Archives Found

NARA announced yesterday that they are opening approximately six million veterans records at NPRC. This is exciting news for veterans, genealogists, and historians. The original records can be viewed at the NPRC reading room in St. Louis. Honestly, understanding which military records reside in various NARA (and other) facilities is somewhat confusing, but there’s a handy grid here that helps to clarify which records are available at NPRC. This batch of OMPFs (Official Military Personnel Files) corresponds with individuals who served in the Army, Army Air Corps, Army Air Forces, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard and left the service (discharged, retired, died) prior to 1946. However, additional records are also available at NPRC. Note: the DD 214s (OMPFs) will not be available online, and will require authorization from veterans or kin for third-party release. More information available through NARA.

Yesterday a US District Court judge made a ruling regarding the witholding of documents based on President Bush’s 2001 executive order. NYT article here, more information in AP article here.

A quick article on CNN caught my eye: the auction of documents relating to South Carolina between 1861-1863, including letters written by Robert E. Lee.

However, I found myself with more questions than answers. Here are a few:

-What is the provenance of these documents? Obviously there’s a somewhat shaky trail leading to Thomas Wilcox (the seller driving around with the letters in the back of his SUV), but to whom were bulk of the Lee letters (and other correspondence) addressed? Was this a treasure trove of documents entrusted to someone and passed down through the family as such, or an artificially assembled collection by a souvenir hunter? The article mentioned that the letters were in the family, but nothing else.

-A lawsuit is mentioned, but no citation. I wonder if South Carolina attempted to reclaim the documents by the use of replevin on the premise that these documents belonged to the Confederacy, and what the grounds were for dismissal?

-What repositories might have been interested in these records? Washington and Lee University seems like an obvious choice to me (and from the information online it appears that they have a gap in their Lee Papers between 1859-1962), perhaps the University of South Carolina or other institutions might have been interested as well. Was there any action on the part of these institutions or others to try to get these papers? Whether forming a consortium to share the costs and the documents, finding an interested patron to purchase and donate them, or negotiating some sort of deal with the holder of the documents, it seems (from my decidedly limited view after reading this article) that maybe something could have been done to keep the documents publicly available. [I’m not faulting either of the named institutions; not only am I aware of the costs of this type of thing, but I have no idea whether they were even approached in this matter.]

It’s a shame that the papers will now be dispersed and perhaps lost to history forever. In this type of situation, I hope that some transparency and media attention will bring focus on the private acquisition of presumably public documents, though I wish that the article had mentioned this a little more bluntly. What can we do as archivists, as historians, as citizens to advocate for less private holding of significant records?

I’m going to try to track down more information about this particular case.

Entirely well-meaning, I started a long-ish post about perspective for this blog that has grown to be a bit longer than intended. Hopefully as I continue to polish it, I will post it here.

In the meantime, I’ve been doing a lot of reading and compiling of sources in preparation for the ACA exam next summer. In talking to colleagues, there has been some interest in a virtual “study group” to work together and discuss some of the articles and books. I’m in the process of setting that up for folks that I’ve already spoken with, but I’m certainly willing to open it to wider discussion if interest warrants. I’m hoping to get that tied down this week.

I’ve also been reading a lot of narratives that are somewhat related to archives and more closely, historical memory. I’m looking forward to digging into Remembering War: the Great War between memory and history in the twentieth century tonight after reading Richard Cox’s recent blog post. Another book that has intrigued me this week is Closest Companion: The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friendship Between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley; after reading the NYT travel article that referenced the book, I now also want to read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s No Ordinary Time. It has been years since I visited the FDR Presidential Library, and I think that I may be up for a revisit… or perhaps a trip to Top Cottage. Something has always intrigued me about FDR.

I’ve been following the exploits of David Irving for several years now, ever since I read Deborah Lipstadt’s book, _Denying_the_Holocaust_, and more recently since the Irving v. Lipstadt/ Penguin UK trial, where Irving lost his libel suit and was ordered to pay upwards of £2 million in fees. Several weeks ago, Irving was arrested in Austria on an arrest warrant issued in 1989 against him for the crime of Holocaust denial. Irving gave several speeches that year in Vienna and elsewhere in Austria that set forth his revisionist agenda. Presumably Irving was aware of the warrant for his arrest– so what possessed him to decide to visit Austria?
My guesses: he’s looking forward to the eventual trial and publicity in order to gain a wider audience for his revisionist history, sympathy in the form of those who will defend his “freedom of speech,” and he’s looking for new monetary avenues of support.

Unbelievable.

Anyway, the story that made me laugh today was today’s article in the Telegraph. Anyone out there want to make a bet that Irving will try to leverage this tidbit in his next defense?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/02/wrevis02.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/12/02/ixworld.html

Nazi historian Irving finds his books in Austrian jail library
By Kate Connolly in Berlin
(Filed: 02/12/2005)

David Irving, the British historian, has embarrassed Austria’s judicial authorities by finding his own books in a prison library while in custody on charges of Holocaust denial.

Irving, 67, who will spend Christmas and the New Year behind bars pending trial, found two of his most contentious books in the Graz prison library after asking for something to read.

He said in an interview he signed both, German translations of Hitler’s War and The Destruction of Convoy PQ-17, before returning them to guards.

Josef Adam, the head of the prison, said it was “not possible” to know how the books had ended up in the 6,400-volume library, the contents of which he “could not know exactly”.

“Now we will dispose of the books,” he said.

An embarrassed justice ministry said it had known nothing about the existence of the books in the prison.

“Revisionists have no place in the libraries of judicial institutes,” said Christoph Pöchinger, a spokesman for Karin Gastinger, the justice minister.

Hitler’s War was the first volume of Irving’s two-part biography of Hitler and sought to describe the war from the dictator’s point of view.

The 1977 book prompted huge controversy because it portrayed Hitler in a positive light and claimed he had had no knowledge of the Holocaust.

In The Destruction of Convoy PQ-17, published in 1967, Irving blamed Capt Jack Broome for the loss of life when his convoy was destroyed while taking war materiel to the Soviet Union.

Capt Broome sued Irving for libel in the High Court in 1970 and won. The book was withdrawn from circulation.

Austria issued a warrant for Irving’s arrest in 1989 after he delivered two lectures disputing the existence of gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps.

Denying the Holocaust in Austria is a criminal offence. If convicted, Irving could face a sentence of up to 20 years.

He was arrested near Graz on Nov 11 before giving a lecture to a Right-wing student fraternity in Vienna.

I feel like there should be a disclaimer for this.

Blogging: not as easy as it looks.

It seems like I have tons of ideas running through my head when I’m sitting in class, or waiting for a train, or walking down the street. But the moment I sit down to post… tabula rasa.
Maybe it’s an irrational fear of a blank page… all of that scary white space.

One of the things that I’ve enjoyed so far about library school is meeting new people, and hearing their stories. While there’s a certain level of quiet insularity (and probably shyness/anti-social tendencies), there are also a number of people like myself who are not afraid to use our voices. In talking with a fellow student last night after class, I think that we came to the shared realization that while the courses so far are somewhat easier than our (unrelated)previous university experiences, the purpose of this professional program is to prepare us for jobs in the archival world. For most people, an MLS is a terminal degree, a means to a professional end. In other words, the program, while interesting, isn’t meant to prepare us for teaching duties– but for more practical job applications. This may all seem overtly obvious, but I think that library school programs have a tendency to masquerade as being much closer kin to an academic master’s degree– and from what I have observed so far, there’s a wide gap separating the two. Nobody seems to discuss these differences, but perhaps this is why so many archives ask for experience in or a separate MA in history?

Ahh, the MA in history as qualification for archival positions. While I absolutely am for education- and allowing people to have as much of it as they can cram into their greedy brains, I’m somewhat opposed to the practice of hiring persons holding only history MA’s as archivists. What does a person holding an MA in history know about preservation standards, provenance or replevin? Does the average history master’s student keep up with developments in the archival field? (Probably not.) Would you hire a psychiatrist to perform foot surgery? A psychiatrist has an MD, sure, but probably isn’t the right fit for that position. The same goes for hiring MA’s in subject areas to be academic librarians without holding an MLS or library experience. Sure, they probably have an excellent reading knowledge in the field– but what do they know about cataloging, donor agreement, preservation management or collection development, OPACs, or library management? The short answer: they shouldn’t be expected to have that knowledge without library training, and employers shouldn’t be shortchanging their users by hiring them. Of course, knowing that I’ll be out there job hunting soon, MLS in hand, has no effect on my opinion here. (Right.)

The expectation in many an archival or academic librarian job ad is a second MA in a subject area. I think can be a lot to ask of employees– a BA and two master’s degrees– for positions that pay $30-40,000/year, and sometimes much less.