Digital archives & a plagiarism battle
This newsletter's topics include the 'Red Summer,' Obama Library, and family history!
Hello everyone!
Here’s a Twitter moment I put together about responses to that proposal from Twin Cities that libraries should become librarian-less. Some favored it but others did not. Also, here’s a post I wrote, for those interested in genealogy, about non-traditional family trees in Futurama, one of my favorite shows.
Here are some articles I found this week I thought I’d share:
Karen Sieber writes about the Red Summer, or the “more than three dozen geographically dispersed race riots, lynchings, and other violent attacks targeting African Americans in 1919” and a new database visualizing the effects of these horrible events. Feel free to check it out.
Joshua McCune analyzes three words, one of which is German (Aachen), another which is Hawaiian (Aa), and a final one which is English (a). Its a combination of genealogy, linguistic analysis, and history. A post I’d definitely recommend!
Julia Azari, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Marquette University, argues that the all-digital Obama Library “is a break from tradition. It is clearly a nod to contemporary life” and notes how historical scholars are concerned, adding that “a transition to online-only resources could come at the cost of one of their greatest assets: the knowledge and commitment of the archivists”! She later notes how an archivist at the Eisenhower Library “jumped into the research with me,” going onto say “historians also use presidential libraries in combination with other archival sources…The archivists I worked with were all very professional and non-partisan” and that “not all scholars have the time and research funds to visit one library…But a big part of the intellectual contribution of libraries is the deep expertise of the archival staffs,” ending by saying that “the digitization plans of the Obama library may prove to be a vital new turn in access and storage of presidential documents….the effort to replace old practices with new ones may come at a steep cost.” The debate over the Obama Library continues, as would be expected.
A fun exercise I did earlier this week in response to a fellow librarian asking about what a “library band” would be named and what its songs would be, mostly using images from The Simpsons and Futurama. Enjoy!
My tweets about History Day, since I judged the last two days, specifically websites and helping others bit with documentaries too. It is something I would recommend for all who are interested in history! This is why I’m sending this newsletter a little later this week.
Some discussion about why, as a teacher, you shouldn’t tell students to buy your book on Amazon but should recommend the library. Good tips for all!
Ebony McDonald, an archivist working at LSU Libraries, writes about her experience at the Conference of Inter-Mountain Archivists (CIMA) & Society of Southwest Archivists (SSA) Joint Annual Meeting in Tucson in May and what it meant to her. Always refreshing to see a perspective like this one.
Laura Hedgecock, a genealogist, connects the art of telling family stories to neuroscience. Very interesting!
The community of Banning, California demands answers after the firing of the staff archivist, Bill Bell, saying that “without Bell — or another qualified archivist with broad familiarity of the Pass area — important relics of the city could be relinquished from the library’s care”! Great for the community to stand up for an archivist like that. I’d hope the same happens in other communities
An ugly battle between an Indiana University-South Bend master’s student Katie Madonna Lee and a Wayne State archivist, Alison Stankrauff, the former sueing the latter for “plagiarizing an article she co-wrote.” Yikes! The archivist seems to be in the wrong here, as the article shows.
- Burkely