Selected Papers of Robert C. Binkley: Edited With a Biographical Sketch and a Bibliography (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Selected Papers of Robert C. Binkley: Edited...)
Excerpt from Selected Papers of Robert C. Binkley: Edited With a Biographical Sketch and a Bibliography
Binkley's concern for true and full-bodied history led him far in the promotion of the use of sources. He took up and pushed with great Vigor the work of leadership in the Joint Committee on Materials for Research. Microfilm, when he be came interested in it, was a means of recording endorsements on checks; when he left it, it was one of the accepted tools of scholarship. He even pursued relentlessly the solution of the problems of microfilm cameras and readers, showing in this an inventive and practical mind. Other methods for the reproduc tion of the materials of scholarship were studied by him with intense and prolonged concentration, and he became the author of a pioneering book on the subject, one which I believe has not yet been superseded.
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Robert Cedric Binkley was an American historian and librarian. He was an acting professor of modern European history at Western Reserve University.
Background
Robert Binkley was born on December 10, 1897, in Mannheim, Pennsylvania, United States, of German stock, the first son and second of eleven children of Christian Kreider and Mary Engle (Barr) Binkley. His father, who came of a Mennonite family of small means, was an editor and writer.
Education
Young Binkley attended public schools in Santa Clara County and went on to Stanford University. He completed his B. A. degree in 1922 and a Ph. D. in 1927, writing as his dissertation "The Reaction of European Opinion to the Statesmanship of Woodrow Wilson. "
Career
In June 1917, after two years in college, Robert enlisted in the United States Army Ambulance Service and served in France from January 1918 to the end of the first World War. In July 1919, after his discharge from the army, Binkley joined Professors Ephraim D. Adams and Ralph H. Lutz of Stanford in collecting research materials for the Hoover Library on War, Revolution, and Peace. On returning to his studies at Stanford in 1920, he served as a reference librarian at the Hoover Library (1922 - 1927), contributing greatly to its development. After receiving his doctorate Binkley served for two years as an instructor at New York University. In 1929 he went to Smith College as an associate professor and in 1930 to Western Reserve University as acting professor of modern European history, eventually becoming head of the department of history at the university's Flora Stone Mather College.
Binkley's interest in history stemmed from his participation in the first World War, the causes and significance of which were of philosophic concern to him, and from his part in collecting documentation relating to the war and the peace that followed. He came into prominence in the historical profession with his studies on the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, on which he wrote three major articles.
While at the Hoover Library Binkley became interested in problems raised by the perishable nature of paper, which he discussed at the First World Congress of Libraries and Bibliography in Rome in June 1929, and in the possibilities of microfilming research materials. Because of his interest in such matters he was appointed head in 1930 (chairman after 1932) of the Joint Committee on Materials for Research of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council. In this capacity he studied all phases of reproducing, evaluating, describing, and preserving research materials. In his manual, Methods of Reproducing Research Materials, he showed how limited editions of scholarly publications could be produced by employing various techniques, ranging from those suitable for making single copies to those designed for production of copies in quantity.
During the depression of the 1930's his office became the point from which stimulus was given to various government projects for the survey of research materials. In his own city, he initiated the project for compiling the Annals of Cleveland, a digest of the newspapers of that city. He later helped to plan several state surveys of historical materials under the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and was chief mentor to the director of the nationwide Historical Records Survey of the Works Projects Administration.
Before the outbreak of the second World War he helped to develop projects for microfilming valuable manuscript and other library resources of Europe that might be endangered in the event of hostilities. Binkley's interest in various social problems is reflected in his book What is Right with Marriage, written in collaboration with his wife in 1929, and in his Responsible Drinking (1930). His essential characteristics were his originality, which led him to propound many ideas that he let others test and apply; his enthusiasm for work and play; and his simplicity and honesty in social relations. He died of lung cancer at Lakeside Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, after an illness of a few weeks, and was buried in that city.