(Radio Iowa) – Iowa historians are being asked to sign a petition to prevent administrators from closing one of the State Historical Society’s facilities. The Department of Administrative Services plans to shut down the Centennial Building in Iowa City because of an 800-thousand dollar budget shortfall. The petition was started by Mary Bennett, a retired special collections coordinator with the State Historical Society. She says no other facility in Iowa can take the archives if the Iowa City center closes.

“As an employee, I entered into deeds of gifts with people and made promises on behalf of the state that we would take care of their treasures and that we valued them, and so they gave them up,” Bennett says, “and then now I feel like that trust has been violated.” Bennett says administrators made the decision to downsize the State Historical Society without public input. She says state administrators are desecrating the archives she worked for almost five decades of her life to build.

“If you think about taxpayers paying 168 years to make sure this treasure was kept safe and sound and intact,” Bennett says, “and then now for, as I said in the board meeting, it is a joke that for less than a million dollars, you’re going to take the thing down.”

She says the Des Moines facility can only take 40 percent of Iowa City’s collection. The rest would be privatized, divvied out or destroyed. The center is scheduled to fully close next year.