From archives to genealogy
With a new post connecting 1990s films with archival trends, and 10 wonderful stories
Hello all!
Thanks again to many new subscribers to this wonderful newsletter! Again, if there is anyone you think will be interested, please forward this newsletter to them.
This past week, I published an article about records erasure, digitization, and themes in 1990s films, which I think all of you would enjoy, which is already interesting those on Twitter and LinkedIn. Here’s an excerpt from that article:
…All of these films share a similar theme: the erasure and change of records (mostly digital), which has an increased relevance as archival institutions continue to digitize more and more of their records, although not everything…more and more of the records held by archival institutions are digital, specifically “born-digital” (like tweets, Facebook posts)…There should be measures in place to make sure that the records, especially digital records, are not tampered with. Perhaps this would require fixity checks, but also could necessitate rules on the usage of records themselves…as a major trend in libraries is collection of data to prove their value even though this has its downsides especially when it comes to ethical concerns with data mining and big data
While the spring semester came to a close, I found a whole host of interesting articles, in part thanks to the wonderful people in libraries, archives, and researching their own family roots I follow on Twitter. These include:
Kelly Jenson writes that in 2020, Teddy Roosevelt will get a presidential library funded by the state of North Dakota, with the library and museum focusing “on digitization efforts of presidential archives and ephemera, as well as offer a public space for learning about Roosevelt’s presidential legacy”
Brigit Katz writes about how the U.S. government is trying to legally recover an Alexander Hamilton letter stolen by a bad employee of the MA Archives
A researcher, Andrew Biswell, claims they “discovered” “a 200-page work titled The Clockwork Condition” by Anthony Burgess, who had written A Clockwork Orange, in the archives of the Burgess Foundation in Manchester, where it had already been transferred, and “it is now being catalogued.” While stories about the “findings” of a “discovery” easily take headlines, they make the researcher the center of attention rather than the place they found it, even though researchers are more accurately giving existing records new meaning than “discovering” them. However, Biswell is a biographer of Burgess and a director of the foundation, so they seem fine at calling it a “discovery.”
In an article about the acquisition of “Saddle Club” records by the Elon University’s archives and special collections, and its coordinator, Crystal Carpenter, who said that “once the archives is established, it is around forever so whenever someone is comfortable wanting to donate materials they can do so. Our goal, really, is to take this historically significant period in Alamance’s history and be able to make it available to the community.”
The story of how a Fredericksburg resident was banned from the National Archives for stealing “dog tags of soldiers killed in two World War II plane crashes” from the College Park location, and how “about five search warrants are requested per year to retrieve missing items”! Its an interesting story as its a battle between those who want to keep the dog tags for “family history” purposes, and the National Archives which would like them for posterity, to contribute to the cultural memory of the county itself.
Adam H. Donby writes that the problems of ancestry.com go much deeper their racist ad into the databases of the site itself. Also see Megan Molteni’s “Ancestry.com’s Racist Ad Tumbles Into a Cultural Minefield” article in Wired
Jessica Benjamin, a genealogist gives tips for how to write about your “boring ordinary ancestors.”
An article linking to a two-page sheet of best practices for conducting research which is risky (and sensitive) and avoiding online harassment, although it is never said what topics they are thinking of
Natalie Pithers, another genealogist, writes about how signatures are, themselves, a “mark in time” and a tangible sign your ancestors existed
Barb Bauer explains the case of the 1880 census which recorded the sick, poor, and mentally challenged individuals, and how it can be useful for genealogy
- Burkely