Reparative processing, pop culture, libraries, the LOC subject heading change, and more
This week I'll be sharing with you some of the latest news about archives, libraries, genealogy, and history, in a newsletter deemed "too long for email."
Hello everyone. I hope you are all doing well! On Tuesday, my post on Pop Culture Library Review asked whether Kaisa, the librarian in Hilda, is experiencing burnout or not. On Wednesday, another one of my reviews about a webcomic, Mira!, for The Geekiary, was published. The following day, my blog, Wading Through the Archival Stacks sprung back to life (after no posts since September) with a post about an archives scene in a recent episode of The Ghost and Molly McGee. With that, let me move onto the rest of my newsletter.
There are a few archives-related stories to talk about this week. Alexandra deGraffenreid, Collection Services Processing Archivist at Penn State’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library, wrote a detailed and important critical archival analysis for the Journal of Language, Learning and Academic Writing which argues that “ethical and reparative processing needs should be prioritized within an archives’ overall extensible processing program.” This piece explores the tension between using extensible and minimal processing practices to process backlogs efficiently while acknowledging the “power of archivists in shaping the historical record and their ethical responsibilities” toward communities within their collections. deGraffenreid further says that archivists should prioritize collections where archival practices have perpetuated the obfuscation or marginalization of “records of traditionally underrepresented communities.” She argued this work capitalizes on “the inherent flexibility within an extensible processing framework.” Previously, I have listed deGraffenreid as “Alexia Puravida” in this newsletter, especially when noting tweets that she has posted on archives-related issues as she is a prolific tweeter. I believed, based on how email accounts and social media sites require you input a first and last name, that her Twitter username was the same as her name. However, once I opened her article, I realized that this was incorrect. I apologize for that error. Moving back to the article, I recommend, as deGraffenreid suggested, reading the whole special issue. Articles within the issue focus on topics such as ethics of consent and privacy in 21st century archival stewardship, Indigenous community-based archival provenance, digital repatriation, archival custody, historical metadata debt, archival imperialism, and other topics.
On Twitter, there was chatter about how archives aren’t neutral, the reality of digital humanities labor/digital work, archival silences, obsolescence of technology with required constant maintenance, archival description (which is not the same as library cataloging despite what some librarians say), and archivists in DnD. Apart from the book entitled Captioning the Archives, with Lester Sloan opening his “archive of street photography, portraits, and news photos, and [his daughter] Aisha interview[ing]…him, creating rich, probing, dialogue-based captions for more than one hundred photographs,” I was excited to read a new pop culture archivist, in a place I wouldn’t have expected. I am referring to the Jedi Archivist, Lyssa Votz, who is said to crave data, rather than adventure, and an operative of Crimson Dawn who is named the Archivist. I don’t know whether either of these characters will pan out to be actual archivists in these upcoming Star Wars comics, but I am cautiously optimistic.
Other archivists, like Patrick Hswe, wrote about equity budgeting, while Sam Cross reviewed a character she argued was an archivist, in an episode of The Venture Bros. Posts on the subreddit /r/Archivists focused on collection management, digitizing negatives and transparencies, family archiving, reprocessing, and described an example of archives in popular culture, specifically in the first episode of Star Trek: Picard. Apart from this, were scattered posts about State Department Employees participating in a dissent channel calling on the agency to “denounce [the] January 6 riot,” highlights from the presidential archives described by NARA’s David Ferriero, and the new steering committee of the Web Archives Section. Additionally, I learned about the Library of Congress (LOC)’s Goodson-Todman Collection which archives old game shows, the importance of providing restricted access to mental health records, the types of consent forms that archives (and archivists) encounter, and read an article in Contents magazine about dark archives, calling them the “repositories of human knowledge to which we no longer have operational access.” The SAA's Privacy and Confidentiality Section provided links about proposed revisions to the ACRL/RBMS Guidelines Regarding Security and Theft in Special Collections, the advocacy of some calling on Biden to reveal JFK assassination records, the relation of anthropology with archives, and executive privilege (i.e. the former President trying to stop NARA from releasing his records to Congress). The latter was covered at length by Jonathan Shaub, noting the role of NARA and federal agencies.
That brings me to libraries. On Twitter, deGraffenreid noted that people can’t use Dewey to remove the problematic parts of the Dewey Decimal System, as White nationalism is baked into the system. Others shared books about library work and disability (Beyond Accommodation: Creating an Inclusive Workplace for Disabled Library Workers), suggested changing the language used for “master records,” noted banned and challenged library books, and asked people to add Homosaurus to the Alma Authority Vocabularies. There was also, on Twitter, a thread which shared views of BIPOC librarians on what a good manager looks like, and another thread, which argued that the ALA has disengaged with book challenges and protecting library workers. The biggest news of the week is LOC changing the “illegal aliens” subject heading to “noncitizens” and “illegal immigration.” While you could argue this is a start or even “victory,” librarians have criticized it as erasing “undocumented immigrants” as a term, said that the term “illegal immigration” is still problematic, and noted the reported opposition within LOC to the term “undocumented.” Some even said that term “illegal immigration” was chosen as a “sop to anti-immigrant forces in Congress,” and as a way of avoiding political blowback.
Violet Fox, one of the major proponents of the effort to change the term, argued in a thread that LOC’s action is not progress, and is insufficient. She argued that LOC is trying to “assuage conservative lawmakers so they don't come after libraries.” Fox stated that ALA Policy Office and LOC are wrong in their assessment of this change, while local libraries have made strong changes on their own. In response to Fox, some noted that LOC is not “the final arbiter of language we use in libraries.” Some were more enthusiastic/ glad for the language change, calling it “progress” or a “welcome step.” Kelly Jensen of Book Riot, a former librarian, was one of those more critical of LOC. She said that while the word “alien” was removed, the term “illegal” remains, saying it is “not only dehumanizing, it’s inaccurate and it’s racially charged.” She noted the campaign by Race Forward to not use the “illegal” word, i.e. Drop the I Word, with three reasons why it shouldn’t be used, why it matters, and a journalist reference guide. Jensen also called what LOC did the “bare minimum” and not a step forward. Of note, here, is an article by Monika Batra Kashyap discussing nuances of terms used in discussions about immigration, as share by David Philip Norris, also known as the Secular Librarian, or nightcataloguer on Twitter. Kashyap writes:
We are currently stuck in an “immigrant nomenclature debate” which includes, on one end, those who insist on using the term “illegal immigrant” such as some politicians and the media…On the other end are those, such as many immigrant rights and advocacy groups, who eschew the term “illegal immigrant” in favor of descriptors such as “undocumented,” “unauthorized,” “non-citizens,” “without status,” or “unlawfully present.”…In addition to the legal and moral grounds…I would like to offer an additional ground as a basis to reject the term “illegal immigrant” – history…the hypocrisy, historical amnesia and racism that undergird the term “illegal immigrant” and also makes apparent the negating attributes of terms like “undocumented”…while I firmly advocate for the wholesale jettison of the term “illegal immigrant” based on the legal, moral, and historical grounds above, I am also dissatisfied with terms like “undocumented,” “unauthorized,” “non-citizens,” “without status,” and “unlawfully present.” These terms are framed solely in the negative, and thereby reduce a person to a deficiency. Such negating terms are dehumanizing; they connote finality, defeat, shame, and blame. That said, because of the immigrant youth-led “undocumented, unafraid and unapologetic” movement which has reclaimed and reframed the term “undocumented,” such a term should indeed be deemed better than terms like “illegal immigrant.”…let us continue to interrogate the words we use – however imperfect the words may be.
Moving beyond this are posts by LOC about Jonathan Larson, a 15th century manuscript LOC just acquired, defining what pinning and linking is, the story of an Indigenous researcher in D.C., Indigenous population business trends, an iconic photo of a Black soldier from the Civil War, and a research guide which focuses on public international law. On a totally different but partially related topic, there are posts by the prolific April Hathcock about the reality of historical trauma, and precarity in the library profession, causing problems for many but especially for people of color. Hack Library School, on a totally different subject had posts about group work, changing jobs, and funny library tweets.
Apart from posts on library subreddits about a third party website stealing library event information, or LIS e-resources, Vanity Fair noted that two members of the “Spotsylvania County School Board in Virginia advocated for burning certain books,” and Jennifer Snoek-Brown reviewed Lovecraft Country, which features segregated libraries. There was also a presentation on the infrastructure of the Internet Archive (a digital library, not an archive), books about bookmobiles and mobile libraries from NYPL, an opinion piece saying that libraries are at the forefront of combatting loneliness, and a Wired article saying that while blind people won the right to break the DRM of e-books, in three years they have to do it again.
There are some genealogy articles worth sharing. Some reviewed Kate Moore’s book about Elizabeth Packard, who I’ve mentioned in this newsletter before, while some focused on those who found closure on Find a Grave, and another said that the voice of every ancestor matters. I would counter the latter in that some ancestors may be so detestable that you may not want to share their voice and that’s ok. Genealogy journal has a number of interesting articles, whether on historical trauma, tree symbolism as a method for researching and writing genealogy, family history and searching for “hidden trauma,” a critical yoga studies approach to grappling with race, supporting the “identity, growth, healing and transformation of others,” and reviewing the book The Psychology of Family History. There were assorted posts and articles about plotting connections, Irish warehouses, cemeteries off the beaten path, and the value of a will to genealogy research. At the same time, Marlee Logan’s Dividing Ridge Genealogy had blogs about a personal letter, the Lincoln connection, the lore of family history, and the genealogist’s time machine of sorts.
That brings me to history. LOC had a number of articles, about a signatory of the Declaration of Independence which is buried in Washington, D.C., pre-Prohibition mixology, saving a poster, the Stockholm bloodbath of November 1520, and celebrating the ageless Satchel Paige. Smithsonian magazine had articles on subjects such as a 300 million year old fossil found in Utah, the 2,000-year-old coffin revealing Roman burial practices, the National Museum of African Art reaffirming its commitment to repatriation of art, the 1920s gossip around Irving Berlin’s interfaith marriage, and researchers uncovering almost 200 bodies in a Welsh medieval cemetery. Otherwise there were articles about shifting racial boundaries and their limits in Nazi Germany, a history of African-descended people in Houston’s Fifth Ward, the influence of White supremacy on the women’s suffrage movement, and the interconnection of postal work and the struggle for Black freedom.
That brings me to the last part of this newsletter, which focuses on topics which don’t fit completely with articles and posts about archives, libraries, genealogy, or history, but are still important enough to include. Some articles focused on knowledge-formation networks in colonial India, nationality and religion, bookstores are adjusting to supply chain problems, the material politics of in/animacy and queer kin within the childhood menagerie, the biopolitics of immigration, comics in education, and a story about how Louisiana’s petroleum industry profits from “exploiting historic inequalities, showing how slavery laid the groundwork for environmental racism.” Smithsonian magazine had articles about freeze-dried mice sperm producing healthy pups, a bug which scurried below the surface, the Thames River recovering after it was determined “biologically dead,” a mass grave found in a city in South America, how pearls maintain their symmetry, and climate change is transforming the bodies of Amazonian birds, to name a few articles.
Hathcock, who was mentioned earlier in this newsletter, had a post about “entertainers of color who have achieved white fame.” She noted that such people can’t “stray too far from the scripts” when they make clear they don’t belong to White people. In another post, she noted the importance of engaging in action to push back against the “encroachment of the neoliberal corporatization of our work as academic librarians and higher education,” including getting rid of learning analytics altogether. On totally different subjects, I enjoyed reading about the best characters in Inside Job, Filipino folklore in the anime, Trese, one of my favorite short animated series, the reveal in the second volume of Adachi & Shimamura that a character may have so-called “high-functioning” autism, what to expect from the finale of The Aquatope on the White Sand, ND Stevenson’s trans journey in comics, and Molly Ostertag talking about bringing her new graphic novel to your email inbox.
That brings me to The Nib, with wonderful illustrations as always. Some focused on the 1969 Alcatraz occupation by Indigenous people, leaf raking, the NYPD vaccine mandate lie, auditing the Earth, progressives in the wood chipper as a result of the current infrastructure bill, how abortion is an essential service, and the faulty decision made at COP-26, and what climate change deniers would say.
That’s all for this week. I hope you all have a good week ahead. Since there is the Thanksgiving holiday coming up, the next newsletter may come out sometime after next Sunday. So, just be aware of that.
- Burkely