The SAA election, fictional archives, libraries, genealogy, history, and beyond
This week I'll talk about archives, libraries, genealogy, and history, specifically mentioning a fiction my friend published yesterday, and some other news I found interesting in the past week
Hello everyone! I hope you had a productive week. Recently, I wrote an article analyzing the SAA election results after most of the people I voted for were elected, which is great! Hopefully, there is a sea change in the SAA going forward. Other than that, my friend wrote a wonderful new fictional work that includes a section about an archives preparing for an incoming invasion by flying steam-powered machines that menace in the airspace near the city. Here’s an excerpt:
…It was one of the most important places in Avalor. Information on people across the queendom was stored there. This included family genealogies, papers on myths and legends, government records, and other assorted records…During the 41-year-rule of the wicked Shuriki…the archives were ransacked by this evil queen and her minions. Sitting at the information desk, the archivist yawned. He pulled a lever. It first activated a set of bells which rang across the building, informing the staff of the impending emergency…The safe room [in the archives] was stocked with necessary supplies, like food and water for one week…the staff rested easy…One question remained: Would these measures be enough to protect the archives?
Other than that, I published a post examining the wizard in Prisoner Zero who turns out to be a librarian, and his library in the bowels of a spaceship. The librarian ends up becoming so stressed out from managing the library by himself, making it one of the first times I’ve seen librarian burnout portrayed in animation. I noted the integral role of library values to the show itself. With that, let me move onto the rest of my newsletter, starting with archives-related news.
Sarah Jones Weicksel wrote about the diverse coalition which worked to protect the NARA facility in Seattle from being closed, while my colleagues at the NSA wrote on the evolution of diplomacy in cyberspace and whether JFK sent a secret warning to Fidel Castro, through Brazil, on prisoners captured during the Bay of Pigs invasion. As valuable were articles on those preserving Olympic and Paralympic stories, improvements the NPRC made after the huge fire in 1973 which destroyed thousands of records, and the blaze in South Africa which destroyed records in a Jagger Library’s special collections, not all of which had been digitized. Other interesting pieces included the third part of a series on the history of dancing at the U.S. Naval Academy, a past NARA event on the killing of Vincent Chin in 1982 and the trial that galvanized the Asian American movement. I enjoyed seeing a project called Archiving the Black Web which is trying to establish “more equitable and accessible web archiving practice that can more effectively document the Black experience online,” an article that argues for a theory of archival power that considers “the role of process and place in the shaping of modern memory practices,” the fundamentals of appraisal, and the importance of acknowledging history. There were articles on how to pitch web archiving to your institution, curators and archivists talking about “items they’ve collected from our pandemic year,” an introduction of a member of the SNAP committee, and an obituary for a talented person who worked at the National Archives of Ireland: Gregory O’Connor. Of note, for those who are interested, is this video from the SAA’s Records Management Section:
That brings me to libraries. Jennifer Snoek-Brown put together excerpts from 10 poet librarians, while the Library of Congress (LOC) had blogposts on various topics. This included disability law in the United States, landscape photographs, music director Oliver Daniel, COVID-19, sign language, guided dance research tour, and the legal implications of the ship stuck in the Suez Canal. Also of interest were the interviews with Lindsay Braddy (head of the law cataloging team) and Jason Zarin (legal reference librarian), along with a post by motion picture preservation specialist Michael Hinton who explains what he does for his job. Hack Library School wrote on graduating from library school and making expectations for yourself this year with the pandemic. I read the New York Public Library blogposts on Josephine Baker and a reading list of Asian / Pacific Islander / Desi-American people. I enjoyed reading Carrie Wade’s piece on problems with library furniture that are visually appealing but isn’t actually workable for patrons, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund talking on five library victories over censorship, a defense of rainbow bookshelves (even though I think organizing it by content or some other measure would be better), and celebrating the role of public libraries.
With that, let me talk about genealogy. I Love Libraries explained how you can uncover your own family history at libraries. Other sites focused on use of Irish records, DNA, and searching for records when doing Black genealogy work. Related to this is a post by a Black woman, and genealogist, who calls herself Felipe, on her site Tracing African Roots, one of my favorite family history sites, titled “Are African Americans really mostly “Nigerian”?” Then there is the story of the amateur genealogist who scrubbed over 200 gravestones at a Maryland cemetery (All Hallows Episcopal Church) to make them “easier to photograph.” Of course, she ended up damaging the stones! Even worse, the woman who did this did not ask permission and said she didn’t know she was causing damage. The stones had stripes which could only be “fixed by washing down the entire headstone,” with estimates for cleaning the headstones costing “upwards of $10,000.” Luckily, a day for volunteers to help repair the graves is being planned for the spring while the sites Billion Graves and Find a Grave distanced themselves from the genealogist. There is a tip from The Hidden Branch on the necessity of reading up on local history, with context important when looking to your ancestors, including answering questions like: What wars were going on? Who leads the country? Who was the religious leader? What major events occurred?
This connects directly to stories about history. An archives technician for NARA, Thomas Richardson, explained the rich literary history of the U.S., Smithsonian magazine noted that the Associated Press turned 175 years old, Ellen Terrell wrote on the hello girls of World War I, and a farmer uncovering a 4,000 year old tomb in Ireland. Related to this is the American Historical Association (AHA) signing a brief that is “regarding the release of the records of two 1971 Boston, Massachusetts, grand juries that investigated the Pentagon Papers leak,” wanting the release of these records. Just as important are articles on teaching LGBTQ history, writing and advocacy at the AHA, historians and the future of newspaper access, the Smithsonian’s COVID-19 collection, and how the New Orleans was a center of slave trade. The same could be said when it comes to articles about interstate highways, jazz clubs, the history MA, the Harlem Hellfighters, the Angel Island Immigration Station, and feeling like an interloper as a minority student.
That brings me to the final part of this newsletter. April Hathcock wrote a poem on justice, George Floyd, and injustice in the U.S. The Nib had illustrations on how private contractors will remain in Afghanistan, ways that George Floyd was defended, militarization of police, more money for police departments, and the never-ending news cycle. Smithsonian magazine noted how the U.S. returned 500 artifacts to Mexico, that humans have altered 97% of the Earth’s land through habitat and species loss, and a new study pushing the origins of human-driven global change back thousands of years. Others wrote on captions on Zoom accounts, amplifying women’s voices on Wikiquote, Latino art, misappropriation of native/indigenous imagery in pharmaceutical advertising, and adding image descriptions on Twitter.
That’s all for this week. See you all next week!
- Burkely