From momentary fiction to ongoing controversy
This week, I'll be focusing on genealogical topics, archival controversies, a new fictional narrative, and other library and archives news tidbits
Hello everyone! I hope you all had a great week so far. I’d like to share some news tidbits for the past week. I’ve been loosely following the fire at the Museum of Chinese in America, which is trying to recover its artifacts, many of which were destroyed in a horrible fire earlier this month, so that’s a worthy cause to donate to.
I’d like to note four Twitter moments I put together. The first of these focuses on genealogy and its misrepresentation by historians (and scholars in general). Following in its footsteps is my next collection of tweets with further musings on genealogy and recordkeeping. Another one focuses on the ongoing debate over the closing of NARA’s Seattle facility and its repercussions for researchers. For further information about the latter story, I’d recommend reading, apart from those tweets within the moment I put together, an article in MyNorthwest titled “Officials, historians slam ‘horrendous’ plan to close Seattle National Archives.” My final Twitter moment focuses on the controversy over NARA’s blurring of an image (not a federal record, but a Getty image) from the 2017 Women’s March, arguing that this issue is being blown out of proportion, while also including the perspectives of others. For this, apart from looking at the views of various individuals on the subject, I’d recommend you read the post of David Ferriero, the present Archivist of the United States, giving a full rationale and apology for the action, along with a recent post by former NARA archivist Maarja Krusten titled “knowledge construction zones.” Also see another of her posts, criticizing the SAA for its response in terms of the fact they relied on news links as a source for their statement, ignoring the further context. She added that the SAA should “move ahead and apply archival appraisal and arrangement principles to information gathering, too.” I also read the response by Jeremy Brett of the Concerned Archivists Alliance, published yesterday, with interest.
That brings me to another subject. This past week my friend published a new fictional narrative. And this new story has a small section focused on libraries. Basically, one of the protagonists had read aerodynamics books in the library (allowing her to determine where the enemy ship had its fuselage) into the institution’s sole librarian kicked her out. This person let the protagonist “freely browse the vast bookshelves” at her leisure and honored her requests for materials but told her to leave because she lived in the upper floor of the library. In any case, my friend thought this section was worth mentioning, although my friend said they will work to ensure that future stories integrate elements of archives and/or libraries more broadly.
There are some other stories in the archives and library fields I’d like to mention. Hack Library School was again on fire this past week, focusing on climate change and libraries, goals for another semester of library school, the first step in preparing for a library school education, and stress in library environments. I also thought the Gallup Poll showing how library visits by Americans outrank visits to the movies or even sporting events was fascinating, but not at all surprising. I also enjoyed reading an article advocating for more of a focus on users at academic libraries and challenging the librarian-in-residence “job” floated by Reese Witherspoon's book club. Apart from that, I liked reading about NARA’s record group explorer again, relevant subjects in the archival field, and a genealogist confessing how they are a “genealogy hoarder” because they save multiple copies of the same document.
That’s all for this week. Hope you all have a great rest of your week!
- Burkely