Faulty "book quarantines," libraries, archives, and what lies ahead

This week, I'd like to focus on libraries, archives, and much more.

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful week. This week’s newsletter will focus on libraries, archives, and much more. As a reminder, if you haven’t voted yet, please do so, as this presidential election may be one of the most important in our current time and place, just as pivotal as the previous political shifts in the last 20 years. Regardless of who wins, it will undoubtedly shape the U.S. for years to come.

This past week, I read an interesting article in Wired (here’s the version on the Wayback Machine) by Gregory Barber about COVID and surfaces, which specifically mentions libraries, noting how a study by a federal government group named Realm led librarians to consider “book quarantines” for a week or more, leading to a fear (or fixation) among librarians about those objects which should be shared with others. One librarian from California is quoted, Erin Berman. She noted that thought of possible COVID infection on books from fomites created anxiety among her co-workers, removing the focus on other efforts to reopen their facilities to the public. Barber criticized the over-emphasis on cleaning surfaces based on outdated knowledge from the spring, adding that the Realm studies were based on a “vague foundation” and were not guidance. Rather, they simply just gathered data. Honestly, I don’t understand why the study was published at all. Shouldn’t they have waited until the data collection was complete before publishing their findings? Berman, quoted later in the article, noted, as I’ve pointed out in previous newsletters, that the major risk of infection from the virus is in the air, not from touching a book. Libraries should keep that in mind before they mindlessly have librarians clean surfaces repeatedly. Improving HVAC systems so that COVID particles can be filtered out effectively is many times more important than wiping down every surface. By wiping down surfaces again and again, it might seem good, but in reality, it doesn’t do as much as people believe it does. As such, libraries should get with the times and try to reopen safely without putting unnecessary strain on those working inside the libraries. Not everything should or realistically, can be, virtual. Furthermore, libraries should not get caught up in the “hygiene theater” which is sweeping many fields, disciplines, and the business world, with faulty beliefs.

With that, I’d like to talk about other some articles about libraries. Hack Library School had a number of great approaches on peer mentorship, your ILL (inter-library loan) technician, developing a practical library project, and a perspective on BIPOC student labor. There were articles from the British Library talking about 18,000 digitized maps released, another about the renaming of a Charlotte, North Carolina library branch in order to remove the name of a white supremacist governor, and a piece in The Rambling about the value of libraries. I enjoyed reading Library of Congress blogs on various subjects. This included posts about a 15th century book of illustrated witchcraft, Latin on maps, digitization and digital collections at a Vatican library, Henry Mancini, Henry Houdini (and the spirit realm), workplace, efficiency, and telework in Japan, and Hispanic Heritage Month.

Let’s move onto news and articles about archives. I’ll start with noting my short review of a Little Witch Academia episode, noting archives stereotypes and archival themes in the episode itself, in this pop culture review. In terms of reviews, there were some great reviews in The American Archivist Reviews Portal on a database focusing on redlining in New Deal America, and the program, Airtable, which can be used for collaborative airflows. In the same sense, there was a fascinating discussion on Twitter among students and new archivist professionals (SNAP) which I participated in. I’m glad I did so, and that SNAP hosted the discussion. At the same time, archivists wrote about imposter syndrome in the field and digital image banks, while the Hingham Archives had a post about the smallpox epidemic in the Revolutionary War, and Melissa Barker talked about efforts to preserve family bibles. Finally, there were posts on NARA blogs about managing official social media and email accounts, a virtual public meeting of the Public Interest Declassification Board, digitization of 400 reels of stock footage from the 1940s, the 1824 presidential election, and Rosenwald schools.

There are several other articles which get honorable mentions. For one, DeseretNews had a post about how blocking content can draw more attention to it, Preservation Maryland talked about uncovering history about Hagerstown’s Black community, Smithsonian magazine wrote about how radical protests propelled the suffrage movement, Mimi Matthews noted the role of illness and injury in historical romances, and Vox had an article about how bookstores have weathered the pandemic. Additionally, genealogist Jeannette Austin had posts on her newsletter about the oldest collection of Virginia wills and the value of sharing your family photographs with others (if you want to). At the end, I thought the abstract of the 2020 Presidential Address by Mary Lindemann, president of the American Historians Association (AHA), was illuminating, as she talks about how historians are struggling to remain productive and the necessity to “think more deeply about the “doing” of history and to isolate what really matters in research, writing, and instruction.” The full video of her address will be, according to the AHA site, available on the AHA’s YouTube channel beginning on January 8, 2021. So, look forward to that!

I hope you all have a productive week to come.

- Burkely