Over 2,000 Iowans have signed onto a petition urging state administrators to reconsider closing the State Historical Research Center in Iowa City.

The Save Iowa History coalition started the petition after the State Historical Society of Iowa (SHSI) announced the closure of the facility on June 17.

The decision was made without any discussions with the public or the SHSI board.

In a June 25 SHSI board meeting, Adam Steen, director of the Iowa Department of Administrative Services, responded to a public comment informing them that it was a team decision to close the building, and “nothing technically requires [public input.]”

The building has only been accessible by appointment since July 9 and will officially close on December 30.

Mary Bennett, a retired special collections coordinator who worked for the center for 50 years, said the library has always been a resource unlike any other.

“This library is like the Library of Congress for Iowa,” she said. “Since 1857, we have scoured the universe for everything we could find about Iowa. It would be very hard for me to summarize how extensive, comprehensive, and cohesive the collections are.”

Steen said they’re approaching the building like a business, and the imbalance of more money going out than coming in is threatening its sustainability.

“What we found was there was a lot of money and a lot of things being spent that we didn’t have money coming in to cover,” Steen said. “That creates a very large problem for the sustainability of any organization, so we are doing the best we can now to get to a spot where this building does not go away.”

Bennett said, when looking at the overall state government budget, “we hardly cost anything.”

Of its $8.95 billion general fund appropriation for fiscal year 2025, the state of Iowa allocated just $4.77 million to historical resources.

“The total benefits are nothing compared to the consequences,” Bennett said. “We never look at monetary value—we always look at historical and intrinsic value. What price are you going to put on aspects of Iowa history?”

Bennett argues the center is being shut down too hastily, which she said will jeopardize the success of the transition.

In a letter to Adam Steen, John R. Dichtl, president and CEO of the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH), warns Steen that there hasn’t been a sufficient amount of time planned regarding the closure.

“The rushed timeline puts at risk some of Iowa’s most important historical items—things like the 160-year-old Civil War hymnal that gave comfort to our country’s brave soldiers and even an irreplaceable autographed baseball card featuring the legendary Bob Feller,” the letter reads. “A hurried process and its proposed outcome could seriously compromise SHSI’s ability to serve and engage all Iowans in exploring their shared history.”

During the June 26 SHSI board meeting, State Archivist Tony Jahn said he and his team are still working out the details of what is to happen to the collections.

“Ultimately, we’re trying to do what’s best for Iowa. We’re trying to do what’s best for the communities, but we want to make sure the collections endure because really that’s what it’s all about in the end — it’s about making sure the collections are preserved and accessible,” he said.

40 percent of the collection will be moved to the Des Moines research center, while the remainder is disbursed throughout Eastern Iowa or dismantled.

Although the public is allowed to conduct research at the center until December 30, items will start to be moved to Des Moines and other locations mid-September and early October.

Bennett shared that, once items are moved to Des Moines, minimal staffing will prevent the online catalog from being up to date.

“Most of the things in Iowa City are not in that catalog, so now we will not know what’s in the collection,” she said. “What are they going to do with it if they don’t even know what’s in the collection?”

House File 1039, approved by Governor Kim Reynolds on June 11, sets aside $5 million to “revamp the archival storage shelving units of the State Historical building in Des Moines.”

The project is not scheduled for completion until 2028, and Bennett worries the collections from Iowa City will live in the basement until then.

“It probably won’t be retrievable, and the access tools won’t exist, which makes me skeptical about what comes next,” she said.

Over the years, Bennett has seen thousands of students from all over the state utilize the center, but it doesn’t stop there, as the center is an alternative classroom for adults as well.

Undergraduate and graduate students and faculty at the University of Iowa heavily rely on the library for coursework and research, and its closure would be a huge loss, said Colin Gordon, chair of the University of Iowa Department of History.

“The way a colleague of mine often puts it is ‘The archive is our laboratory,’” Gordon said. “We can teach out of the textbook for students, but it’s much more meaningful for them to discover it themselves.”

All history majors are required to take a workshop methods course, which teaches them how to read archival and historical sources.

Further down the line, honors students and master’s students rely on locally available sources to write their theses, as they oftentimes cannot raise the funds to research off-site.

“In all those respects, it’s a really important resource for us,” Gordon said.

While Gordon supports digitizing and cataloging historical documents in order to make research more accessible, he worries about the loss of access to physical documents and artifacts as well.

“Most historians would say you lose something when you’re not reading it in its original content,” he said. “When it’s digitized and you’re asking AI to zero in on documents, you don’t get a sense of their larger context.”

As a result of the upcoming closure, Save Iowa History has rallied together and is asking the state to guarantee accessibility to physical records, maintain the SHSI building in Iowa City, provide more funding to the library, allow more public input for future budget-making and decision processes, and honor SHSI’s legal, ethical, and fiducial responsibilities while making decisions.

“You cannot have exhibits in a museum, you cannot have historic preservation projects, you cannot write history books unless you have evidence to base all those studies on,” Bennett said. “They’re foolish not to realize everything flows from the library and archives.”