NARA, librarians, faulty quarantines, false security of disinfection, archives, and more
This week's newsletter will cover similar topics that I've talked about last week while focusing on NARA, 10 librarians in popular culture, faulty guidance on COVID, disinfection, archives, and more!
Hello everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful week. I’d like to start with a post from the National Security Archive, which gives suggestions for how President-Elect Biden can improve FOIA and bolster the Presidential Records Act against future abuse. This includes presuming the posting of White House visitor logs, banning the use of disappearing messaging apps that don’t automatically capture communications, discontinuing the use of discretionary portions of FOIA exemptions that have been used to hide large amounts of information, review pending FOIA litigation, use technology to improve declassification and make disclosure more proactive, work to increase the NARA budget (which archivists have been advocated for a while) and to strengthen the Presidential Records Act. I thought I’d mention that first before moving onto the rest of my newsletter.
With that, let me talk about libraries first before moving to archives. I put together a post that highlighted 10 librarians in popular culture, in animations and anime that I’ve watched. It was in response to a Book Riot piece back in March that pointed out that librarians are not portrayed well in popular culture, something which I agree with. I may write some more posts later which highlight beautiful libraries in animated series that I’ve watched or something different entirely! We’ll see. There were some other posts that talked about how controlled digital lending is making a college library available to everyone, everywhere, privacy and consent, the Library of Congress preserving the “artistic genius of generations of Americans — even budding geniuses” for decades thanks to the copyright process, a winter break reading list of one librarian, the importance of compassion, and wonderful photographs from the Library of Congress! It’s great.
A couple of days ago, the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) shared updated guidance on disinfecting books and other materials, when it comes to COVID-19 (called COVID as a shorthand in the rest of this newsletter). They stated that their advice is based on current research, saying that washing hands often, avoiding close content, covering your mouth and nose with a mask are CDC guidelines that should be followed. They note that washing hands removes dirt and oils, while hand sanitizer cannot, which can stain or damage collections. That makes sense, but then we get to the idea of quarantining materials, which I’ve previously criticized being absurd, when it comes to libraries. They write that materials after they are handled by visitors and staff should be quarantined, but not disinfected, while admitting that research results “do not yet agree” on the timeframes of quarantining materials, citing studies about COVID on cardboard and plastic from March and May, even though scientific understanding of the virus has changed since then. Apart from that red flag, they then declare that some studies show that COVID on plastic and stainless steel stays there, with some institutions implementing “a 7-day quarantine,” even claiming that stacking collection materials can allow the virus to survive. As it turns out, all this guidance is based on REALM. In a recent study by that group, they said that after six days the “virus was not detected on the glass, laminate, and powder-coated steel.” Even so, in their FAQ, the group admits that COVID is thought to “mostly spread between people in close contact with one another and through respiratory droplets passed from person to person,” while saying that “little is known on the infectivity of the virus on fomites.” At the same time, they give a big disclaimer: “this project is not giving recommendations or guidance,” but is only “providing data.” So, why is the NEDCC and others treating it as guidance?
Anyway, despite the faulty guidance of quarantines by the NEDCC as noted earlier, they do have good guidance on disinfecting collections: don’t do it. In fact, they say that quarantines are better, as cleaning and disinfecting products, fogging, UV radiation, and microwave radiation should not be done. The same applies to disinfecting facilities, with no fogging, not touching or splashing cleaning solution on collections materials, and “collecting institutions” (i.e. libraries, museums, archives, etc.) informing the public about approaches to ensure the safety of staff and patrons, and their approaches to disinfect collection materials. Related to this is what happened during the 1918-1920 pandemic, where many libraries were closed, with those that remained opening seeing surges in circulation, and reading books at the time. An important historical perspective for what is happening now! I probably should have been more critical of the REALM study originally, than just citing the data in October, and September newsletters, but it’s better to be more critical now than never.
The IFLA is even less sure about the spread of COVID on surfaces. They write that understanding is at an early stage, making it not possible to offer “definite advice,” while saying that it seems “more likely” that some surfaces “could carry the virus,” meaning they should be “regularly cleaned or removed from circulation,” and that if there is a “chance” that material or equipment has been in contact with an ill person, it “may be appropriate to wait.” But how do you know that an ill person used a surface or material? Remember that more than 50% of COVID-19 infections, according to recent CDC guidance, are from people who are asymptomatic. IFLA admitted that REALM’s data has “not been subject to peer review yet,” and noting that some libraries, like those in Denmark, are not putting place book quarantines, while some starting that those in the same country continued to “warn against allowing public use of computers.” That connects to a recent article I read in a reprint of the New York Times, about how there is little or no evidence that “contaminated surfaces” spread the virus, with the major threat from “the virus that is exhaled by infected people and that lingers in the air,” and saying that hand washing is still encouraged, while “scrubbing surfaces does little to mitigate the virus threat indoors.” A NIH respiratory infection specialist is also quoted, who argued that a “lot of time, energy and money is being wasted on surface disinfection and…diverting attention and resources away from preventing airborne transmission.” The article used the example of Hong Kong, noting that quarantine areas in the airport there might be comforting, but they make “practical sense from an infection-control standpoint.” Aerosol expert Shelly Miller was quoted as saying that disinfecting sprays are “often made from toxic chemicals” which can harm human health and indoor air quality, in line with the World Health Organization said about fumigation to “stop” the virus (don’t do it), adding that she can’t understand why “anyone would think that disinfecting a whole person would reduce the risk of transmitting virus.” Additionally, microbiologist Emanuel Goldman says that for the “original SARS virus, fomite transmission was very minor at most,” with COVID acting the same, while some said that paranoia is “about touching anything from handrails to grocery bags had taken off.” Then, Hong Kong chemical and biological engineering professor Yeung King-lun is quoted as saying that “the air you’re breathing in is basically communal.” And that wraps it up!
With that, let me talk about archives. In a post on the SAA’s Electronic Records section series Dispatches from a Distance, digital archivist Emily Higgs wrote about her institution, noting that she is lucky to work from “home,” and is doing best with what she can do, trying to work in her apartment, with frequent dropping in internet connection, drops in a VPN, and competing for bandwidth with her partner. She then says that many are working from “home,” with IT systems not set up for this, adding that we will have to do “some serious retooling” to make sure that the infrastructure is ready for it. That is correct! There was also an interesting profile with the newest Steering Committee of the SAA’s College and University Archives Section, David McCartney, who stated that some of his challenges included “capturing and preserving university-affiliated web sites,” but that the Internet Archive helped with that, with managing and preserving born-digital content still a challenge. More fundamentally than that, he makes a valid point that many individuals in the field are not “not sufficiently compensated for their professional services,” with unpaid internships undermining the profession, with the value of work going unrecognized. As such, he says it is a challenge to “continually advocate for our profession to ensure its rightful place in commerce and culture.” It is also true. Similarly, I thought that Catherine Stiers made a good point about using Reddit as an archival outreach tool, and the Web Archiving roundup. The latter outlined the UCSD web archive collection, the LC Commissioned Composers Web Archive. the Egyptian Politics and Revolution Collection, using the Wayback Machine to “capture limited Cal State Northridge websites and Wakelet for websites and social media posts,” the UC San Diego Web Archives collection, and UMD’s COVID-19 University Response Collection. Great digital archives collections! At the same time, there was a fascinating study of access policies for indigenous archival materials in the National Anthropological Archives at the Smithsonian Institution, a post about the large periodicals collection, which is part of the Special Collections of the Pueblo City-County Library District (PCCLD), and the annual report of the SAA’s records management section, as noted here too. Finally, are three posts by Samantha Cross on Pop Archives! In one she talked about the so-called “lost” letters of JM Barrie and Robert Louis Stevenson while reviewing archives in a few places: the video game “Hades,” Henry the records keeper in the CIA’s record room in the 2010 film, Red, and the video game “Control.” I have an upcoming review of archives and archivy themes in Lore Olympus, a webcomic on Webtoon which I really enjoy, on my blog Wading Through The Cultural Stacks.
That brings me to some other topics. Jennette Austin wrote about genealogy research from home and Chancery court records. Also related is Ancestry’s Holocaust records database, which is free, but you need an account to save information, of course. Then there are some honorable mentions. Some wrote about strengthening children’s privacy literacy, a probe into an e-book pricing scandal in UK universities, the UMD administration again not listening to students and refusing to put in place pass/fail grading this semester (despite a huge push from students), and likely not next semester either. In closing, there is a worthwhile post by historian Gene Procknow who reviews a book about the turbulent beginnings of paper money in U.S. history, and the CDC’s new guidance when it comes to masking up to protect from the virus’s infection.
I hope you all have a productive week to come and enjoy your late November “holiday” break.
- Burkely