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  I want to know if any former staff or patients have written about their experiences at the hospital (published or unpublished) at any point in its 119 year history (1874-1993).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.