Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/415

Rh relations. That a commonwealth may really gain large results from an efficient corps of workers in history, there must not only be a library equipped to meet the needs of research, but there must also be such organization of those using the materials of history that the advantage of association in suggestion, in stimulation, and in emulation may be secured. A State historical society as the center of State historical activities must, therefore, be provided with a library of research, and must maintain meetings from which the largest benefits of association are derived.

That largest source of historical records, the legislative and administrative archives of the commonwealth, comes in for special care from a State historical society. This large mass of material should be given the form that will make it most serviceable for the purposes for which it was created. State publications need the supervision of the best historical acumen that they may tell most effectively all that should be recorded. The archives for the past are generally so bad, so defective, and so lacking that rehabilitation and reprinting are necessary. An important and essential part of the operations of a State historical society will have to do with these archives. This responsibility for the supervision of the archives of the State seems to be represented by quite a movement among the State historical societies of the South.

In identifying historic sites and stimulating local communities to mark them and beautify them a historical society is performing an important service in rendering more hallowed, richer in association and more stimulating to the imagination the land upon' which a people dwells.

A still more intimate relation to the life of a commonwealth seems, in this scientific and dynamic age, to belong to the state historical society. That a State may understand accurately and closely and handle skilfully and scientifically its problems of progress a state historical