The value of records, a NARA mini-documentary, library unionization, bias in Library of Congress headings, the ALA, history, and beyond!
Happy Tuesday everyone! Today I'll be bringing you the latest news and analysis of assorted archives, libraries, genealogy, and history topics.
Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing well! With cleaning out of two closets with clothes and other stuff, I’ve been a bit busy in the past two days, so that’s why this newsletter is going out today instead of the usual date on Sunday. Last Tuesday, I penned a post about the unnamed librarian shusher in Steven Universe who was sort of redeemed in some of the comics of the series and on Friday I shared some episodes and such analyzed by a British archivist which notes examples of archives in fiction. In the past week, I was impressed with posts from my colleagues at NSA about the Afghanistan War and biometric devices captured by the Taliban. So those are both worth a read, especially the first one as it uses Snowflakes that me and my colleagues worked to index and make more accessible to people! So that put a smile on my face to see that. With that, let me move onto the rest of this newsletter!
With the coming of the Taliban into power in Afghanistan, coupled with the U.S. withdrawal from a war in a country where the U.S. should have never been involved in the first place, some commented that “human lives are more important than records,” in response to the founder of an all-girls boarding school in the country destroying her student’s records. On a related note is noting how archives support their communities (well, we hope they do), efforts to digitize records, specifically military records in the case of NARA, and the British Library putting over 1 million newspaper pages online for free. Also of note was the story of an archives technician Jesse Wilinski who teamed up with National Archives video producer John Heyn to create a story “that explores the life and death of Charles Sprout, a soldier in the United States Colored Troops (USCT).” This is available in a documentary published on NARA’s YouTube channel, which talks, in part, about how records aren’t “dead” but are of “living” because they are records “of people who actually lived and did great things” and how the archives are key for park rangers to be able to do their jobs:
Other than this, there were posts about primary sources in NARA holdings about the Olympics, the availability of Consular Dispatches, from 1783 to 1906, on NARA’s Catalog, a notice providing a “partial waiver for the Declassification Review of Certain White House, National Security Council, and Homeland Security Council Records,” the SAA looking for nominations for the Vice President/President-Elect, Council Member, and Nominating Committee positions within the organization, and the finding of NSV documents in a house which are being sorted and viewed by employees of a city archive in Hagen, Germany, showing the continued value of archives once again! Otherwise, there were some documents shared by archives about Alexander Hamilton, a commemorative stamp from the Postal Service on the Apollo 11 landing, a signature of Bill Clinton a document wishing the Department of the Interior a 150th anniversary in 1999, the elegant signature of a “slippery character” (and Scottish-born Crown sympathizer) in papers from Henry Clinton, and an autographed tour program of Louis Armstrong and his concert group.
That brings me to libraries. First and foremost, as I said on Twitter, if you know of any webcomics with librarians, with the letters A, E, F, H, I, J, K, O, Q, V, W, X, or Y, let me know! I’ll do my own searching, of course, but what I search for can be limited, which is why I’m asking here. Anyway, there were stories about mobile libraries in Afghanistan in response to the Taliban takeover, the challenges of finding ISSNs for journals, and anger at the ALA possibly connecting to the top leaders of the ALA being majority people of color. While some responded to the latter saying they agreed, others said the reason for anger at the ALA was due to lack of advocacy on behalf of library workers early on in the pandemic, or that the ALA cares more about libraries as a concept than actual library workers. In any case, it was interesting to see the discourse around this as someone in the archives and libraries fields. I say this as someone constantly wondering whether I will keep my ALA or SAA membership next year, as my ALA and SAA membership will both expire on March 31. Currently, I’m leaning more toward letting my ALA membership lapse. I mean, will we ever see the ALA speaking out against the board of trustees of Worthington, Ohio libraries voting to not “recognize a demand by library staff to unionize, forcing employees to move toward its own vote”?
In this case, 70% of Worthington staff members had “signed and turned in union cards to the State Employee Relations Board” yet the board sneered and decided to not recognize it! Of librarians, 75% are NOT unionized nationwide, even though “union librarians typically earn 38% higher salaries than those not in unions.” That’s terrible. In Ohio itself, while there are “30 collective bargaining agreements among Ohio's 251 public libraries,” the only library in Central Ohio which has a union is Fairfield County District Library, which has “52 employees, 34 of which are bound by a union contract,” but only five of those 34 pay union dues.
When has the ALA ever spoken about unionization in libraries? The Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT), a unit within the ALA which seeks to make the organization more democratic and “establish progressive priorities” for the association and profession has raised this issue a couple times, passing the resolutions each time. This included, a 1980 resolution to support Massachusetts librarians unionizing, a 1982 resolution to support the right of Chicago Public Library to unionize, a 1996 resolution supporting Omaha Library Workers, and a 2008 resolution to oppose sweatshop labor and support union businesses. According to the SRRT’s list of resolutions, the 1982 resolution was rejected by the ALA Council and the 2008 resolution was changed to remove support for union businesses! Reading their list gives the impression that the ALA, and especially its council, has taken very conservative and reactionary positions, starting in the mid-1980s, but the amount of rejections after 2000 are higher than in any other period. In 2018, an article in American Libraries quoted Aliqae Geraci, chair of the American Library Association–Allied Professional Association Standing Committee on the Salaries and Status of Library Workers, as saying that “…librarians have a special responsibility to raise their occupational wage floor, to make room for support staff to achieve higher wages. We have an ethical obligation to raise everybody up.”
What I have said about the ALA here is, of course, not comprehensive, but it is my belief it is the case and I’d ask readers to find any recent resolutions by the ALA where unionization has been mentioned, using this search for example, as ALA resources like “Unions in Libraries” were last updated in 2000. Of note on this topic, is April Hathcock’s post in December 2016 criticizing “collaborator statements that ALA administration released immediately” after the election of the former traitorous President. She argued at the time that the ALA “does not care about its members or their communities…[it] cares only about…funding libraries.” She further said that the ALA will “gladly sell out its members and their communities for this bottom line,” colluding with anyone possible. While she did not talk about unionization specifically, what she said applies to this, as it could explain the ALA’s non-action on unionization.
Moving on, some wrote about summer directed fieldwork as part of an MLIS program, no more late fees at Louisville's public libraries, Southern University’s Library telling the stories of former slaves, a book fairy keeping the wretched Little Free Libraries (often filled with trash books from my experience) filled, an article about staff perceptions and experiences with drag queen storytime, and an interview with Chris Brain, foreign law intern working on the Global Legal Research Directorate, part of the Law Library of Congress. Out of all of this is a post, by River Freemont, that stands out. Freemont’s post explores bias and Library of Congress subject headings (LCSH), noting gaps in headings which do not “fully convey the meaning of these works,” the cases when “subject headings being used were inappropriate or outdated.” She also did research for pansexuality to be a new LCSH and to support a change in the heading from “sexual minority culture” to “queer culture,” while learning about the process for proposing headings, with complicated rules, and the fact that it can “take over two months to receive a ruling on your proposal”! She also noted Violet Fox’s Cataloging Lab, the lack of “representation from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), public and school libraries, and international libraries,” and her overall experiences at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. Hat tip to Fox for mentioning this article back on August 17, as I wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.
Having talked about archives and libraries, it makes sense to move onto the third major topic of this newsletter: genealogy. I enjoyed reading about the genealogy research project which could help preserve Gullah Geechee lands, the National Library of Australia noting the various British and Irish maps they have in their collections which can help family historians, digital age trailblazers trying to preserve Austin’s Latino history, the story of Captain George Pointer. He was an enslaved, and later free, Black man who helped build the C&O Canal and his “descendants owned the large plot of land in upper Northwest for 80 years before it was claimed by eminent domain to serve the fast-growing and all-white Chevy Chase neighborhood around it.” Otherwise, there were posts about how a woman exploring her family's history exposed its unsettling legacy of slavery in New Hampshire, an explanation of how deep dives into slavery research are justified, a guide to using Google for family history, when to seek professional help with your family tree, and the value of tombstones.
Then there’s history. Smithsonian magazine had articles about an enormous Roman basilica dated to King Herod’s reign, the history of the rainbow flag, Robert E. Lee’s former home reopening with renewed focus on the enslaved, scientists reviving tiny animals that spent 24,000 years on ice, the story of two farmers found the largest dinosaur ever unearthed in Australia, and how you can explore an unseen trove of Franz Kafka’s personal papers. Other articles in the same magazine focused on the U.S. government’s failed attempt to forge unity through currency in the late 1890s, the discovery of a 1,000-year-old chicken egg, the most invincible hotels in the U.S., an enslaved man buried in England between 226-427 A.D., and the history of policing women’s trauma. Furthermore, other publications focused on battles over calling killing of indigenous people genocide (it is), Trevor Owens, Head of Digital Content Management at the United States Library of Congress, talking about how he does history, French efforts to support the revolutionary cause in the Revolutionary War, and the value of student engagement with primary sources.
There are other stories and topics which don’t neatly fit into the categories of archives, libraries, genealogy, or history. For instance, there is a referendum on the right to housing in Ireland, an article explaining how to make the most of metadata, Remezcla talking about Afro-Latino erasure in Hollywood, Smithsonian explaining efforts by some scientists to pull carbon dioxide from the ocean and turn it into rock, and the same publication noting that COVID anti-bodies detected in wild deer. There were also studies about how climate change may increase the spread of plant pathogens, not surprisingly, and thawing of permafrost in Siberia releasing more methane. As always, The Nib had wonderful illustrations. This week I found ones about the storming of the Capitol being lost to history, how we are all “haunted by the gender sorting machine we’re passed through at birth,” the fear of parents who are bringing their kids back to in-person schooling, the supposed “new normal,” the botched exit from the long war in Afghanistan, virtue signaling and the pandemic, and fears of a pundit who is suddenly caring about the people of Afghanistan. My favorite, however, was Gemma Correll’s “protective clothing for the socially reluctant.” You always see so many styles with these illustrations and an array of topics, which is why I like them so much.
That’s all for this week. I hope you all have a great rest of your week ahead! I haven’t decided whether I’ll publish a newsletter this upcoming Sunday or do it another day, but I will likely publish it then, just to be consistent.
- Burkely