The Reading List: 2016

I am a librarian that doesn’t read nearly as much as I should. I have been out of graduate school now for 3 semesters, and have not gone back to reading for pleasure in the way I did years back. On a better note, I also haven’t gone back to endless hours of watching the Food Network either. Or anything on the TV-machine, really.

An excellent 2015 read

So I am constantly in awe of those who read, and read, and read.

And write about what they read.

So here goes. The 25 books I would like to get through this year. And I might even be so bold as to put the list up on my books-to-read list on Goodreads. But don’t expect updates and reviews. It will take all I have, just to read..

In true characteristic style, mostly non-fiction. History. Political science. Public policy. Biographies.

And since I boycott Amazon, the links will be to reviews and other tidbits I found interesting.

1. Widow Basquiat: A Love Story, Jennifer Clement. Because as a Brooklyn-born-and-bred native having grown up in a Caribbean neighborhood, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work still resonates with me.
2. M Train, Patti Smith. Because as a Brooklyn-born-and-bred native who lived for the day my mother would let me take the train to Greenwich Village, memories.
3. Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín. Because this Brooklyn-born-and-bred, Greenwich-Village-train-rider now plays Irish flute and obsessively knits Aran blankets.
4. The Fight for Peace: The Secret Story Behind the Irish Peace Process, Eamonn Mallie and David McKittrick. Because this Irish-flute-playing, Aran-blanket knitter really needs to learn more about Ireland.
5. 

   Another excellent 2015 read

   Ulysses, James Joyce. Because never having read this makes me feel like an impersonator every time I play Irish flute and knit Aran blankets.

6. Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, Sarah Vowell. Because every time I read one of her books, it makes me want to get another graduate degree, this time in American Studies.
7. Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, Jon Meacham. Because every time I read one of his books, it makes me want to get another graduate degree, this time in Political Science.
8. Once a Great City: A Detroit Story, David Maraniss. Because every time I read one of his books, it makes me want to get another graduate degree, this time in History.
9. On the Move: A Life, Oliver Sacks. Because it took reading Dr. Sacks’ obituary for me to realize I have never read one of his books.
10. The Witches: Salem, 1692, Stacy Schiff. Because part of me wants to go back to being that 12 year old girl who read everything she could get her hands on that had anything to do with the Salem witch trials.
11. Joan of Arc: A History, Helen Castor. Because part of me wants to go back to being that 12 year old girl who read everything she could get her hands on that had anything to do with Joan of Arc.
12. Kitchens of the Great Midwest: A Novel, J. Ryan Stradal. Because I secretly want to live in Iowa and spend my summers going to county fairs.
13. Television Is the New Television: The Unexpected Triumph of Old Media in the Digital Age, Michael Wolff. Because I used to want to be a political pundit when I grew up.
14. Notorious RBG, Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik. Because while I night not want to be a political pundit when I grow up anymore, I admire an author with an excellent social media presence.
15. Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family, Susan Katz Miller. Because my constant fascination with issues of identity kees me passionately believing the subject of this book is one of the great issues of our time.
16. Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong Places, Nadia Bolz-Weber. Because every ten years or so, I binge read books about religion.
17. The Nuns of Sant’Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal, Hubert Wolf. Because I need more than just one book about religion to constitute a binge.
18. Jesus Freak: Feeding, Healing and Raising the Dead, Sarah Miles. Because I need more than just two books about religion to constitute a binge.
    
    

    A 3rd excellent 2015 read

19. The Prize: Who is in Charge of America’s Schools, Dale Russakoff. Because before going to library school, I worked on the fringes of issues of education for years.
20. The Remedy: Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis, Thomas Goetz. Because much of the work I did on the fringes of issues of education was related to keeping kids healthy, with tuberculosis always a concern.
21. Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson. Because I need something to help me make sense of our broken criminal justice system.
22. The Oceans at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman. Because I am a librarian, so therefore Neil Gaiman must be my secret boyfriend.
23. 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear, James Shapiro. Because my 12 year old went to Shakespeare camp this summer, and it became embarrassing clear that I need to know more.
24. Hold Still: A Memoir With Photographs, Sally Mann. Because my 12 year old loves photography, and again, embarrassing clear that I need to know more.
25. Empire of Cotton, Sven Beckert. Because I have enjoyed reading a great deal about the history of other commodities, including sugar, salt and coffee.

Happy New Year and I hope you enjoy your year of reading!

 

 

 

Archives Friday: The Americana Edition

Lots and lots of great stuff in the news this Friday, especially if you are like me and love all-good-things-American!

Big news from the New York Times today:

Phil Ochs’s archival materials, including lyrics, scrapbooks filled with articles by and about him, photos and posters, have been donated to the Woody Guthrie Center, in Tulsa, Okla. The center is an archive and educational facility that opened in April 2013 with the goal of preserving not only Woody Guthrie’s materials – his complete archives are housed there – but also the archives of musicians and artists in other disciplines who were influenced by him

The entire article is worth reading. Great biographical material. An event celebrating the addition of the materials is forthcoming.

Oh, to be an archivist working with Congressional Papers… New Mexico State will soon be opening the Pete Domenici Archives.

The collection includes unique artifacts and memorabilia from Sen. Domenici’s extensive career in New Mexico. A photo exhibit will also highlight the senator’s work in Washington.

Domenici, a Republican, served in the U.S. Senate from 1972 to 2009. He is the longest serving senator in state history.

You can learn about the collection, here:

I have great affection for a number of my former hometowns, but by far my favorite is Buffalo, New York. A city full of history, and replete with great cultural institutions caretaking a diverse historical record. Today’s news:

President Millard Fillmore, singer Rick James, Indian hero Red Jacket and thousands of Western New Yorkers genealogical and historical documents can now be found in a single Buffalo location.

Burial history of any of the more than 169,000 people buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery’s 269 Delaware Park acres are now contained in the just-built Margaret L. Wendt Archive and Resource Center. The $2 million, 3,000-square-foot building modeled after Warren Granger’s circa 1840 barn that graced the same location made its debut Thursday afternoon.

Thanks to a grant the archives are now digitally restored, and the new building sounds wonderful. My best wishes to a GREAT city deserving of being a GREAT historical tourism destination.

And in closing, and ode to Phil Ochs I find particularly appropriate when discussing the preservation of American history:

Enjoy!

The Week that Was, The Graduation Edition

Tonight I will attend a reception sponsored by the Student Chapter of the American Library Association (ALA), San José State University, School of Library and Information Science.

Tomorrow I graduate with my MLIS, three years in the making.

I am trying to pick out outfits for both. Business casual, they say. Tough sell, since I have had neither the time, money nor energy to buy myself any clothes in the last three years.

Wednesday was Badass Librarian Day. In cyberspace. I RSVP’d a “yes” (assuming one can really do that in cyberspace) but didn’t participate. Busy, tired and hot. People freak if it gets above 75 in the SF Bay Area. I was uninspired to respond to any witty things my wonderful (new) colleagues posted on Facebook. As the mother of a ten-year old learning how to be an information professional within the context of approaching middle-school, I wondered how to help children question the inherent biases written into a classification system developed by a not-so-nice straight white man born in 1873. Maybe by Badass Librarian Day, 2015 I will have figured out how to present the Dewey Dilemma to my child within the context of diversity and the development of critical thinking skills.

And then I came home after Badass Librarian Day and learned that Dr. Terry Cook had died.

Friend to all, mentor to many, author, editor, impassioned correspondent, advocate of just causes, co-dog-walker of Clifford the big white doodle, smartest guy in the room. Terry was a world-renowned intellectual in the field of archival studies, whose ideas transformed archives from being perceived merely as storehouses of old records to sites of national memory worthy of scholarly attention. As Verne Harris, Director, Research and Archive, at the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory in South Africa, recently wrote, Terry was ‘pre-eminently amongst the giants of current archival discourses’.

I never met Dr. Cook, so I am hesitant to call him a mentor. The words hero and leader are still coming up on my Twitter Feed four days after his death. But I pretty much despise those two words, probably because I have worked with and around children long enough to have come to understand the reductive nature of (what we think) are our common comprehension of these words.  I have come to understand the ineffable nature of heroism and leadership. I know it when I encounter it, and like most of us I encounter it by proxy. A news headline or the work of a fine photojournalist on the other side of the globe. The moment at which I can assign text to those encounters is fleeting.

I go back often to Dr. Cook’s article “Archival Science and Postmodernism: New Formulations For Old Concepts” and at risk of trying to assign text to his sheer brilliance, Dr. Cook helped me come to believe the chosen historical record must not be considered static, but rather dynamic representative objects living in a virtual world. The historical record is not a passive product of objective activity, but rather the output of a process fraught with the results of underlying power dynamics related to race, culture, class and… The historical record is an active agent in the formation of human, organizational, cultural and social memory, and as such is simply a product of underlying power dynamics that often leave out the voices of marginalized and underrepresented communities. As archivists we must first and foremost understand that our role is not simply as passive guardians of objects removed from the social contexts of power and control, but rather as ones charged with the shaping of a collective, social memory. Terry Cook helped me begin to understand how to rebel against the notions of universal truth and objective knowledge in the world of archives, and how important it is to reveal the context of the historical record through study of the power relations that endow that same historical record with objective importance.

But Dr. Terry Cook was not a philosopher. As a historian, he took a keen eye to the history of archival appraisal and in his article “‘We Are What We Keep; We Keep What We Are’: Archival Appraisal Past, Present And Future” he argued that the profession was entering a time of reflecting upon how powerful societal influences have informed the underlying and sometimes unconscious manners in which archivists have become accustomed to doing the work of appraisal. He offered a new way of doing the work–a practical and pragmatic way that in defining appraisal as collaborative practice between archivist, community member and user, gives voice to a multitude of societal sectors in creating a more complete historical record accessible to a larger public. Cook argued that the archival community needs to confront the deeply held manners in which institutions with and of power shape the work and keep marginalized voices at bay and out of the community historical record. It is only through actively living this theory in a time of easy communication, that we begin to grasp the concept of a citizen participation in co-creating archives that gives voice to underrepresented communities with the goal of presenting a more complete truth–even if total truth in the postmodern world remains elusive. Even as we replace a larger, powerful mega-narrative with bits and pieces of different stories, comprising a new and different discourse. Closer to the truth, but perhaps never completely free from underlying and overlaying systems of power and control.

Having missed the boat on Badass Librarian Day, I reflect on what it means to be able–as of tomorrow–to call myself an information profession. I come from a social services background, and believe passionately that information should be shared as broadly as possible, for the more information people have the more people can work towards the public good. How and with whom we share information, is the fundamental marker of the well-being of an organization, and the social well-being of a nation. While taking into consideration matters of legal restraint and confidentiality, and generally trying not to clog up inboxes with junk, in honor of Badass Librarian Day I today pledge to share as much information as possible, with as many people as possible and as often as possible. We say information is power. I say those of us privileged enough to hold the information are the ones with the power. And if we want to share the power, we must share the information.

Rest in peace, Dr. Terry Cook. And congratulations to all the new-minted Badass Librarians out there. May we have the courage of our convictions.

Random Thoughts, Year Two (Part II)

Semester over.  Grades in.  I am alternately:

Very tired.  Very happy.  Very relieved.

Honored and humbled that my instructors believe in me, so.

All ready for Spring, 2013.  Records Management.  Preservation Management.  Special Collections.  The theme continues.

As for closing thoughts on this semester:

I can officially now say that any fears that librarianship is not political enough for me, continue to be assuaged.  From my course in Oral History, I learned of a discipline that gives voice to underrepresented groups.  A discipline that offers perspective differing to the official account of historical events.  In the case of an oral history project as opposed to personal memoir, a discipline that gives collective voice to a particular time and place – even under the most ordinary of circumstances.  When done by a community, a discipline that gives power to the collective to reflect and make decisions about community empowerment change.

I was terrified of taking Archives and Manuscripts.  I suspected I would struggle with material not particularly conducive to mastering in an on-line environment.  I am grateful to an instructor who understood this, used the on-line learning medium effectively – especially given the natural down sides – and encouraged us to make practical use of what we have learned, through hands-on internships.  During Summer, 2013 I vow to be consumed by an internship that allows me to gain as much practical archival experience, as possible.

I am not much into all the ways graduate students in our program use to communicate, but from the peripheral glances at Yahoo groups and Facebook, I do get the impression that many students dread taking the mandated Research Methods course.  Beats me, as to why.  My section had an emphasis on historical research, and it was one of the most solidly academic experiences of a lifetime.  I can’t believe that up until this Fall, I didn’t really know the differences between reference, primary and secondary sources.  And I can now write a decent historiography essay, to boot!

Off for a few weeks of rest.  And knitting.  And reading, whatever I want!

Constructing a History of the Present

A wonderful story about an octogenarian who delights in taking apart books, to hunt for treasures hidden in the bindings. He has been doing this for more than 70 years. He has taken apart 2,000 books and almost 200 of them have produced important findings.

During the 16^th, 17^th and 18^th centuries, it was common in Europe to use paper and parchment from existing books to make bindings for new works. Upon taking apart some of the books bound during this period of time – and some constructed more recently – Ezra Gorodesky, an American-born Jew now living in Jerusalem, has made some important discoveries. Important discoveries in the form of these “recycled materials” used as binding.

Beautifully decorated marriage contracts, or ketubahs. Pages from unknown versions of holy books. Notary records. Rare pages from the first volumes of the Torah to be printed in Italy. Letters written to Rabbi Isaac Luria, the famed 16^th century kabbalist.

Most interesting, however is the fact that much of the material used for the bindings came from medieval Hebrew manuscripts confiscated by the Church. Materials meant to be destroyed during the Inquisition. Ironically, this material helped give life to new works.

But most interesting. The emphasis is mine:

But Dr. Aviad Stollman, curator of the National Library’s Judaica collection, said that Gorodesky’s most important findings have actually been in the realm of day-to-day life – “deeds, documents and letters” that together “form the basis for writing a history of the Jewish people.”

So, what materials might a bookbinder use today, if he or she was taking “deeds, documents and letters” that together form the basis for writing a history of the present? Today’s San Francisco Chronicle, my hometown newspaper, offers some clues.

Supporters of Proposition 29, the $1-a-pack cigarette tax hike, conceded defeat Friday more than two weeks after the election and following a bruising and expensive campaign by opponents.

So, perhaps a printed copy of the June 5, 2012 California State Ballot.

The chief witness against same-sex marriage at a landmark federal court trial in 2010 said Friday he’s had a change of heart and now believes the rights of gays and lesbians to wed are a matter of “basic fairness.”

“I don’t believe that opposite-sex and same-sex relationships are the same, but I do believe, with growing numbers of Americans, that the time for denigrating or stigmatizing same-sex relationships is over,” David Blankenhorn wrote in an opinion piece in the New York Times.

So, perhaps a printed copy of the New York Times opinion piece.

The West Coast will see an ocean several inches higher in coming decades, with most of California expected to get sea levels a half foot higher by 2030, according to a report released Friday. The study by the National Research Council gives planners their best look yet at how melting ice sheets and warming oceans associated with climate change will raise sea levels along the country’s Pacific coast. It is generally consistent with earlier global projections, but takes a closer look at California, Oregon and Washington.

So, perhaps some pages from the National Research Council Report.

Day-to-day life. Deeds. Documents. Letters.

The very, very distant past. The very distant past. And “constructing” a history of the present – page by page.