A year after she finished her research on The Ridges, author Katherine Ziff returned to Alden Library to explain how she assembled her published dissertation, Asylum on the Hill: History of a Healing Landscape.
Ziff discussed the process of writing a book using Ohio University’s Archives and Special Collections, located in Alden, on Tuesday night.
The book, which served as her dissertation for her doctorate in counseling from OU, focuses on the first 20 years of the Athens Lunatic Asylum, housed in the main structure at The Ridges.
Drawing from her education in sociology, counseling and public policy, Ziff researched the architecture of the building and grounds, patients, staff and methods in order to depict how Athens County addressed mental health in the late 19th century.
“All those strings of education came together here with this book,” Ziff said.
Ziff’s presentation focused on how she sifted through archived documents in order to find annual reports from the Ohio Department of Mental Health and patient commitment documents. OU’s Archives served as one of her primary sources.
“You ask one or two questions and all roads lead to (Archives and Special Collections),” Ziff said.
Douglas McCabe, curator of manuscripts for Archives and Special Collections, served as the moderator for the discussion because of the assistance he offered Ziff in her research.
“(Ziff’s research) was new info for me too, so it was exciting for me to pass it along,” McCabe said.
As part of her research, Ziff had to gain access to the documents of committed patients, which are blocked by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act unless the person attempting to gain access is a relative or a researcher.
Ziff used information from committed patient documents in her book, but she was unable to release names of patients.
“I read all the (commitment documents) for people from Athens and then expanded and read a thousand of other documents,” Ziff said.
Because OU’s library was such an important source in Ziff’s research, Dean of OU Libraries Scott Seaman had planned this library speech more than six months ago, but because of scheduling conflicts, this was the first time available for the talk, which was a part of the Authors @ Alden series.
In addition, this was the first time that a lecture has been live-streamed for guests who could not attend, later to be put into Alden’s collection.
“It’s another way of building library collections of things that are really unique to Athens,” Seaman said.
dk123111@ohiou.edu
