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Vol. 25:1 ISSN 0160-8460 April 1997
NHPRC Honors F. Gerald Ham with Distinguished Service Award
F. Gerald Ham is the 1997 winner of the Distinguished Service Award of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. The Commission approved the award at its February meeting for presentation at the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists in Chicago in August.
Since 1989, the Commission has annually presented this award, the purpose of which is to recognize individuals whose careers have demonstrated exemplary accomplishment and extraordinary commitment in forwarding the mission of the NHPRC and individuals who have made notable accomplishments in the fields touched by the Commission's work. Previous recipients have been (in chronological order) Arthur Link, H.G. Jones, Louis Harlan, Robert Warner, Dorothy Porter Wesley, Charles Lee, Carol Bleser, and Mark Hatfield.
Dr. Nicholas C. Burckel, Society of American Archivists (SAA) president and a member of the Commission, has provided the following description of the achievements for which the Commission is honoring Dr. Ham.
Influence
Dr. Ham received his undergraduate degree from Wheaton College and his Ph.D. in history from the University of Kentucky. He began his archival career as Associate Curator of the West Virginia Collections at West Virginia University, then in 1964 moved to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin where he served for over 25 years as the State Archivist and Head of the Archives Division. From 1967 to 1991, he also taught archival courses as adjunct professor in the University of Wisconsin's School of Library and Information Studies.
As a teacher, Dr. Ham has influenced a generation of archivists, many of whom are now leaders in the field. His archival education sequence attracted scores of students to Wisconsin who used the rich collections of the society as the laboratory for their work. His graduates are found in repositories throughout the country and abroad. His extraordinary success in placing his students reflected the high esteem in which his program was held.
As a scholar, Dr. Ham's influence has been even greater. Each profession needs its gurus, those who both challenge standard shibboleths and chart new directions. Dr. Ham's writings have helped define the archival profession. In his widely reprinted address as president of SAA, "The Archival Edge," he urged his colleagues to take a more active role in shaping the archival record of the future to bequeath to posterity a more useful and representative documentary heritage. Subsequent articles further defined strategies for the archivist's role in what Ham coined "the post custodial era." His provocative article on "Managing the Historical Record in the Age of Abundance" won the Society's prestigious Fellows' Posner Prize, while in 1994 he received the coveted Waldo Gifford Leland Prize for "writings of superior excellence and usefulness in the field of archival history, theory, or practice" for his book, Selecting and Appraising Archives and Manuscripts.
Dr. Ham was also a practicing archivist under whose leadership the historical society's statewide archival program became one of the more innovative and highly regarded in the country. In this effort he assiduously utilized the support and resources of the NHPRC.
Finally, Dr. Ham contributed significantly to the development of the profession through his leadership of SAA, where he served as member of the governing Council, Executive Secretary (a position antedating that of full-time director), President, and chairman of key committees, including the Committee on Education and Profession Development at the time it developed the first curricular guidelines for graduate education, and the original Task Force on Goals and Priorities. He was elected Fellow of the Society in 1968.
