Archivist labor and "discovery"
DNA, family trees, and acknowledging the role of archives in research
Hello everyone and welcome to my new subscribers!
I wrote a short post late last week, following up on some conversations on Twitter about the issue of slavery and the Packard family, finding some who directly (or indirectly) participated in slavery and others who actively fought it. Of course, I wrote this because all deceased Packards are, in some way, my ancestors, due to my relation to the English immigrant, Samuel Packard, who landed in Massachusetts in 1638. So, that was a fun post to write. I also recommend you look at, if you are interested, my e-books on U.S. Revolutionary War history.
Anyway, here’s some articles I read this week that I’d like to share with all of you. If there’s any articles you’d like me to include for next week’s newsletter, let me know.
A Twitter moment pulling together recent thoughts on a SNAP (Students and New Archives Professionals) discussion on the “invisible labor” of archivists. I say “invisible” because it can be perceived that way by some even though it is obviously not invisible.
An op-ed about the battle of Tamara Lanier to “retrieve daguerreotypes of her enslaved ancestors, Renty and Delia, currently held by Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology” which is ignored and dismissed by Harvard, which has tried to deny Lanier’s lineage. An important piece to consider this week, especially as archives try to have more a social justice focus.
Mary Koeven writes about non-traditional family trees, focusing on the Harry Potter series. In coming days, I aim to build off this with a focus on the Fry and Waterfall families, or even Farnsworth, in the Futurama universe, which would lead to genealogical issues to be certain! If the link to this article is taking too long to load, I recommend you read it on the archived page.
Genna Duplisea, the Archivist and Special Collections Librarian at Salve Regina University, writes about jobs in New England archives, arguing that “it does not seem that the job market in New England is supporting the influx of new graduates, or emerging and seasoned professionals. The exponential annual increase of digital information alone means…that society needs more archivists.”
Judy G. Russell writes on The Legal Genealogist that DNA can be a “basis for bringing people together,” further saying that the “genealogical community has been hurting, way too much, with way too many people going way too far over the top…over the issue of law enforcement access to genealogical databases,” adding that there is nothing wrong with staking out a strong position but it is wrong to slam those “who want law enforcement access to genealogical information as only being in it for the money or for the headlines.” Basically, her point is that serious questions should be resolved, but there shouldn’t be personal attacks on each other, saying there are no people that are “good” or “bad” but only “folks who see things differently.” Interesting, although I side with limits on DNA use on genealogy websites
In wonderful news, Lonnie G. Bunch III was named as the Secretary of the Smithsonian, and is a leading historian in the U.S., spending more than 40 years in the museum field, while also previously serving as the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Rebecca, an archivist, writes in her post back from 2012 about how the SAA was, in her view, advocating for archives without archivists (using volunteers instead), and the danger in that being the case. I also recommend you read the “You didn’t discover that (in the archives)” post on the archives webcomic, called “Derangement and Description,” which makes a good point that you can never really “discover” something in an archives.
Sometimes historical artifacts pop up in interesting places, like a 1885 circus poster in a Wisconsin bar, although you can’t say it was a “discovery” as an article by Brigit Katz of Smithsonian magazine claims, as that promotes a faulty view, just like when that idea is applied to libraries or archives. Even so, the Smithsonian article, unlike the one in Atlas Obscura which just talks about his “research” (but never says where), does acknowledge the role of archives: “a large stamp indicated that the world-renowned circus would be performing in Durand on August 17 and, after consulting archival records, Berger was able to determine that the year of the show was 1885.” Still, this article never says what archives he consulted, although it is implied it was the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin, although this is not explicitly said.
NARA celebrates Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday, with Keith Donohue writing that there are connections between NARA and Whitman, with iconic images of him in their Mathew Brady Photographs of Civil War-Era Personalities and Scenes, and working as a Federal Government worker. Furthermore, through a grant, NARA has “supported the Whitman Archive’s project to collect, annotate, and provide access to Whitman’s trove of correspondence.” I thought that was pretty interesting, to say the least.
Apart from a post by a librarian about why they love their profession, one of the more interesting articles I found was an interview last year with David Grann about the use of many archival records for his book, Killers of the Flower Moon, like the National Archives, Library of Congress, “Oklahoma Historical Society, Osage Nation Museum, Oklahoma State Archives and Records Management, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, and University of Oklahoma Western History Collections.” In the same interview he said that the “branch of the National Archives in Fort Worth, Texas, was an essential repository for my research,” adding that his “book is born out of archives. It could not have been written without the benefit of these collections, and the many archivists who kindly guided me to hidden troves.” He also said that perhaps his “most remarkable discovery happened when I told a librarian at the New York City Public Library about my research” and to his astonishment, the librarian “told me that some members of his family were from Oklahoma and were related to several of the victims and the murderers I was writing about” which led to a “wealth of information”! So that was interesting.
- Burkely