A mobile library, fictional archives, records preservation, genealogy, and more
This newsletter talks about some new articles I have in the process, my friend's new fictional work, the archives field, libraries, family history news, and so on.
Good afternoon! I hope everyone had a productive week. Happy Valentine’s Day! While the failure of the impeachment of “our” former traitorous leader by the U.S. Senate is a disappointment, I’d like to share some positive news from the past week. I am glad to report that I Love Libraries accepted my article reviewing libraries in the all-ages animated series, Mira, Royal Detective. Similarly, my new post about the proposed closure of the Seattle Federal Records Center in Issues & Advocacy has been tentatively approved for publication by the SAA’s Issues & Advocacy Section. Yesterday, my friend published a new fictional work which goes even further than their last one by directly emphasizing the importance of archives. In the story, my friend notes how the archives was moved above-ground from its previous underground location, dispelling the “basement archives” stereotype, making it more accessible, that this archives has plans and rules in places to safeguard records, along with emergency planning, and possible restrictions. Its cool that the story also features records request forms, a historian in the archives who teaches at the local university and works at the archives, based on experience of the writer in working in an institutional archive, a massive research room lit by natural light, and stacks moved by wheels “resembling those on tall sailing ships.” There’s even a part about why wearing gloves to handle paper documents is not necessary, smashing yet another stereotype, this time of the white-glove-wearing-archivist. Finally, there is a scene where the historian tells one of the protagonists to destroy something rather than have the archives ingest it because “the archives do not and should not be collecting everything.” The story also features a library, of course, because my friend said they couldn’t resist adding it in. With that, I’d like to move onto the next part of my newsletter.
Let’s start with archives. My fellow workers at NSA had some great posts about White House records from the former administration being saved, weak enforcement of the Endangered Species Act shown in FOIA requests, and two posts on February 2 and 10 about the mysterious “Havana syndrome” which sickened CIA and diplomatic personnel in Cuba, the causes of which are still not, yet, known. NARA’s head archivist, David Ferriero noted that you can subscribe to a newsletter about the NARA catalog, while posts on The Unwritten Record, one of NARA’s many WordPress blog sites, focused on various topics: Civil War photographs, genealogical inquiry, and NASA trailblazers. At the same time, archivists on the blog of the Acquisitions & Appraisal Section of the SAA, explained best practices in diversifying one’s collections, while Rachael Woody, a member of the SAA’s Committee on Public Awareness interviewed Elizabeth Stauber after the Hogg Foundation Archives won an Advocacy Award. For my part, I published a post about the value of archives in popular culture. For those who are active on Twitter, or interested in discussions among archivists, I’d recommend joining #archivehour on the same day at 3:00-3:30 PM to discuss “how the archives and records sector can connect across the world.” The same goes for the SNAP (Students and New Archives Professionals)’s snaprt chat on 8 PM EST on 2/25 about digital skills and accessing archival collections online. I’m really excited for it after sadly missing the first discussion of this year by SNAP.
Libraries have recently been in the news, even more than usual. For one, there was a story in Teen Vogue about the interconnection of libraries with policing, calling for a reduction/removal of police from the libraries, with a lively discussion about this on the /r/Libraries subreddit, and criticism of the “Little Free Libraries” concept as self-gratification. I first heard about this on a Twitter thread posted by a person I follow, and made my own contributions. To learn more about this, I’d advise reading the article in DCist that spurned this discussion, the criticism of them in the Journal of Radical Librarianship, and a related BBC article. I have to agree with the criticism, especially that these supposed “libraries” are really book swaps and should be called as such. There is also a lot of chatter about a man named Cameron Williams who worked for the Chattanooga city library and a prominent activist within the Black Lives Matter movement in the city, who was “charged with burning books from the library written by conservative authors” with the library claiming he improperly removed the items. Now, that may sound bad, but consider what he has said in his defense: that the books which had misinformation were already set to be removed from circulation, so he took them, with the library admitting that it was his job to weed out certain books. While we can be like those on /r/books or /r/Libraries, decrying his action, which makes sense, there is a lot of information about this case which is not known, as we still don’t know the full story. If he had removed the books quietly and not burned them, I doubt there would have been an issue. Perhaps he could have done what they did in Futurama and flushed them down the toilet instead! Ha ha. Ok, not really, but that show does make a point about awful books being flushed down the sewers. On a related topic, Hack Library School came through this week with articles about the inherent ableism of being productive and generalizing. Additionally, there were a myriad of posts on the Library Congress’s blogs. These posts focused on Black chemists, early archaeology, Black women, Black people and the Gold Rush, and a Nicaraguan poet named Rubén Darío. In other library news, the School Library Journal had an article about how librarians help students understand biased science literacy, Publishers Weekly predicted that this year will be “pivotal” for digital content in libraries, Book Riot stated that school librarians are supporting virtual learning, and I published a post about libraries in The Simpsons.
I’ll conclude this newsletter with a mention of some recent genealogy-related posts and articles about related subjects. When it came to family history, the blog The Hidden Branch reblogged a post about the tragedy in Australia’s Yuin Reef and began a new series of blog posts interviewing “people who were young (early teens to early 20s) genealogists from different decades.” Pauleen Cass, an Australian genealogist, had two interesting posts about women and work and another about researching family history with books. I think the latter is even more vital than the former, although both are fascinating. I’d like to point to my newest family history post which reprints a family history I wrote in 2017 where I try to solve the enigma of Michael’s half-brother Johann Hermann. In closing, I recently read a story about how online learning can threaten the privacy of students (no surprise there), along with posts guessing how the Founders would feel about the impeachment of the former president, the YouTube experience, and remembrances of a Maryland continental soldier.
If you made it this far and read the whole newsletter, then you should give yourself a pat on the back. Thanks. Happy Valentine’s Day to you all:
- Burkely