Pop culture reviews, market-based approaches to archives, libraries, genealogy, history, and beyond
This week, I'll be talking about the same topics as always, with a focus on market-based language from NARA, challenges of digitization, proposed changes to odious library classifications, and more!
Hello all! Hope you all had a productive week. This week was relatively eventful, as this Pride month comes to a close. I published a short post about the animal librarian in Tamberlane and another about two “keepers of secrets,” focusing on Jocasta Nu in Star Wars and the unnamed records clerk in Joker. Additionally, I just published a post about a bun-wearing librarian shusher in one of my favorite webcomics, Boyfriends, and the role of spinster librarians. On Friday, I put together a “moment” of a recent discussion by the SNAP Section about so-called archival “neutrality” and activist archivists. With that, let me begin my newsletter.
There were many articles and analyses relating to archives which I’ll talk about in this week’s newsletter. For one, Sam Cross wrote about the problematic depiction of archives, and archivists, in a fictional book by Eva St. John, with the help of her friend, Rachel Thompson, who told people to “read the article, not the book.” Apart from that, David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States and head of NARA, noted that the agency’s staff, from his view, is working to improve how users (which he calls customers) interact with the agency’s records and resources, and delivering excellent service. This perspective, while logical and justified, is limited by the fact that he is at the top of the NARA leadership and talking about service, noting that “qualitative and quantitative market research” will be examined. This makes him sound more like he is part of a private company or a corporate archive than a public entity. Some archivists have said the reality of archivists at the present time and place is that funders dictate a “market language of use and efficiencies…whilst an ethos of managerialism strips the ethical and moral away from public services.” Others have noted that since the 1970s, government entities have been told to be economically efficient, and have to, as a result, “justify their existence in economic and market-based rather than social and cultural terms.” As such, government entities often privilege, as argued by Ciaran B. Trace, “economic and market-based approaches over notions of accountability, responsiveness, and the social good.” It seems that Ferriero is doing some of the former rather than the latter but is also trying to balance both approaches.
The University of Washington, Special Collections began a podcast series in February, titled Beyond Scope and Content, which “tells the hidden stories of women filmmakers in the Film Archive.” Apart from this, there were articles about digital archives of Black life, the importance of funding the National Archives in Australia, UNESCO having an webinar focusing on digitization of UNESCO Constitution documents and featured speakers from various national archives, explaining the “challenges and opportunities of digitisation for empowering archival communities around the globe,” and the most recent edition of The Archival Spirit, a newsletter of the Religious Collections Section of the SAA. A number of SAA sections are having elections for their steering committees beginning soon, specifically the Archival History Section, the SNAP Section, and the Performing Arts Section. I wish the best for all those running for positions and hope good people are elected that will move these SAA sections forward!
There was great news in the library world. Violet Fox, who calls herself an “expert in library metadata and classification,” shared two resolutions for the ALA Council, one on removing the “illegal aliens” term from the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) once and for all, and another focusing on the LCSH revision process as a whole. Both resolutions were written by her and her colleagues Tina Gross and Jill Baron. Fox noted that while the ALA Washington Office opposes these resolutions, saying the process should work more quietly behind the scenes to “prevent it becoming a political talking point,” it has been five years since the Library of Congress (LOC) committed to removing the “illegal aliens” term, so it is time to remove the term altogether and make the process for LCSH headings more transparent. Fox requested people ask her about the resolutions if they have any questions. Speaking of LOC, there were interesting posts which I read in the past week which are worth mentioning. Some focused on LOC employees like Maurice Carter, head of the receiving and warehousing unit in the Logistics Services Division of Integrated Support Services, who has “kept the Library’s shipping docks open during the COVID pandemic,” a very important job, and musician Roman Totenberg. Most important of all, however, was a guest post by Megan Metcalf, a Women’s Gender and LGBTQIA+ studies librarian and collection specialist at LOC, talking about the library celebrating Pride Month with an event about the library’s LGBTQ collections, which are relatively extensive, including foundational LGBTQ publications in the 1950s and 1960s like the Mattachine Review (1955–66), ONE Magazine (1953–69) and The Ladder (1956–72).
I liked reading Jennifer Snoek-Brown’s examination of librarians in the 1987 film, Prick Up Your Ears, and other assorted stories about libraries. This includes ones about the pandemic, libraries offering COVID-19 vaccinations, and UC Berkeley making over 10,000 Chinese-language titles available, for free, online, in a database. Other than reading the depressing ALA report that aging public library infrastructure in the U.S. will require billions of dollars to be fixed, it was illuminating to read Robin Gee’s post on being the only out transgender (and non-binary) staff member in their library.
Having talked about archives and libraries, I’d like to pivot toward genealogy. For one, there is the financial news that 23andMe, the DNA testing company, is going public. Secondly, there were articles about remains of enslaved people in Georgetown finally being laid to rest, tracing ancestry using DNA, how the 1950 federal census (to be available for searching next year on April 1, 2022) does not have infant cards available because infants born between January and March 1950 were not enumerated on the census because they “died before the official census day of April 1, 1950” according to Claire Kustens. As such, the cards are not part of the release of the 1950 federal census because they are not part of NARA holdings and were not saved, considered to not be permanent records, but temporary instead, unfortunately. Just as valuable were stories about source citations and a genealogist who has a family tree which is exploding in its size. However, I was inspired most of all by a comment on LinkedIn by Melissa Barker: “I am always telling genealogists to NOT GIVE UP! There are records being found in attics, basements, closets and old buildings all the time. There is information being discovered in records we already have…NEVER GIVE UP!” That is something I stand by, as my genealogy research slowly moves ahead.
Just as important is news in the realm of history. As always, Smithsonian magazine had great articles. This included pieces on Asian American folk heroes, a well-known photo studio named Bachrach Photographers, unearthed footage shedding a new light on the Hindenburg disaster, an American monk traveling across the world to safeguard documents that tell “humanity’s story,” remains of ten Indigenous children who attended one of the first boarding schools for Indigenous students, returning to their homes after 100 years, and Egyptian archaeologists accidentally discovering hundreds of ancient rock cut tombs which date back over 4,200 years! In related news, the American Historical Association released a statement which opposed “legislative efforts to restrict education about racism in American history,” covered in various media outlets, while writers for Perspectives in History covered many important topics, such as questions of equity in remote education, a clothing scrapbook, the business of applied history, and the experience of finding women’s expressions of sufferings in their own personal writings! While the last one may make some people scratch their hands in confusion, it is vital since women didn’t always write down their experiences for a variety of reasons. This has led some researchers and historians to piece together the lives of women by closely examining the words of men and official records, as something women wrote themselves is non-existent.
There are articles which don’t easily fit into the categories of archives, libraries, genealogy, or history. Smithsonian magazine summarized a study which estimated that 50 billion wild birds live on Earth, while noting that red patches on Pluto are mystifying scientists, discussed why a new statue of Marilyn Monroe is so controversial, and the return of a symbol of national identity, an ancient, pre-Inca breastplate, returning to Peru. The latter reminds me of one of the season one episodes of Carmen Sandiego, where Carmen finds a gold coin named Ecuadoran 8 Escudos, which is a symbol of the independence of Ecuador. She is able to, successfully, return the coin to an archaeologist and save a treasure for the people of the country. In other news which should surprise no one, ICE, discussed internally surveilling protests of immigrant advocates and retaliating against them for their views. On the positive side, Montpelier, the home of James Madison, in Orange County, Virginia, voted to share power with descendants of enslaved people who worked on the plantation, with the Montpelier foundation saying this would provide a model for historical sites nationwide. Hopefully, the foundation is right and other historic sites do the same, so perhaps Monticello or Mount Vernon could be next?
The Diamondback had an opinion piece calling for UMD to respect its workers, articles about opposition to development of affordable housing in College Park for environmental reasons (although there is likely a racial component which is unsaid as a reason for opposition), and the US Education Department extending Title IX protections to transgender students. Inside Higher Ed, which occasionally has reactionary opinion pieces complaining about racial justice, gender justice, and the like, had pieces arguing for summer breaks for faculty members, noting tuition discount rates for first-years, and importance of mask mandates. School Library Journal had stories about multilingual learners faced challenges in distance learning. The Chronicle of Higher Education warned that the tenure denial of Nikole Hannah Jones, a Black female journalist who worked on the 1619 Project along with other New York Times journalists, is “craven and dangerous.” Medical X Press reported on a study finding that while the origins of COVID-19 are still a mystery, the virus was “highly human adapted.” As always, The Nib had wonderful illustrations. Some of my favorites were about: destruction by humans to the environment via an analogy of humans trashing planets, using plutonium to engage in peaceful space exploration, and the push over and over by consumers to fulfill their desire to have new things to make themselves happy. Other illustrations focused on Tucker Carlson being outed as a source for information on the former traitorous president, Fox News, and other topics, how everything is back to normal for certain people while the Earth continues to burn, and fears, by certain misguided individuals, that teaching anything about racism will somehow cause their children to be “infected.”
That’s all for this week. I hope you all have a productive week ahead.
- Burkely