In the boughs of Sinclair, you’ll find the records center and archive tucked away in the library housing historical records, old photos, incident reports and much more.
Bob Smith, Sinclair archivist, has been at Sinclair for over six years and said he takes care of terminator case files, old historical clippings about Sinclair, old photos and public safety reports.
“I may have some things that only need to be kept a year or two that will be shredded. I also have records that are permanent,” Smith said. “I have terminated files that go all the way back to the 70s.”
Smith organizes and takes care of nearly 5,000 boxes, along with computer databases.
“I have almost 16,000 listings in my database. Many of the boxes have hundreds of folders in them,” Smith said. “Then I can query that. When I get a request, I can query it to find it quickly.”
Smith said he does a destruction of records about four times a year and it’s typically around 4,000 to 5,000 pounds.
The record center itself, is described by Smith as “bare boned” because it’s less expensive to house records in that sense rather than in a furnished office.
“The reason this is kind of a barebones approach when you talk about a records center, not an archives, the records storage is more expensive in a finished office than it is down here because you have dropped ceilings, carpet and fancy cabinet. Here, it’s bare bones,” Smith said.
Many of the records that Smith organizes and files away “won’t see the light of day again,” according to Smith.
Smith’s favorite part about the archive is the photos. He said he has photos from 1887 from the start of Sinclair’s existence.
“The cool thing is most of my photos are scanned. That’s something that happened in the last five years,” Smith said. “I still have access to the original photos and I can pull those out when I have to.”
Smith said the archive houses all the drawings and renderings of the buildings before and after, along with all the oversized photos that have made appearances throughout Sinclair.
Many of the photos are from the library flood of 1983, according to Smith. He reminisced about the time when a pipe busted and water cascaded overnight from the loading dock area and raged through the library, knocking off many of the books from the library shelves.
“I was actually a student at Wright State University and we came here and helped recover the books,” Smith said. “We had a human chain from the library to the loading dock of people helping recover the books. But about three to four weeks after that the water pipe broke again and water came back in. There’s a famous photograph that [the archive] has of President Ponitz paddling around in a rubber raft.”
On the other side of the library, is the more formal archive that houses historical documents, along with newspaper clippings. Each document is stored in an acid-free archival box in order to preserve the documents, photos and much more. The boxes are placed in formal shelving in order for Smith to stay organized.
Smith said seeing the way things have changed throughout time is something that fascinates him.
“One of the things I like is if you go back and look at photos in the 20s and 30s, that all of the students wore suits and ties and then in the 50s things became a little more casual,” Smith said. “Now you guys wear pajamas to school. It’s really interesting to see how things have changed.”
Gabrielle Sharp
Executive Editor