The crisis continues: archives and libraries adapt to the new circumstances
This week's newsletter, like last week, will focus on COVID-19, especially on the effects on the library and archives field, while pulling in some other important stories.
Hello everyone! I hope you all had a great week. Again, many of my articles this week focus on COVID-19, although I am including related news which I thought deserved an honorable mention as well.
I finished collecting content for a weebly website I created, titled “Shaking the U.S. to the core: consequences of the COVID-19 public health crisis,” which I mentioned in my March 26th newsletter. It includes mostly statements from organizations, but includes a focus on archivists, and much more, from early March to May 5 of this year. The COVID-19 Digital Archive, which I created on Webrecorder, accompanies this website. I know the aftermath of the crisis is just as important as the crisis itself, but for every archival project, there has to be an end date.
Moving on, I’d like to highlight news from the library field. Hack Library School had a wonderful collection of articles again. Some talked about what people in the field should do now that internships are cancelled, while others talked about the importance of staying sane, and planning a practicum during the pandemic. Another writer even claimed that adopting a puppy has taught them something about being a librarian, which is a questionable claim at best. Apart from this, there was the annual library systems report released by American Libraries, an open letter to library directors, while some reported about the banning of LGBTQ children’s books in some U.S. libraries (violating the principles of library profession set by the ALA), with a school board in Alaska claiming that The Great Gatsby, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Catch-22, The Things They Carried, and Invisible Man contained “content that could potentially harm students.” Of course, these claims are absurd and have no basis, as they are just another reason to ban or censor books.
As for the archives field, there were some articles just as important as those relating to the library field. The first of these posts debunked common myths about precarious labor in the field. Also of interest was an interview with Kat Siddle, librarian for the lululemon athletica. Siddle described herself as a “clothes librarian” and manages the “historical garment archive at lululemon athletica’s headquarters in Vancouver, BC.” As such, she has become a librarian who runs an archive, making it a “hybrid library-archive space, because employees can check items in and out, and they’re able to self-serve if I’m not available,” saying she is always learning more in the “design-driven environment.” As the series on the SAA’s Committee of Public Awareness (COPA) blog declares, “There’s an Archivist for That!” So, there can be an archivist for anything. As Angella, George, and Lance chanted in one of my friend’s fictional stories,
We’re here!
We’re archivists!
Get used to it!
I’d like to give special mention to some stories. The Diamondback had some great articles, some noting how the UMD president, Wallace Loh, criticized Betsy DeVos for her changes to Title IX rules, while also holding a virtual town hall. Apart from the unfortunate loss at Annapolis in the fight to get graduate assistants (and other graduate student employees) collective bargaining rights, there is the wild story of the SGA president vetoing legislation which had been approved by the rest of the student government in the organization’s last meeting! Some people can be such jerks. I also found the story by The Verge about the confusion raised by Disney’s tweet about the #Maythe4th hashtag, Judit Szakács writing about the business of disinformation in Eurozine, and Jeannette Holland Austin writing about researching Creeks and Cherokees in her genealogy newsletter, Yesterday, on May 1st also as fascinating.
That’s all for this week. I hope you all have a great week ahead.
- Burkely