FOIA, libraries, archives, family history, and so much more
This week's newsletter will, like always, focus on libraries and archives, but will also talk about genealogy, government transparency, and defining censorship
Hello everyone! I hope you are all enjoying your week. The National Security Archive, where I work, is really on top of things, put together a sourcebook of documents about the riot/insurrection (or whatever you want to call it) at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, and I’m excited to see where this project will lead, what documents they’ll uncover. Anyway, let me move forward with the rest of my newsletter, with a focus on archives, and libraries, as always, along with other topics.
I published three posts in the past week, on libraries, archives, and even genealogy! I wrote about the prevalence, in the French animated series, LoliRock, of libraries time and time again, in the series. They are definitely shown to have value, even though no librarians are shown, sadly. Recently, I published a post about archivy themes in one of my favorite animated series, Steven Universe. While archives never show up per say, there are many instances where archive-like places are shown. I didn’t talk about it in the post, but the Buddwick Public Library is archivy in the sense that all the books were written by the town’s founder, Buddy Buddwick, and the library serves as a repository of said books. Finally, a couple days ago I wrote about the story of three Irish women who were servants first of a man named John H. Packard: Mary Hassan, Ellen McBride, and Bridget Walsh. While this post only scratched the surface, it is part of an effort I am taking to move my blog away from mainly writing about men and male narratives (as I had in the past), instead focusing on underprivileged people in society.
With that, I’d like to move past my posts and focus on stories in the world of archives and libraries. The Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero wrote posts thanking Wikipedia for its birthday, noting how it can be important to archival work (in terms of adding in archival sources) and penned a response to what happened at the U.S. Capitol. I also enjoyed reading the interview with Mott Linn, the chief librarian of the National Security Research Center at Los Alamos, who is called a librarian but is really an archivist, and the four-page newsletter from the SAA’s Security Section. Apart from this, some wrote about the value of making archival collections visible, tips from an archivist in organizing your genealogy files, having archivists further engage with people online about records of enduring value, and the importance of archival permanence. Vice had an article about how archivists (probably better called data analysts or something else in this case) are preserving livestreams of the events at the Capitol before they are deleted, and how the 1918-1920 pandemic ravaged indigenous reservations across the country. On another note, I recently learned about the Black Archives of Kansas City, which dedicates itself to collect, preserve, and make available materials which document “the social, economic, political and cultural histories of persons of African American descent in the central United States, with particular emphasis in the Kansas City, Missouri region.” What a great idea! It was founded by a man, Horace M. Peterson III, who interned at the precursor to NARA, the National Record Center in Kansas City, and the J. Paul Getty Museum Management Institute, later becoming an expert in Black history and Missouri folklore. At the same time, I learned about the new website of the SAA’s Visual Materials Section, called Views, with book reviews, in-depth analysis, new publications, and more.
NARA record about 1970 census
I’d also like to share a story from the Virginia Mercury about a Virginia attorney, Hassan Ahmad, trying to seek sealed papers of a well-known anti-immigrant activist, John Taunton (a friend of Steve Bannon and Kris Kobach), who died in 2019, using FOIA to try and get the papers, held by the University of Michigan, unsealed, but this request was denied until 2035, with the issue now before the Michigan Supreme Court. Ahmad wondered what it would mean for his immigrant clients and law practice, trying to find out what was in the 10 sealed boxes Taunton gave to the university. His lawsuit was initially dismissed by the Michigan Court of Claims, but in July 2019, the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed that decision, “ruling that the sealed documents are public records and should be made available.” The University argued that they appealed this case because they claimed that would-be donors would be “deterred from donating private records of historical significance to a historical library at a public university, in this case, the Bentley Historical Library,” and claimed it would “FOIA’s purpose of enhancing public access to information.” In contrast, Ahmad said that this is an issue of government transparency, said it makes little sense that the university claims it is worried about a “potential chilling effect,” adding that he believes that the papers are public records subject to FOIA, and said that it is “high time that they be called to task for where they actually came from.” I’d say he has a valid point there and if he wins this case, it will open the doors for those in other states to ask for the same. If he loses, then that would be a win for the Tauntons of the world and a loss for government transparency, I’d say.
With that, let me talk a bit about libraries. Hack Library School, as always, has some great posts about skills as a librarian, what you should know if you work in a public library, facing your stereotypes, and structural racism. Additionally, I Love Libraries had a post about 10 of America’s “favorite librarians,” an article in Publishers Weekly said that local public libraries connect the “threads of literacy, learning, and community welfare,” and the ALA released a statement condemning violence at the Capitol. Also, the Internet Archive released an online library explorer to allow people to browse books of various subjects and areas from their computers. The Library of Congress had blogs about advanced searches on Congress.gov, the right of privacy (and contact tracing), and the art of the book.
There are some other topics I’d like to note before ending this newsletter. Larry M. Elkin wrote about how censorship should be defined before it is denounced. He first stated that it is not censorship for opinion editors of the New York Times to not publish your essay, but is a form of judgment, with censorship occurring only when “the government restricts or compels expression under threat of penalties, which may be administrative, judicial or extrajudicial.” He further pointed out that the First Amendment does not offer anyone a right to Facebook access, meaning it can publish or not publish what it wants, even though there are some legal remedies, saying that freedom of the press means people have a right to publish anything you want, but it doesn’t mean that the “manufacturer of a press must agree to sell you one.” He added that press freedoms in the U.S. are not absolute, the role of the “safe harbor” in stopping platforms from being liable for copyright infringement and defamation, said that we aren’t hearing from those who advocate net neutrality as much as in the past, saying some lessons are being absorbed about the role of private parties to “determine how their privately funded facilities are used,” and not the value of defining censorship. Other than that essay by Elkin, Jeannette Austin wrote about ancestors from England, two historians noted a starting point in teaching about what happened at the Capitol in classrooms, Megan Kate Nelson talked about how historians are contextualizing the events at the Capitol, and Richard Ovenden talked about the value of archives (despite citing noted anti-communists like George Orwell). In the past week, I read, as well, about people trying to request documents from police departments about vacation days used by police during the Capitol riots, and a big science publisher Springer Nature going open access and what that means.
That’s all for this week. Hope everyone has a good weekend and week to come!
- Burkely