of the Cincinnati University Board of Directors defined the office of Clerk and provided for the recording of important information, stating:

It shall be the duty of the Clerk to attend and keep an accurate and complete journal of the proceedings at every meeting of the Directors, with marginal notes, and an index of every matter transacted; to keep regular account books by double entry, in which all the funds, accounts, receipts, expenditures, and financial matters of the University shall be entered, and posted up in a proper and business-like manner.. [and] …to file and preserve all bills, accounts, claims, reports and correspondence, or other papers of the Board…

T.B. Disney was the first Clerk of the Board of the University of Cincinnati to take on this responsibility.

As the neighborhood around the original McMicken property changed into a more industrial area, and as the University continued to grow, the administrators initiated plans to move the university to an environmentally-friendly area with room to expand. McMicken’s will again became a record of discussion—and dissension. As the will excerpt quoted above states, McMicken gave his real and personal estate to the city for the purpose of establishing a college and McMicken’s heirs took this very literally, claiming that an attempt by the University to physically move operations would result in forfeiture of the bequest. The Circuit Court of Hamilton County and the Supreme Court of Ohio both disagreed. In a series of cases that began in 1890 and finally concluded in 1893 with the final appeal, the courts concluded that the University had every right to build on a new property in Burnet Woods. The full record of briefs and decisions in the cases is available in the University Archives. Plans went forth in 1894 with the issuance of “Instructions for Architects in Preparing Plans for the New University Buildings to be Erected in Burnet Woods Park in the City of Cincinnati”

Student Academic Records and Registration

While the Board of Directors (as the Board of Trustees was known then) concerned themselves with organizational and financial records, the academic departments took responsibility for documenting student information. As consistent retention requirements were not applied to university records until the 1970s, fewer records of other types have survived, but student records (as well as board records) were considered permanent. A study of the development of records creation, filing systems and equipment in the academic areas gives us a good idea of how records management as a whole progressed across the university.

The 1893 Rules Adopted by the Faculty of the Academic Department direct several records creation and maintenance activities, specifying what data was to be collected and to whom it was to be disseminated. The Registrar was responsible for maintaining enrollment statistics, classifications of students, attendance, and student progress. The use of pre-printed forms, or “blanks” as they are termed in the Rules, demonstrates the desire to collect uniform data. Blanks were used for registration, entrance exams, matriculation, grade reporting, and student transcripts.

As with most early records, bound journals were used to record student registrations and academic progress. The earliest registration records for the University of Cincinnati in the University Archives are from 1879 for the art and academic departments. Each record was handwritten twice on a perforated registration blank and a copy was detached and given to the student. While bound journals keep records securely together and virtually eliminate lost documents, indexing is required to efficiently locate and use a specific record. The early student records of the University are not indexed, requiring a page-by-page search of the journals to find a record.

Loose papers were even bound to create a single, complete record. Post-bound (think loose-leaf) journals were used later. These allowed journals to be unbound and new records inserted in sequence. Similar types of systems were used such as the Engineering academic recordkeeping system for 1935-1945 shown on the cover. This system, known as a visible file, allowed records to be added, moved, and removed and provided a full visual picture of all records in the system. Card files were a popular means of managing student records and several other types of information into the 1960s.

The earliest known file cabinet was displayed by the Library Bureau at an exhibit of the 1893 Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. Globe-Wernicke of Cincinnati was one of the first companies to manufacture file cabinets, which were then made of wood. Nevertheless, file cabinets were slow to catch on at UC and journals were used to create and store records into the twentieth century. While journals and cards remained the format of choice for student records, contact information, indexes, vendor files, and financial records, there is evidence that lateral filing was employed around the 1920s. Subject files, correspondence and reports from that time period show no evidence of folding, spindling, rolling or binding, suggesting that they were filed in cabinets or possibly in flat drawers.

Handwritten records were the norm into the twentieth century. In 1909 typewritten Board of Directors minutes began to appear but were still interspersed with the handwritten ones. The May 1910 meeting was the first to be completely typewritten. Through the years, the typewriter became more popular but handwritten records never went away. Student information cards for the College of Music and Conservatory of Music were entirely handwritten as late as 1962, when those schools became part of UC.

The 1949 Cincinnatian reveals a lack of love for records creation during the registration process: “That morning we suffered the torture of endless waiting lines, only to be faced with the ordeal of filling out those vast ‘last-name-first’ registration blanks.”

In fact, records creation could still be an arduous task all around. However things were changing. Mimeographs and photocopiers allowed for easier duplication and typewriters continued to make records creation faster and more efficient. But a new tool was on the horizon and with  the introduction of the computer came a flood of new records and information to manage.

 

Part 3:    Automation & Records Management