Librarian-soldiers, bureaucrats, e-book licensing, roots work, the value of history, and more!
This week I'll focus on archives, libraries, genealogy, and history related articles, along with those on other topics.
Hello everyone! I hope you all had a good, and hopefully productive, week. In the past week, I published two pop culture reviews. One focused on librarian-soldiers and the never-ending “library war” against censorship in Library War, one of my favorite anime. The other post asked whether an underground mailroom in a recent webcomic I read has “archivy vibes.” With that taken care of, let me begin this newsletter.
Earlier this week, Samantha Cross, who I have mentioned many times in this newsletter in the past, reviewed a character named Raven Inkwell and asked if they are an archivist, determining they are just a bureaucrat. This makes Inkwell a little like Hermes Conrad in Futurama, I suppose, whose whole job is to be a bureaucrat, even singing a whole song about this, literally! There were posts about indexing of poor relief records, pushing for a bigger NARA budget, the blues and the gay community, a post on Northwest Archivists introduced a new archivist-in-residence, UNESCO publishing a digital exhibit about the UNESCO Radio Unit from 1947 to 1990, and Preservica focused on more ways to quickly build and manage a digital archive, using their Starter program. Also of note was the Spring 2021 newsletter of the SAA’s Archivists and Archives of Color. In this newsletter, records about the 1968 uprising in Kansas City and the gospel choir at Northwestern University were discussed, as was a new digital collection on Rev. William A. Jones, Jr., and assorted updates.
With that, let me talk about libraries. There was promising news that a bill ensuring that “public libraries the right to license and lend e-books that are available to consumers” is now state law! While the Association of American Publishers (AAP) expressed their opposition, library advocates were glad to see it pass. I sympathize with them more than the AAP which only advocates for big publishers. The Library of Congress had posts about LGBTQ ancestors buried in the Congressional Cemetery, damaged books, innovations in handcrafted and art books, honoring Asian-Americans, a new research guide which focused on the Louisiana Purchase, a brief history of something unique: wind mapping, and making models of ancient books. Jessica Fitzpatrick wrote about the value of reading, Joann and Kenneth C. Davis argued for the importance of school libraries, Amy Burroughs noted that local libraries help to address digital inequity, Siviwe Bangani wrote about academic libraries battling against misinformation during COVID-19, and Alexia MacClain wrote on how vintage supplies kept libraries running through the pandemic. At some point, I’ll contribute to the online directory of librarians and library and information science and services professionals. In the past week I learned about more libraries in popular culture, with a character in Mira, Royal Detective, designing a library and an episode of Cardcaptor Sakura where characters go to a library, as shown below:
This brings me to genealogy. In the May 2021 newsletter of the Midwest Computer Genealogists, there were articles about the Spanish fur trading post of St. Louis, researching Missouri repositories, land surveys, and Missouri pioneers. Marian Bulford wrote about her American cousin, Donna Moughty argues the importance of separating truth from blarney, Emma Maxwell writes on unraveling lies, myths and cover-ups in genealogy, Carol notes the value of census records, and Ancestral Findings notes the importance of looking at marriage records in genealogical research. Apart from all this, the Irish Times had an article about the Irish roots of an Irish actor, Mary Winston Nicklin noted that there has been a spike in family history trips to Europe, and PR Newswire reported that africanancestry.com is becoming a “path to Sierra Leone citizenship” for Black people who can trace their roots to that country, all by using DNA results. While DNA testing is only part of roots work, for some, more than others, it can be an important part of figuring out your roots!
There were interesting articles and posts about history I read recently. Smithsonian magazine argued how the push for statehood for Oklahoma led a beacon of racial progress to oppression and violence, that a long-lost manuscript contains a searing eyewitness account of Tulsa massacre, while noting that citizen historians transcribed key papers about the massacre, and talking about artifacts left behind from the massacre. Smithsonian noted that scientists have unearthed the oldest-known human grave in Africa, Kenneth Durr comparing the gas shortage over the Colonial Pipeline to the 1973 oil crisis, Lynn Weinstein of the Library of Congress writing about rationing during World War II, and a college student decoding the data hidden in Inca knots. I loved hearing about the Tulsa artist who unveiled a Trail of Tears mural for the Museum of Native American History, and the interconnection of race and disease in the United States, in terms of who died from tuberculosis.
In the final part of this newsletter, I’d like to mention a few other articles. The Chronicle of Higher Education interviewed students with disabilities who say that colleges should NOT return to normal (which I’ll agree with), while The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene noted that inaccuracies in Google's health-based knowledge panels leads to misconceptions about infectious disease transmission. Nature concluded that deforestation reduces rainfall and agricultural revenues in the Brazilian Amazon, the LA Times wrote about how the Getty Museum battles bugs, and Rodrigo Ochigame analyzed what he termed “algorithms of oppression.” As always, The Nib had wonderful illustrations. They focused on, specifically: conservative fears of supposedly “woke” people, the “interview” with one proponent of the Flat Earth theory, dogs as the best friend of gentrification due to their racism toward Black people, and West Virginia giving away guns as an incentive for people to get vaccines, a terrible idea if true.
That’s all for this week. I hope you all have a good week ahead!
- Burkely