From digitization to handwriting
A new WordPress post, my e-book, and news of the past week
Hello all!
I am glad to see that we have over 20 new subscribers since my last newsletter went out. So, welcome! If you think anyone else is interested, feel free to share this newsletter with them. I wrote a post in the last week, which counters faulty arguments by Robert Caro and focuses on digitization in archival institutions. Here’s a snippet from that post to peak your interest:
…We have gotten to the point that everything is “in the computer” like in this film [The Andromeda Strain], not only with libraries and other public institutions, but more and more with archival institutions in recent days…Now, while each researcher can choose their own way to use documents, it seems like he [Caro] is glaring down on those whom use their phones, or other electronic devices, to take pictures of documents…Caro is almost stuck back in time, part of the old guard of presidential scholars whom inhabited presidential libraries…He further claims that it is “very hard to destroy a complete paper trail of something.” I’m not actually completely sure about that…think about “deleted” files on a computer. They are not really deleted but rather the directory to them is eliminated…without vital descriptive work of paper records in the first place, those electronic records which are produced through digitization would be an unusable and undifferentiated mass…when anything is digitized, archivists commit to maintaining the digital file and the original on which that file is based…archivists would need to balance benefits of saving certain digital records over other digital records…With all of this, there…[is] a debate among scholars, especially in the field of archives and libraries, over a possible difference between a digital library and a digital archives
My e-book (Tales of the Maryland Extra Regiment) is bumbling along I have decided to provide my “book to libraries for free” and eliminated the “reader-sets-price,” lowering the price to $1.00 flat. So please, if you are interested, purchase a copy of my wondrous book. In the meantime, I’m going to probably use another provider in the future, rather than Smashwords, possibly draft2digital. I assure you that my other books will probably be on something else, like libraries, archives, or genealogy, as I’m just testing the waters for now. So suggestions on this would be appreciated.
Speaking of genealogy, over the past couple weeks, I just published a three-part series on my grandfather, Bob Mills, and his quest to learn more about his family in “Bob Mills’s quest to learn more about his family lineage”, “Settling the estate of Tom Packard: letters from 1976 to 1979” and “Tommy Adkins, Bob Mills, and the wonders of genealogy.”
And now, we get to the news of the week!
NBC News, of all places, has an article about the “hidden perks of a free library card,” focusing on the value of libraries
Lilly Carrel, an archivist of the Menil Collection in Houston, whom I quoted in my above blogpost, talks about her archival work in a place you might not expect
Joseph McGill of the Slave Dwelling Project talks about visiting Rowan Oak, which once held enslaved peoples, a place, many years later, where famed author William Faulkner lived, and the struggles in getting the logistics to work, with resistance from those who want to glorify a “traditionalist” South
Universal Studios takes down a public domain clip from a 1947 ALA PSA “Your Life Work: The Librarian” because it was used in Emilio Estevez’s new film, The Public. Whether you see Estevez’s film is up to you, but the ALA PSA is still interesting, all these years later, despite some stereotypes. That’s why I included it at the beginning of this newsletter!
Amy Berish, Assistant Archivist at the Rockefeller Archive Center, talks about processing new collections and her “digital work,” which fits right with my post I published last week
The story of the Alaska Resources Library and Information Services (ARLIS), a college library on the University of Alaska’s campus in Anchorage, allows you to check out “hundreds of specimens” just with a “Anchorage public library card”!
A researcher talks about the difference a “community-based archive can make,” to tell stories that often haven’t been told
Tracing three generations of a prominent Black family in Pittsburgh, as noted in a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article which is stocked full of pictures
The conservation division of Cornell University Library talks about the difference between photo albums and scrapbooks, and efforts to preserve these often fragile heirlooms
Simple tips, from a genealogist, on reading old handwriting in documents, with practice at reading such handwriting getting better with practice!
And that’s it! I look forward to your comments on this wonderful newsletter.
- Burkely