Reviews, archives, libraries, genealogy, and the value of history
This week's newsletter I'll be talking about some new pop culture reviews I published, but also archives, library, and genealogy news, along with related stories
Hello everyone! I hope you all had a good week. There’s been some great news in the past week. For one, I had an article published in I Love Libraries reviewing libraries in Mira, Royal Detective, an image of which is shown at the beginning of this newsletter. Secondly, I had my first article published in The Geekiary titled “Disenchantment is Queer Through and Through,” which David Opie called it a “great article.” Third, I put together a post about messy libraries and fighting in the library in animated series. With that, let me continue onward to the rest of my newsletter.
When it comes to archives, there is a lot to report for this week. On Twitter, Maarija Krusten told me about how she once participated in listservs, David Ferriero of NARA noted that since the start of the pandemic, “a large portion of NARA has been teleworking 100%” with staff from the Office of Research Services responding to reference requests, preparing digitized files and metadata, creating folder and box lists, submitting metadata and digitized files to upload to the NARA Catalog, writing blogposts, conducting quality control on digital images, and “conducting processing and description work that can be done remotely.” He said that all these tasks allowed the agency to “connect with customers and make access happen.” He further highlighted History Hub, new collaborative projects involving the NARA Catalog, tagging and transcription in the catalog, and many other efforts. Beyond NARA, there is a post where Rebekah Davis talks about her daily time as an archivist at Limestone County Archives, one of my colleagues at the National Security Archive, Lauren Harper, writes about new documents focused on the Capitol Riot, and Brecht Declercq pleas for media historians and media archivists to become better acquainted with each other. I was fascinated to read Karl Melrose’s article about “benchmarking of records across organisations,” Kristen Merryman noting how fifteen films from the forestry service are available on Digital North Carolina, a summary of a new book by Verne Harris about the ghosts of the archive, and a person on the /r/Archivists subreddit asking how to store newspapers. I was excited to learn about the digital archive of the Kress Collection, a collection which could be useful to some of you.
That brings me to libraries. Hack Library School had posts about the ALA’s Library History Round Table and “special libraries,” while I Love Libraries talked about online games and how libraries have adapted due to the pandemic. American Libraries magazine wrote about how library patrons with disabilities face increased challenges as a result of the pandemic, NYPL put together a booklist related to the film “Judas and the Black Messiah” and another post more broadly about Black History Month. While horrified by the story of a terrible patron on an /r/Libraries thread, it was even more valuable to read two threads which talked about libraries adapting to the pandemic, in terms of what “open” looks like, and taking books out of quarantine. The same could be said about an article assessing different definitions of disability, history of libraries in classical antiquity, a series of events hosted by the Wiener Holocaust Library highlighting their new digital resource, Testifying to the Truth, which “features more than 1,000 eyewitness accounts of refugees and survivors of the Holocaust, newly digitised and translated into English for the first time,” and a post by business reference librarian Lynn Weinstein about Black insurance companies. I’d like to note Cynthia Hudson-Vitale and Judy Ruttenberg writing about persistent identifiers which can connect a scholarly record with many versions, Veronica Arellano Douglas trying to pull back the “curtain” on so-called library magic (clue: it’s not magic), and a project called Who Can Get Your Book? run by the Fight for the Future about accessibility (and lack thereof) of books to people across the U.S. I urge you all to sign this letter to legislators, asking them to support the Build America’s Libraries Act which would “provide $5 billion in funding to repair, modernize, and construct library facilities in underserved and marginalized communities.”
With that, it’s time to talk about genealogy. First of all, Carolynn ni Lochlainn has an interesting genealogy channel which people should subscribe to. Other than that, Brooke Schreier Ganz gave a talk about how you can use FOIA for your genealogy, there is the story of a college student named Eric Schubert using genetic genealogy to crack cold cases, and a focus on a Franklin County, North Carolina Black woman, Renate Yarborough-Sanders, who has spent over 20 years to research her family, asking others to do the same. Of note for genealogists is Ancestry.com beating a California privacy suit over yearbook photos, with a federal judge saying that the plaintiffs, who said the company “uses and profits from photographs and other personal details in its U.S. school yearbooks database without permission,” don’t have standing, and that the “company is immune from liability under the Communications Decency Act.” While on the one hand, this could be seen as a positive for genealogists, as it allows records to be open without restriction, it is a negative in terms of privacy. In the past week, I also read about Irish genealogy, RootsTech Connect 2021, and Black genealogy. Even worse than Ancestry’s victory was the AI tool created by MyHeritage, a genealogy testing company, which creepily lets you re-animate dead relatives. I’m sorry, but this is going too far. I don’t why anyone would ever think this is a good idea. This type of software is dishonoring dead people, moves away from actual research, and understanding of the past. It is no coincidence that a US investment firm, Francisco Partners, just acquired MyHeritage, based in Tel Aviv, which has “acquired 11 other companies since it was founded.” This is purely the machinery of capitalism at work, with a company profiting off people’s family stories.
That brings me to the final part of this newsletter. Connected to the above video, The New Republic asks if historians can be traumatized by history (the answer is obviously yes), the American Historical Association wrote a letter of support for the institution of political history in Hungary, while the AHA’s Perspectives on History talked about grad school. The National Museum of African American History & Culture noted the continued importance of Black History Month, a podcast of the Preservation Maryland interviewed the head of the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture (Chanel Compton), and Early American Historian William Hogeland wrote about Naomi Wolf, Tucker Carlson, and the threat of American fascism, as he terms it. I liked reading about Frederick Douglass, the problem of information overload, how Libraries Archives and Museums are more alike than different especially when it comes to precarious labor, and am glad to see Dr. Seuss Enterprises shelving six books, citing hurtful portrayals of Asian and Black people. It is not surprising to see that in 2020, national parks across the U.S. had, collectively, 237 million visitors. That’s a lot of people! On another note, I’m excited to read Rebecca DeWolf’s upcoming book (in October) titled Gendered Citizenship: The Original Conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment, 1920-1963, and Margot Canaday’s new book, under contract, titled Queer Career: Sexuality and Employment in Modern America, whenever it comes out, as it could be useful for LGBTQ genealogy and research. Canaday is a legal and political historian wrote a very thoughtful book titled The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth Century America, which has been called “the most expansive study of the federal regulation of homosexuality yet written,” examining that regulation when it comes to immigration, military, and social welfare.
That’s it for this week’s newsletter. Hope you all have a productive week ahead.
- Burkely