The city's economy has also expanded into electronics and medical instruments. Indianapolis still has heavy industries, however, and SIA conferees will tour some of them, along with other representative sites in Indianapolis and canals and limestone quarries in southern Indiana. Significant physical remains of the city's and state's industrial heritage still exist, but in many cases they must be actively sought and documented by those with that particular interest. As a result of a 1934 agreement among the National Park Service, the Library of Congress , and the American Institute of Architects , Congress in 1935 passed the Historic Sites and Buildings Act. The HABS program has documented historic houses and public buildings that tend to spring to the average American's mind as being significant, and the ones that are earmarked for visits on family vacations.
HAER documentation includes measured drawings, photographs, and text.
One hundred sites is a respectable representation for Indiana to have in HAER, being one- fiftieth of the total for the fifty states, but given Indiana's rich industrial heritage, it should be a much larger number. Industrial processes interest IAers as much as the sites. Descriptions of processes flesh out those of the physical remains and put a human face on them. We must understand why sites were built, how they were used, how people did work there, and how the surrounding physical and economic environments were affected. The problem with documenting processes is, however, that they keep changing.