Fourth of July edition: presidential libraries, archives, racism within the ALA, Elizabeth Packard, and more!
This week, I'll be summarizing articles, updates, and posts on libraries, archives, genealogy, and history topics, up to the "email length limit" that Gmail will truncate
Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing well. On June 29, I published a post reviewing one of my favorite webcomics, Diamond Dive, and the librarian who shows up in a number of issues. On June 30, my article for The Geekiary, my third article on the site, about LGBTQ representation in Final Space, was published. While I am a bit proud of it, the comments on Reddit were not as nice as I would have thought they would be. However, that won’t stop me from reviewing shows in the future. With that, let me move ahead with the rest of my newsletter.
At the end of June, Maura Porter, lead Declassification Archivist for the John F. Kennedy Library, announced her departure from the presidential library, which is part of NARA. In an update on LinkedIn, she said her retirement was melancholy because, in her view, “NARA is slowly but surely turning the Presidential Libraries into shells,” and lamented that many “committed people who leave with sadness or stay disheartened,” saying it should not be this way. Taking this at face value, it seems to point to more fundamental problems with NARA itself. I can’t speak to them much since I don’t work there, but I can hope that the workplace culture changes. As I noted on Twitter on June 30 in response to Maarja Krusten’s criticism that what I said NARA and corporate language in my last newsletter was not complete, lacking in historical background, “I can only do so much in the newsletter, without it taking up too much space. I'd say what's there is the beginning of an analysis, or part of an analysis.” The same is the case for Porter’s update. Everything in this newsletter is only a part of, or the beginning of, an analysis of a topic. I’m not trying to write a fully-fledged academic article with this newsletter, but only summarize some of the important news in specific fields and some of my own thoughts on specific topics.
Otherwise, there were stories about the Austin History Center preserving records of the pandemic’s impact of Austin with the COVID-19 files project and the publication of ISOO’s annual report, saying there is a “need to rethink, update, and strengthen several of the key policies and authorities that undergird these critical information programs” (Classified National Security Information and Controlled Unclassified Information systems), among other observations. Others wrote about the potential for AI in audiovisual archives, study of British colonial identities, the importance of honoring the past while preparing for the future (in reference to conserving a 15th century manuscript), how you can celebrate July 4th with NARA, and the SAA representative to the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) William Maher calling for “exceptions for archives.” Just as relevant is Michelle Moravec’s post back in April 2016, asking how historians are thinking about “responsibilities as the users of these digitized archival material, when what we write is online, and when our reuse of digitized materials may at the least violate copyright and the worst cause harm to individuals.” That is relevant to those who digitize old materials, or relatively new ones, for archives.
That brings me to libraries. On June 29, April Hathcock, a Black female scholarly communication librarian, announced on her blog that she had completed her last session as part of the ALA Council, recounting her struggles with racism, White privilege, and other issues within the ALA itself over the past six years. She further argued that the ALA has “always been and will always be centered on promoting the ‘neutrality’ of white supremacy and capitalism,” going onto say that the ALA has not been as welcoming as it could be to those who aren’t White, which comprises 87% of the profession. She added that while she respects those fighting within the organization to making it better, she does not believe that meaningful change of the organization is going to happen, criticizing the ALA from pursuing actions which hold itself, the libraries it advocates for, or the government, accountable when it comes to inclusion and diversity, along with underpaid, furloughed, and overworked full-time staffers.
Hathcock says that while the ALA is not a place for her to make the profession more welcoming to those who are not White, noting that “bureaucratic organizations have never been sites of liberation,” that she will put her efforts toward groups such as We Here, WOC + Lib, Green Book for Libraries, and others. The post definitely gives me a lot to think about, as a person who is new to the profession, and is a White man. As the AFL-CIO’s Department for Professional Employees puts it, “librarians are slightly less diverse than the workforce of professionals in all education, training, and library occupations,” noting in the notes that “librarians were 85.3 percent white in 2015, 84 percent white in 2010 and 88.3 percent white in 2005,” according to U.S. Census data and other statistics (see pages 3, 4, 7).
While a report by the ALA akin to the anti-racism task force just convened by NARA which I talked about in a recent newsletter, with specific recommendations, would be a good first step, more needs to be done. I am not certain what needs to be done to reform the ALA, or if it can be reformed at all, but it makes sense for people of color not represented by the organization, and even discriminated against by those within the profession itself, to form their own organizations. After all, as it should be obvious, not everything can be done by going through established organizations which hold the mantle of representing specific professions.
In other news, Ipswich opened its first dedicated public children’s library in Australia and the Baltimore County Library system has ended “extended loan fees…and outstanding balances on cardholders’ accounts” in order to encourage patrons with such balances on their accounts to “visit their local branch and start over with a clean slate.” Jennifer Snoek-Brown shared perspectives of the reel librarian, Wong, in Marvel films, while the Library of Congress (LOC) had posts about Walt Whitman’s diaries and notebooks, how to research the 1921 Tulsa massacre, and 18th century Spanish social assistance and anti-idleness policy. The latter is from Jake Neuberger, a remote intern transcribing and researching documents in the Herencia: Centuries of Spanish Legal Documents crowdsourcing campaign for LOC. I also enjoyed reading Joanne Chern’s “Seven Things I Learned in Library School” post for Hack Library School, suggesting students do the optional readings, spend time outside your department, get involved, think beyond basics of racial diversity, recognize that those in your class may be your coworkers in the future, normalize talking about money, and follow your interests. Reading it, I found that I did everything she suggested before even reading this post! So, it was reassuring to read that post.
With that, let me talk a little about genealogy. I was so excited to see there is a new book about one of my ancestors, Elizabeth Packard (otherwise known as E.P.W. Packard), titled The Woman They Could Not Silence!, which has just been published! Kate Moore, the bestselling author well known for her book on the Radium Girls, told me on Twitter, that she hoped I “like the book and will feel I did your ancestor proud.” I hope she is right. The book has already received positive reviews in NPR, Time magazine, Publishers Weekly, Smithsonian, USA Today, and elsewhere. There were also some interesting articles I found, when searching her name, about how her experience in an asylum was not unique, how her life was dramatized in a recent play, Mrs. Packard, and, of course, my ongoing (I suppose) “Badass Elizabeth series” on my blog.
Apart from this, there were posts from genealogists about Caribbean-American heritage, Black genealogy, Irish immigrants settling in Australia, giving life to the stories of your ancestors without replicating stereotypes in original documents, looking forward to what will happen to your research in the future, and the re-opening of the FamilySearch Family History Library after being closed for 15 months. Most fascinating of all was an article by Paul Chaddicks about the top 10 sins of a genealogist: assuming everything online is correct, not noting every search, not going beyond birth, marriage and death records, trying to do everything yourself, adopting the scattergun approach, not checking your previous work, trying to achieve everything online, neglecting to explore, inflexibility on names, me, me, me! Some of these I have, admittedly, been guilty of, my genealogy skills are always improving.
Then we get to history. On June 2, paperback edition of Tanya Cheadle’s book, Sexual Progressives: Reimagining Intimacy in Scotland, 1880-1914 was released. In the past week, there were, additionally, posts about the life of George Westinghouse, and power of war, how YMCA became a gay anthem. On the one hand, I read about the concern of some historians who were worrying about why the UK National Archives “had to resort to crowdfunding to protect irreplaceable historical records.” On the other was April Hathcock’s post about how all open scholarship is not treated equally, as it can and does “replicate some of the biases inherent in academia and our society as a whole.” Then there are articles in Smithsonian magazine. This included articles about fossils unearthed in California waters, a silver medieval seal unearthed in England, and the story of an immigrant turned into a millionaire who dominated the gambling underground of Harlem, named Stephanie St. Clair, a Black woman who “ran an illegal lottery while championing New York City’s Black community,” and an interactive map of gay guides that shows the evolution of local queer spaces between 1965 and 1980. This great resource is helpful for genealogists, especially for those with LGBTQ ancestors, historians studying the period, and archivists too.
There are articles which don’t easily fit into the categories I have outlined so far. One of these is the controversy over the International Olympic Committee (IOC) suspending Sha’Carrie Richardson, a Black queer woman, for getting a positive drug test for marijuana before the official Olympic trials, for one month. She apologized for this supposed “transgression” and explained it happened because she was stressed after learning her mother had died. People rightly criticized this IOC decision as horrible, horrid, and unhinged. Some even called for abolishing the Olympic Games (and more) as the contest in and of itself obviously results in displays of nationalism, or connected it to the suspending of three women for refusing to “lower their testosterone with birth control pills” and the banning of swim caps which go over Black hair. The best response I saw was someone who said “competing while high should get you another medal.” I agree with those sentiments and this decision is awful, an extension of the war on drugs to the world of sports. It is not surprising coming from the IOC, which hates anyone expressing themselves openly and making a political stance, and undoubtedly has institutional racism, sexism, and everything else ingrained inside the organization itself. This incident is part of ongoing hostility toward Black women and racial hypocrisy, exemplified by the case of another Black female athlete, Gwen Berry, being penalized by the IOC, for not saluting for the national anthem.
It also, in terms of efforts to limit political participation by Black people, and people of color in general, is related to the recent Supreme Court decision which upholds Arizona’s voter suppression laws and further eviscerates the Voting Rights Act (this time title 2), with Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Stephen Breyer dissenting. Last but not least are illustrations from The Nib. This week I came across ones about the many “gurus” who can cause you to go astray, how to “relax” this summer, the incompetence of police, the California town which is without running water even in the middle of a heat wave, and the continued (and probably never-ending) efforts to deny the storming of the Capitol ever happened.
That’s all for this newsletter. Until next week!
- Burkely