Archives Found

This seems to be a banner season for archives and photographs. Suddenly, it seems like wherever I turn, I run into more articles about donations and recent findings.

First it was the snapshots that quite possibly show Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg some 144 years ago, on the day of delivering his famous address. This op-ed intrigued me greatly, for one of the biggest problems with this type of photo is the actual identification of the subjects within the frame. While the author can make no certain claim, the feeling evoked by the article is one of participating in a particularly historic and interesting moment. And this? Poetry:

Looking at Lincoln in these two photographs — all but his hat nearly lost in the emulsion of the film itself — I find myself wondering what it would have been like if photography had been a rudimentary discovery and had been with us, say, as long as the printing press. What would the photographic record show if it reached back, say 500 years, instead of 180?

One answer is that it would show us this same structure over and over again: a fiercely concentrated knot of people hanging on the words of someone at the center of the crowd. And around them? People standing in looser and looser concentrations, until finally — far enough from the epicenter — their attention turns away from history and focuses on the abiding interest of almost anything else. And this is somehow the inherent bias of the camera. It always directs us toward the center of attention, never away to the periphery, even though that is where our attention eventually wanders.

Full article: History and the Problem of Following the Camera’s Gaze

Related Newsweek article: Flickr Helps the Library of Congress

If you haven’t read about the Library of Congress and their Flickr project, you haven’t been paying attention. LoC recently posted a small (very, very small) digitized portion of their image collection on Flickr’s new public image area, The Commons. Using Web 2.0 and social tagging, the LoC has brought their collections to an audience that may not have otherwise encountered these images. More in Wired, and on the LoC blog.

Lastly, the Robert Capa and Gerda Taro photos, seemingly lost to history and then rediscovered and eventually acquired by the International Center for Photography. I’m really interested in seeing the rest of the reclaimed negatives– and finding out if any other evidence surrounding “The Falling Soldier” was found.

NYT article: The Capa Cache

Apparently, self-proclaimed “archives rat” Drew Gilpin Faust, president of Harvard University. I wonder how many other university presidents (or indeed, faculty) are more than marginally aware that archives may exist on their campuses?

Full Washington Post article here.

This kind of thing just makes me sick.

A state archivist was charged Monday with stealing hundreds of artifacts — documents representing “the heritage of all Americans,” according to the history buff who found some of them on eBay — to pay his household bills. Yahoo article here.

How was this discovered, you ask? NYT Article: History Buff Uncovers Theft of American History Treasures

When I think about the irreplaceable items that have been entrusted to my care, and to the care of other archivists, I feel a sense of pride and of responsibility. To think that an archivist would betray that public trust is upsetting, and frankly, disturbing, to me.

How did this archivist know what to steal? He literally wrote the book. Daniel Lorello was the author of The Union Preserved: A Guide to Civil War Documents in the New York State Archives. Knowing the value of these documents to collectors and historians, he was caught while selling a letter written by John C. Calhoun on eBay.

Best of luck today and in the coming weeks to our friends at the New York State Archives as they try to discern what was stolen, and attempt to recover lost items.

Every so often, there’s a news story about a copy of a state constitution or declaration that has been discovered and auctioned to the highest bidder. Sometimes there’s a twist: the state’s trying to recover the materials, or a benefactor has magnanimously donated the papers to an archival repository. This time, an early copy of the Declaration of Independence was found in an attic in Wiscasset, ME in 1994 and sold to a private collector. Now Maine is trying to reclaim the property through courts by reason of replevin, which states that property created by and of the state must be returned to the state. However, since the document was actually created as part of the original thirteen US colonies and not the state of Maine, I wonder what the outcome will be?

The article that discusses the provenance of the document and other particulars can be found on the NYT site here.

I’m mostly opposed to the practices of private collectors snatching up various documents and thereby making them unavailable to the general public. In many cases, documents owned by private investors may not be receiving proper care, preservation treatment, handling, or ideal storage conditions. Is the Declaration of Independence any different? Does it matter that we have other copies, that the informational content is available elsewhere? Does this case rest just as heavily on the Declaration as a symbol that should be held by the public as it does on the actual document?

I’ve always enjoyed reading about the different digitization work that various repositories undertake– I think that this outreach article is a great way to reach donors that might be so inclined to give of time, money, expertise, or whatever else is needed.

It’s been awhile. Of course, since I think I’m the only one reading right now, that’s OK, but I’d like to make the time to post here more often. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, I’ve added a new link to the archives blogroll– the McArthur Public Library Special Collections blog, run by my friend Renee DesRoberts. Big congratulations to Renee– they just received an NEH Preservation Grant to assist with completing a preservation survey!

The main reason that I was in Austin several weeks ago was to attend a symposium at U-T’s Kilgarlin Center, titled “From Gray Areas to Green Areas: Developing Sustainable Practices in Preservation Environments.” While there were many sessions that I was anticipating, two that definitely did not disappoint were those by James Reilly of the Image Permanence Institute in Rochester, and Richard Kershner from the Shelburne Museum in Vermont. I’m planning to talk a bit more in upcoming posts about some of the sessions, but I wanted to drop off a few links here first. There’s a (low-activity so far) conference blog, as well as some pictures taken by various attendees here and here. I think that the conference organizers did a great job of selecting the various speakers and panels, and overall it was an inspiring and interesting event.

This morning’s brief NYT article about the death of one of the last known survivors of the Titanic made me pause for a moment. Not because I’m a Titanic buff (I’m not, though I do find the story to be fascinating), but because of the mention that the deceased was one of the last two survivors of that fateful journey, a representative of the past. As time marches onward, memories fade and we begin to lose more and more “eyewitnesses” to history. Within my lifetime, the last Holocaust survivor, the last soldier present on D-Day, and others will slowly go “into that good night.” I’m not ready for that to happen yet. As an archivist charged with preserving history, I feel that I am always looking for ways to stave off a time when firsthand accounts are no longer available in the flesh. Of course oral histories look to fill that gap, but are there other things that we can do as keepers of the record to preserve the immediacy of speaking with someone who was there at Normandy? How can we, without overinterpreting or overemphasizing, better bring an accurate sense of the past to the present? What are the best ways to capture these things now, before the opportunity is lost?

An article in the LA Times this morning stunned me: Reagan Library unable to fully account for 80,000 artifacts. I’m interested in finding out more about this, because I’m wondering about the status of the Reagan Papers. I think that the museum/artifacts staff and area is separated from the artifacts and donated items, but it obviously raises a lot of questions about security, access, and proper recordkeeping procedures. Talk about terrible publicity– and right before their C-Span broadcast, too. I wonder if any of the allegations will be addressed during their live broadcast tomorrow night? Unfortunately, I won’t be able to watch, as I’ll be traveling, but I’ll definitely look forward to catching it online later. I really hope that C-Span decides to rerun the episodes before the elections next year, and potentially at a better time/day of the week.

The title of this recent New York Times article bugged:

Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web.

Sounds like librarians are being selfish, right? We don’t want to share our books… you must come to our libraries <insert malevolent cackle>.

Actually, the article is about the recent decision of the Boston Library Consortium and a few other big players making a decision not to share their information with for-profit orgs Google and Microsoft (which place restrictions on the materials), and instead working with the Open Content Alliance to digitize materials that are out of copyright. Being a happy library cardholder of several of the institutions mentioned, I would have access to the materials in any case, but as a librarian/information professional, I really like the idea that the information would be accessible to those not ordinarily served by the particular libraries.

While the books involved in the above projects are (to my knowledge) not archival materials, I wanted to note that I’m in favor of digitization projects that work to provide access while preserving the context of the collection.

For instance, the Boston Public Library has the books of John Adams, and they were recently on exhibit at the main branch in Copley Square. While I did stop by several times to look at the materials, I’ve been even more excited about the website, because I can read Adams’ notations at my leisure. One that I particularly enjoyed was his handwritten argument with Mary Wollstonecraft in the preface of An historical and moral view of the origin and progress of the French Revolution : and the effect it has produced in Europe:

“If Nature has no Father, no Creator, no Governor, and men are to perish, Inequality is a Right and it would be folly in him who posesses or can obtain an Advantage, to forego it.”

http://www.johnadamslibrary.org/book/?book=2257683Adams%20221.15&page=11

I love that the digitized collection allows one to search the transcriptions, but also examine Adams’ words on the page in his elegant scrawl. Furthermore, I like that the pages are within the context of the entire book, as well as grouped with his collection of books, thereby providing a basis for researchers to understand Adams’ notations as a whole.

I’ve veered a bit from my original intentions in this post, but here’s the point: I like access, and I like context. The three organizations listed in the title plan to provide some access to materials that in some cases were not previously available to a wider audience. That’s a good thing. However, I think that we need to be conscious of not only access, but also the delivery model that we use to serve up the information. If materials are available through Google Books, but the user still cannot access them, then are we really serving a greater audience?