Flickr / Assignment 5

I admire the courage and determination of urban explorers, especially those who bravely go into the abandoned mental hospitals that I find most fascinating.  The Athens State Hospital in Athens, Ohio is an excellent example.  I have visited the hospital and taken many photos of my own that focus on the more wistful elements still visible: curtains rustled by a breeze through a broken window; a hallway; a room that contains a gurney and yellowed newspapers.  The one thing that separates me from real urban explorers, however, is the fact that I've never been inside.  I envy their dedication to photographing equipment, furniture, signage and other reminders that this was once a vibrant, self-sustaining hospital.

The bottom line is that I had no idea how many urban explorers had uploaded their hard won photographs for the enjoyment of people like me.  I only had to search "everyone's uploads" for "Athens State Hospital" to find exactly what I was looking for.  The results were pages and pages of photos of the inside of the hospital looking out, which is precisely the perspective I have never been able to get.  Clearly, this tag is the most popular.  I also tried searching for "Athens Asylum," which brought up many of the same interior pictures and quite a few of the exterior of the buildings.

The hospital was known by many names from 1874 to 1993, so I tried a couple of other searches: "Athens Lunatic Asylum" (1872-1876), which brought up photos from a very serious urban explorer who told the story of playing cat and mouse with the cops after breaking into the TB ward to get some interesting shots with a decaying piano.  This person clearly felt for the children who died in this building; her photos capture the children's area like no others I've seen.  Next, I tried "Southeastern Ohio Mental Health Center" (1968-1969).  There wasn't even a single page of exterior results; evidently this tag is much less widely known.

My Flickr ID is Kristen_Hallows, and the gallery name is Athens State Hospital.  This gallery is, in my opinion, a selection of some of the most poignant photographs generously uploaded by urban explorers to Flickr.  Many of them show the view from the inside of many of the windows I've captured from the outside.  The decay, of course, is part of the appeal of urban exploration; these photos can make you feel like you're getting an unauthorized glimpse inside a time capsule.

Overall, I'm grateful for and impressed by Flickr.  I have found a resource that allows me to satisfy at least part of my curiosity, and these photos are the reason urban explorers do what they do; I imagine that it's also very gratifying for them to upload the pictures they risked their safety to obtain.  This is also a good example of the effectiveness of tagging.  I did not have to search by all names of the hospital in order to find what I was seeking; all I had to do was search for one, which is the most popular: Athens State Hospital.  If I wanted to do a more academic, thorough search, I could go through all names ever given to the hospital; but I would say that 90 percent of my information need was met by entering that first search term, which is remarkable.  

Information Awareness Report / Assignment 4

For this assignment, I started with Ohio's online reference service, KnowItNow24x7.  When I started the chat session, I entered the following question:

"Hello! Id like to know if any former patients or staff of the Athens State Hospital have written about their experiences at the hospital (published or unpublished)."

I spoke with two librarians; one was ending his or her shift, and the next one was coming on duty.  The first librarian directed me to Chapter 22 of Dr. Cordingley's book, which I remembered finding long ago as described in the previous post.  This librarian also provided a link to the Ohio American Local History Network (ALHN), which I had never found before.  The next librarian offered to do some research and email me the results.  She found a number of resources at the State Library of Ohio, and she also suggested the Chronicling America historic newspaper digitization effort by the Library of Congress.  I remember wanting to visit this site for genealogical purposes, so I am glad she reminded me about it.  She suggested searching for "Athens asylum," and I would also try other combinations of search terms, such as "Athens State Hospital" and the other names the hospital had over the years.

Next, I posed my question to a librarian on Kent State University's "Ask a Librarian" page.  I emailed my question and got a quick response by email from someone with the title of assistant professor.  He encouraged me to contact the Ohio University Special Collections and Archives Department.  He pointed out that without specific names, it would be difficult to determine who has published.  He mentioned that OU has a file on Athens, which can be found here.  He also observed that my question is an interesting one, and he said he would continue to search, but for a quicker response, he suggested contacting OU.

This experience is positive, of course, because it's like having a team of experts to work on your question.  In a way, it's a lot like hiring a professional genealogist.  Having an expert do the work is convenient, but doing the research yourself can be much more rewarding.  I personally love KnowItNow, and I took it as a compliment that the librarians thought my question was interesting.  I hope to be in their place one day providing services to people in search of information.

I realize that each time you use services such as these, you can get a different librarian, which adds an element of uncertainty to the response you will receive.  This could be positive or negative depending on your question and the urgency of your information need.  My personal opinion after this particular experience is that the KnowItNow librarians at the state library were willing to put forth more effort to find an answer.  I am not saying that the Kent State librarian was not helpful; I am saying that the state librarian who emailed me with the results of her search clearly put more time and effort into the question.  She did not point out that more specific information was needed; she did what she could with the information I had provided.  You could say she did more with less.  One of the more significant takeaways from this assignment is that it pays to ask as many librarians as possible.  Combined with your own research, you should be able to find more than a few decent answers to your question! 

Information Awareness Report / Assignment 3

Mental hospitals in the United States and the societal and economic factors that influenced them in the 19th and 20th centuries are of intense interest to me.  I am particularly interested in Athens State Hospital in Athens, Ohio.  In my research, I have found numerous resources about the hospital and its history; however, I have encountered virtually no personal accounts.  This is a significant gap in my knowledge as illustrated by Dr. Brenda Dervin's sense-making model.  I want to know if any former staff or patients have written about their experiences at the hospital (published or unpublished) at any point in its 119 year history (1874-1993).

I would normally begin a search like this online.  I would start with Google Books and WorldCat.  But I know from past experience that I will find plenty of theses and dissertations, annual reports, and similar documents but almost no personal accounts.  I say "almost no" because I vaguely remember coming across a chapter from a book that briefly described what it was like for a child of one of the hospital's doctors growing up on the grounds of the hospital.  This dearth of personal accounts can be expected given the mixed feelings most state hospitals eventually closed amongst and any misunderstanding of or stigma toward mental illness.

This time, I decided to contact historians and people with access to hospital records at the Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections at the Ohio University Libraries (Ohio University purchased the hospital and the surrounding land after it closed).  

I am also a genealogist who had looked into the possibility of an ancestor being hospitalized there.  At that time, I spoke with Douglas McCabe, Curator of Manuscripts, who was interviewed in a documentary about Athens State Hospital.  To find others like him, I Googled "Athens State Hospital historians."  One of the top three results was a page discussing Walter Freeman (pioneer lobotomist in the US), who visited Athens State Hospital more times than any other hospital in Ohio.  From this page, I gathered the names of two employees who were there in the 1950s: Geneva Riley, RN and Wolfhard Baumgaertel, MD but no historians exactly.

The author of this site, Gary Cordingley, MD, PhD, must have a similar interest in Athens State Hospital.  The third Google result was another page from his site that provides the table of contents from his book, Stories of Medicine in Athens County, Ohio, an anthology compiled and edited by Dr. Cordingley.  This book is the closest example of what I'm seeking that I have found so far; multiple chapters in this book feature personal accounts of people who spent time at the hospital, such as children of doctors who grew up on the grounds, nurses, and superintendents.  (This is the page I mentioned earlier as being a vague memory!)

Remaining Google results were pages that happen to include the individual words in my search.  None mention historians by name, much less contact information.  I decided to begin with an email to Douglas McCabe, who said that he is not personally aware of any published or unpublished accounts by patients or staff.  He directed me to RuthAnn Althaus with the College of Health Sciences and Professions at Ohio University.  Unfortunately, Dr. Althaus was not aware of any personal accounts, either.

I used the live chat feature on the Ohio University Libraries Web site to present my question to a librarian: "I'm wondering if you're aware of any former staff or patients of the Athens State Hospital who have written a book about their experiences there."  S/he (I do not know the name or gender of the librarian) did not know offhand, but s/he confirmed that Douglas McCabe is the one to ask.  S/he also directed me to Katherine Ziff, who has recently completed a book about the early history of the hospital, a continuation of her doctoral dissertation on Athens State Hospital.  The librarian provided me with Dr. Ziff's blog, which offers no way to contact her; however, a Google search of her name told me that she is on Facebook and Twitter.  So I decided to send her my question via Facebook.

After sending Dr. Ziff a message on Facebook, I remembered that not everyone prefers to communicate via Facebook, so I thought that maybe I should have asked the librarian I chatted with previously for another contact method.  I went back to the Ohio University Libraries Web site and initiated another chat session with a different librarian.  This person gave me the phone number of Athens City Schools (Dr. Ziff is an employee) and also the number listed in the phone book for her (I never considered looking her up in the phone book!).

Given my own research and the responses from knowledgeable people such as Mr. McCabe and Dr. Althaus, it appears that there are very few extant personal accounts of former staff or patients at Athens State Hospital.  This is somewhat difficult to believe since the hospital was in operation for well over a century and was a major part of the community.  I requested Dr. Cordingley's anthology via interlibrary loan, and I look forward to reading it.  This assignment gave me a reason to take a closer look at his Web site, which helped me to realize that his book offers much more than the chapter on Dr. Freeman that I had a vague memory of finding online in the past.

When I called Athens City Schools, I was given Dr. Ziff's email address, but I was cautioned that she does not return until August 9.  Being someone who works and attends classes year round, I never realized that Dr. Ziff probably does not work over the summer.  I will email her, but I may not receive a response before this assignment is due.  That is just fine, though, because this information need is continual in nature; I do not know if it will ever be complete.  Too many lives over too many decades were impacted by Athens State Hospital for there not to be the personal accounts I have been seeking.

My information search has come to a tentative end.  While the query itself did not change or evolve, my search has closely resembled Dr. Marcia Bates' "berrypicking" information retrieval model.  As I moved along, I evaluated each piece of information before proceeding, and I was willing to go wherever the new pieces of information would direct me.  Further, in my research, I encountered data that was presented and organized as information, which I was able to transform into knowledge, which could become wisdom; this progression is visualized in Nathan Shedroff's Overview of Understanding.  As stated earlier, the hospital may be too complex a subject for an information search to be over at any point in time, but this most recent search has been satisfying, and after I read Dr. Cordingley's book and Dr. Ziff's dissertation (and her book, which will be published in 2012), I may begin the search again.