Archives, libraries reopening, and more!
This newsletter covers various topics, from archives to libraries, the Internet Archive to Black Lives Matter, COVID-19 to flintlock muskets. Enjoy!
Hello everyone! I hope you all had a great week. This week’s newsletter will focus on a number of different topics in the archival and library fields.
I’d like to start with news in the archives field. On June 17, Founders Online celebrated its seventh anniversary, a NARA site that allows users to search the writings of Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison. So, that’s exciting! On the flip side, the Internet Archive is fighting against a lawsuit by publishers, ending its National Emergency Library early, and has put together a post offering suggestions for how to support them. You know from my previous newsletters that I have stridently supported the Internet Archive. But even if you don’t support their emergency library, due to concerns over copyright, I do think that the Internet Archive should be supported. Its loss would mean that the internet would be forever at a loss for all the information archived on their servers of sites which often don’t exist anymore. Now, I think that the publishers and the Internet Archive will come to some agreement, as I believe that the publishers only want concessions, but we will see what happens. On a more positive note, I’d like to highlight an interview with the head of the National Comedy Center Archives Laura Laplaca, and an interview with a vault manager of a Los Angeles company, Ilana Short, were both very interesting. The same can be said of NARA’s 19th Amendment Calendar, and the post about a U.S. car on Soviet roads in 1972, focusing on U.S. diplomats in the USSR that year.
There have been a number of articles about how COVID is affecting the opening of libraries, although there haven’t been corresponding ones for archives. Some talked about the cautious plans of re-opening, and others talked about how furloughs in this time and place are affecting libraries. At the same time, Hack Library School had three great articles, one about librarian allies to Black Lives Matter, diversity and neutrality in libraries, and the right to information. Finally, I also read about New York City’s first Puerto Rican Librarian, Pura Belpré. Its a post from a couple years ago, but it was very fascinating and definitely worth a read.
The articles about authors sharing their advances to expose racial disparities, open access images and museums, a genealogy tool called genograms, the importance of flintlock muskets in past U.S. history, and how COVID is affecting the history field, from the director of the American Historical Association. All of these articles get an honorable mention in this newsletter.
I hope you all have a great weekend and week ahead.
- Burkely