2021 Citizen Archivist Award Recipient

The Ohio Historical Records Advisory Board (OHRAB) is proud to announce that Barbara Matthies of the Clark County Historical Society at the Heritage Center, is the winner of the 2021 OHRAB Citizen Archivist Award.

The OHRAB Citizen Archivist Award honors volunteers in Ohio’s archives who work long hours, unpaid and often unacknowledged, answering reference requests, processing collections, and indexing historic records. This award recognizes a volunteer in an Ohio archives who best exemplifies the dedication and hard work volunteers–our citizen archivists–contribute to Ohio’s archives each day.

Barbara Matthies volunteers at the Clark County Historical Society at the Heritage Center. After many years as a linguistics professor at Iowa State, Barbara returned to the Springfield area to be closer to family and contacted the Clark County Historical Society about volunteering. For nearly a decade she has been scanning the Society’s photograph collections. Thanks to Barbara, the society has gone from having very few photographs scanned to now having most of its enormous photographic collection imaged and indexed. Barbara has donated over 2,000 hours to making the Clark County Historical Society’s photographic collections accessible to staff, volunteers, and the public.

For more information about Barbara and her accomplishments, please see the attached announcement.

OHRAB congratulates Barbara and thanks her for her dedication to the history of Ohio!