Libraries, archives, and the continuing crisis
This week's newsletter will cover similar topics to the one last week, but will focus even more on the COVID-19 crisis, especially how it is affecting libraries and archives
Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing well, despite the continuing COVID-19 crisis. Happy Gay Historians Day! It’s something I come up with, named after the fact that on April 26, 2019, in the season 2 finale of She-Ra ("Reunion"), one of the protagonists, Bow, had two dads (George and Lance) who were historians, but can also be called librarians. Without further ado, let me get started.
Let me start with the library field. Hack Library School had some wonderful articles about concentration issues and finding community while completing an MLIS degree at home. Publishers Weekly focused on how public libraries will operate after COVID-19 and the CEO of the New York Public Library says that books should be quarantined after COVID-19. In addition, college librarians said they were preparing for looming cuts as a loss of funding due to the crisis. At the same time, Hennepin County, Minnesota told library workers to staff homeless hotels or take PTO, forcing them onto the frontlines, who say the task should be voluntary rather than mandatory.
Moving on, I’d like to talk about some related topics. For one, a goodwill ambassador for UNESCO foolishly declared that copyright should be eternal (which doesn’t even make sense) while there was a wonderful newsletter that talked about German migration in the 1700s. I enjoyed reading about the processing of digital records, the interview with Mathew Brock, Library and Historical Collections Manager for the Mazama Library, and the blogpost by National Archives of the UK about films with a connection to their collections. In this past week, some archivists reminded people of the fact that archivists (like librarians) can also experience trauma in their work. Finally, I’d like to talk about the idea of having a COVID-19 diary that records your experiences through this crisis. While this will undoubtedly create a wonderful historical record, archivists would never be able to collect all of the diaries, so they would have to choose the ones that were most relevant to their collections.
That’s all for this week! Hope you all have a great week ahead.
- Burkely