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The Diary Project Continues - Kennebunk and Kennebunkport, Maine

2012-01-31T17:35:00.001-05:00

Last spring I found a diary in an antique store. (You can read my early posts about it if you search for "diary" on this blog.)

I needed to take a hiatus from traveling during the second half of last year, so I spent some time doing online research. My diary is from Maine and after a little deductive reasoning and research, I was able to determine that it is from the Kennebunkport area. I located nineteenth century newspapers and directories of Maine businesses that listed some of the names that I found in my diary.

Today I did more research at the Kennebunk Public Library and briefly talked to the folks at the Kennebunkport Historical Society. I will make an appointment at the Historical Society during research hours because I think that is where I will find more of the information that I need. I am now as close to one-hundred percent certain that the writer of my diary is from that town as I can be without knowing who the actual writer is. The names I have been able to find so far were all Kennebunkport residents.

The director of the Historical Society clued me in to a diary at the Kennebunk Library written by Andrew Walker, so I spent time with that today.

Local History section a the Kennebunk Library

Andrew Walker's diaries cover a good part of the 19th century. Like my diary writer, Walker was active in local politics and worked in a local shop. For a very brief moment, I thought perhaps my diary was written by him too. I have been carrying around a diary transcript and not the original. I had my husband take photos and text me pages in my diary to compare the handwriting to Walker's. They are not the same writing. After closer examination, I also realized that Walker's diary did include the first six months in 1882 that my diary covers, though the contents page of his transcript did not make this clear at first. I photocopied the pages from the overlapping dates and will review them to see similarities from the comfort of my living room. At a quick glance, I noticed that Walker covers the same train crash as my diarist. I want to see what other events overlap. Here I'll get insight on two different men in neighboring towns watching local events unfold.

Some of the names in my diary were located in the index of the Walker diary. He sometimes recorded happenings in Kennebunkport as well as his own town. I checked off names that appeared in both indices. (I had made a name index of my diary as soon as I got it.)

From the diary of Andrew Walker (1808-1899)

I am not positive yet where this research work will take me, but my main purpose for this project is to show the value of personal records for revealing local history and communities. I now have a clear way to show how local records reveal overlapping communities in Kennebunk and Kennebunkport. My daughter is helping me with the project and a second layer to this is showing how such materials can help get children excited about history. I can't wait to share what I've found with her today!

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Here are some interesting quotes from the Andrew Walker diary, which are recorded in the introduction to the diary transcript. It is worth noting that he had a clear idea of why he was writing this. I have written extensively in my blog about the value of keeping a diary. It is interesting to see how someone over 150 years ago had similar ideas...

January 1, 1851

"I Andrew Walker propose to write a short diary in this book of such events in this quiet village and vicinity as come to my knowledge. By the term events I include whatever may be suggested to my mind at the time of writing, whether of a private or public nature, my own thought or the thoughts of others. In short whatever may come uppermost, that I shall try to express. How long the diary may continue remains to be seen."

April 19, 1852

"On the first of January 1851 I Andrew Walker, commenced a Diary and have continued it until the present time. The principal objects I had in view in keeping this diary were,...

"First, in order that I might by constant practice acquire a greater facility in expressing my thoughts on paper.

"Second, noting down many events in this vicinity that now seem of importance but will presently dwarf into mere littleness, other events now insignificant in our eyes, but one day will assume an an (sic) air of important magnitude.

"Third, the pleasure of information to be derived in subsequent years in knowing how events were considered at the time when they transpired and what my opinions were at that time. I recollect of reading somewhere, 'As a woman likes to view herself in a glass, so a man likes to see himself in his diary.'"

Andrew Walker kept eleven volumes of diaries, covering the years 1808-1899.

Orphan Photos and the Arts (part 2 - Getting Creative)

2012-01-26T08:30:00.000-05:00

Last week I discussed the idea of using orphan images to get creative. This post discusses concrete examples of ways to use photos for inspiration, and in art and learning projects. Photos can come from your own family collections. You can also find interesting orphan photos at antique shops and garage sales.

Beware of Preservation and Retaining Provenance

Before you begin, consider making copies of any orphan photos that you collect. Use the copies in your projects rather than originals. I used regular photocopies in the projects I show here, but you can also have prints made to achieve a different look. Keep originals using safe archives methods. Record everything you know about the photo, including who gave it to you and where you bought it. Even record if you don't know who the people depicted are. (Don't leave others guessing and thinking that you might know them.) You may want to try to learn more about the people depicted or even reunite images with appropriate families if they are not your own.

Looking for Images for your Project

You can certainly use you own identified family images in your art. Your own images make everything seem more personal. Using images of people who you suspect are members of your own family can add some extra sentiment to an art project. However, images of strangers can also give a nice feeling to your work. There is something to be said for regarding strangers as part of your own history; they are part of a long web of humanity that eventually made its way to you. The pictures you choose in your work can be there for beauty, a sense of a general history, or a more intimate family feel.

Some General Thoughts about Photos

You may choose images for projects that grab you because of a family connection, a friendly face, a sense of history / nostalgia. Alternately, you may seek images with commonalities that may even help tell a story. Perhaps there is something happening in your life that you want to highlight or contemplate further. Seek images that relate to your hobbies, interests and life events. For example, as part of "The Life in Context Project," my project partner Sue and I are focusing on food memories. To highlight our talks and workbook, I began digging for orphan images related to meals. This lead Sue and me to digging through our own photos to find us eating at our own family tables. I feel as if I have a new understanding of how food threads through our lives and also a fabulously illustrated book on the topic. The images would also be great for decorating my kitchen with large posters, imprinted on small tiles for an unusual backsplash, or in a homemade family recipe book. (Remember to include caption that indicates a photo is an "orphan" if it is one, especially in a family cookbook!)

Find a Muse

The confidence this unidentified woman exhibits in this photo inspires me and I keep her in my mind's eye

This is probably outside traditional archivist thinking...but the artist in me finds muses among my work. I once wrote about how I often grow fond of the people represented by some of the collections on which I work. I have been inspired by the lives of many New Englanders whose papers I have been lucky enough to process. Photographs can give me a quicker way to get to know someone. I do not necessarily need to read a diary or letters to feel as if I know a personality well enough for it to inspire me. One image can have a similar effect. Think like an artist. Find someone among your photos who inspires you and channel that feeling into your work.

I am also inspired by this unidentified, apparently loving, mother (or teacher). Her muse came in handy for this project.

I don't know who they are, but these images are implanted in my brain. I return to them often and use them in a lot of my work, so I can think about how they influence me.

Getting Jiggy with It

Photos can be laquered to tiles and used to decorate.
I often use tiles about doorways to add a little pizzazz
and with this project I've added a touch of history.

Okay, okay...I may be showing my age with that headline, but really, now the fun and fancy free part comes in. I asked my husband to purchase some tiles when he ran out to Home Depot the other day. Can't you just picture a whole bathroom tiled with these "heirloom image" tiles on the left? The history geek in me says that would be very, very cool. If anyone reading this grows inspired to do that and follows through, please send me pictures! I recently redid my bathroom, so that won't be happening around here.

I also had a leftover wood picture frame that I covered with decoupaged images. I left the images to dry on the table. My daughter bounced in from school and got very excited. This blog post took on a whole new meaning with her help. Kid project time! Old images are a great way to engage children and get them excited about history.

A little glue and creativity can go a long way. I'm envisioning future Christmas ornaments and valentines that my daughter can work on too.

So channel your inner muse, find a topic or an item that inspires you and get to work. If you do feel the creative muse, share her (or him) with us and share your photo art projects too.

Orphan Photo Contest

2012-01-24T15:29:00.000-05:00

I'm giving orphan photos the attention that they deserve this week!

Videos Introducing "The Unofficial Family Archivist"

2012-01-23T10:53:00.000-05:00

I know that I promised you ideas for using your orphan photos this week. Those will come in a couple of days. (I'm busy playing with decoupage and hope to have an image of something maybe a little new and different to share.) In the meantime, I would like to post some videos I made late last week to tell you about my new book The Unofficial Family Archivist: A Guide to Creating and Maintaining Family Papers, Photographs, and Memorabilia.

Quite honestly, this is my first time filming myself talking directly to a camera. At first it felt very different from making a presentation until I relaxed and really forgot that I was talking to a camera and not a real person. In the end, it was fun. If you have never met me in person, I hope that perhaps you'll enjoy "meeting" me in a new way - connecting my voice and mannerisms to my words. Welcome to my five part introduction:

Orphan Photos and the Arts

2012-01-19T09:59:00.001-05:00

Last year I posted about how to cull photos. That post generated a lengthy discussion about orphan images. One person who commented mentioned the value of using the materials for historic interpretation, which is something that I do regularly on this blog. One thing that did not gain too much buzz was the value of orphan photos for artistic inspiration. It is this second idea to which I am dedicating my next couple of posts.

I have collected many orphan photos for the "More Finds at the Local Antiques Shop" column in this blog. I have also spent time working as a professional photographer. I grew up "taking pictures" and loving the whole idea of them as both a piece of history and art. A little known fact about me is that I won an award in my high school as best artist in my class because of my own photography. (Ah! Perhaps the mention of this is another sign that middle age has indeed set in -- that time when one feels the need to reminisce about high school awards?) I retain an artist's sense of wonder.

The artistic side of me screams for release once in awhile. A few weeks ago I decided to take some of my orphan images and I made a collage for myself. It is now framed and waiting for me to hang it somewhere.

I know none of the people in this collage and yet I feel as if I know them all. The images I choose for "More Finds at the Local Antique Shop" are ones that strike me as I thumb through boxes of photos. I might be called to them by the eyes of the subjects, their style of dress, or their activities...whatever caught my initial interest grows inside of me and I imagine what the lives of these people were like. In fact, I have such a propensity for imaginings that I am creating a class for children that will teach them how to "read" a photograph, discover as much "truth" about it as they can, and then creatively write about it. (It is my hope that this class will let kids flex some artistic brain cells. I also hope that it will ultimately help develop critical thinkers who can better discern the differences between fact and fiction because of their participation in the exercises.)

Orphan photos naturally elicit a sense of history and wonder if you examine them carefully. If one searches beyond the obvious, one can imbue additional value into an orphan photo by attaching some meaningful purpose to it. To put it simply: Writing and creating with orphan photos is a useful exercise for an individual's creativity. It is also of value to the anonymous object, re-attaching some meaning for its existence.

I still believe that one should not keep every unidentified photo, but one way to deal with orphan images is to creatively use them to make something beautiful and / or thought provoking. In my next post, I will discuss some things to look for in orphan photos so that you too can be creative with those images that have lost their context. I hope that you will share some of your own artistic endeavors.

***
Let me just say for those who may be concerned...I am not recommending all unidentified photos should be cut up and glued...I plan to give ideas for good practice in my next post, including the need to consider using copies for projects and a reminder that many orphan photos retain value despite the anonymity of the subject.

In Honor of MLK Day - Examination of the Question Bridge

2012-01-16T18:16:00.001-05:00

This morning, I sat down with a cup of tea to browse the archives news and found reference to a project that I think is a remarkable potential model for the cultural heritage field. Question Bridge: Black Males is a new video installation at the Brooklyn Museum. "[It] is an innovative transmedia art project that facilitates a dialogue between a critical mass of Black men from diverse and contending backgrounds; and creates a platform for them to represent and redefine Black male identity in America. The project creates and develops a Question Bridge and Identity Map to fulfill its mission." Appropriate for the celebration of Martin Luther King Day, the project is a unique collaborative cultural endeavor that could bring together individuals in diverse communities to discuss issues that separate them. I would like to examine some of the things cultural heritage institutions may want to consider about the project's approach.

View the article at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/13/question-bridge-shows-bla_n_1204789.html?ref=art

Providing the setting

According to the article, Question Bridge has a goal "to demonstrate that meaningful truths can be shared between people who are radically divided from each other if a setting is established that promotes the sharing of essential questions and answers."

One of the most important roles of cultural heritage institutions is to provide the setting for such dialogue. This is the most obvious and most important role the Brooklyn Museum is playing in this project.

Outreach

According to the article, "The community outreach projects bring regional attention to the museum installations...The Question Bridge Curriculum, which is currently being piloted at schools in New York and Oakland with plans for wider distribution, is vital because it brings the messages, meanings and implications of the Question Bridge project into the lives of young people who desperately need alternative representations of cultural difference. "

This project is capable of reaching people of diverse ages, in diverse communities and through a variety of institutions. It is reaching not only museum visitors and students, it is reaching film audiences and Internet users. It seems to me that a library audience could also be a logical part of an outreach effort.

Art as Documentation

This project hits on many of the elements I identified when defining the value of archives for Cultural Heritage Collaborators. For example, the interviews of the men in this project can easily fit into the scope of the archives field as oral history. The recognition of the overlapping varied cultural professions is essential to the health of all cultural fields. We can no longer afford to operate in separate spheres. This project shows the large scale possibilities of using an umbrella term of "cultural heritage" to promote us all. The "art" created by this project can easily be seen by archivists as documentation. It can also be used by librarians as organized knowledge for their own programming and of course by museum professionals, such as those at the Brooklyn Museum, as artifacts of humanity. We can all have a role to play in the promotion and safe keeping of what a project like this generates.

Community

"Once those men join the process, their presence will create a self-defining Identity Map that will function as a unique database of how black men view and define themselves... as opposed to the prevalent images that are routinely projected onto them." The project allows its participants to explore their own self identity and to present it to the world in their way. It encourages us to think about this community and leaves the door open for future projects that focus on other communities.

Opportunities to consider individual humans as members of diverse groups are much needed in contemporary society. I have argued that cultural heritage institutions have a responsibility to support a dialogue about community, with a role to help individuals explore their own identities in relation to those of larger groups.This project seems to give us a unique way of doing this.

Technology

"The website became a practical necessity once our team discovered that we had far more content than could possibly be contained in a conventional documentary or museum installation."

What we show our audiences no longer needs to fit into a specified exhibit space. Furthermore, again and again we are shown the potential of the Internet for broadening reach and transforming an original cultural experience. The message of the Question Bridge is not exclusive for those who attend a film festival or a museum. It can and should be brought to people within their homes. Once such information enters a home, I can see it becoming part of more general conversation, effectively encouraging individuals to think about issues as part of their own lives in a way that a neutral location may not.

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I look forward to watching the progression and development of the Question Bridge. Though the article states that the project is fifteen years in the making, I am still impressed with what its creator have managed to include. I hope that I may be able to return to my native state of New York to see the installation while it is in Brooklyn.

Links to Helpful Archives and Cultural Heritage Web Sites

2012-01-11T11:38:00.002-05:00

I've been collecting my Links to Helpful Archives and Cultural Heritage Web Sites for about 15 years now. They started as bookmarks for myself as I did research for library patrons, wrote client reports, and published articles. I then decided to put the links online to help others interested in good resources for archival work. The list grows as my interests do and as ideas in the field of archives management change and develop. Digital Collaboration is now the fastest growing topic on my page. Recently I have been collecting links on community studies for my own research and I think that may be my next new subject heading on the Links web page.

One day as I was updating the site, I decided to tweet about it. I think that may have been about a year ago. I have received much positive feedback and numerous retweets. So, every time I now update the page I put out a tweet (or two or three) to say that I have done so. I'm glad that people seem to find this useful.

I thought I'd write this post to ask you about your own favorite archives related web sites. As the list stands now, it is very much a personal site. Everything included there I have admired and I have used the information to develop my own ideas about my work and its place in my field. When I started collecting links, there were few archives related web sites. Now there are too many for me to examine them all on my own. So, with that in mind, I hope that others will feel free to recommend sites that they find particularly useful for the promotion and care of archives and cultural heritage resources. If you think something is list worthy -- a site that you have created or one to which you frequently refer -- please comment here, shoot me an email or send a Twitter shout out. I can't wait to discover some new things! Thanks! - MM

More Finds at the Local Antique Shop - Food Memories

2012-01-10T09:58:00.003-05:00

There is always a story behind what we eat (and what we don't eat).

In December, my daughter and I were admiring the gingerbread houses at a local pastry shop. The shop is down the street from her dance class and I bring her in once in awhile so she can get a treat. The gingerbread houses were part of a contest. My daughter and I voted for our favorites and this entered us into a contest to win a free tray of pastries. Above is the winning tray - a plate of pastries that I won for my friends. (Thanks Frederick's Bakery!) BUT, I have Celiac disease and can't touch the stuff. I think the last time I won a raffle was for Yankee tickets when I was in high school. My Dad gave them away because we couldn't travel into the city to use them. The treats do look delicious and I'm awaiting my friends' visit right now for some tea and company, AND so I can give away my treats like a pair of Yankee tickets... but I digress...

Bring up any particular food and I think I'd have a story about it that represents my life at that particular moment: From the Three Musketeers bar that I ate on the way home to placate my sweet tooth while the Frederick's tray sat beside me; (Yes, the candy is gluten free.) To the salami sandwich I had for lunch yesterday, which my husband proudly invented for me when I was ill last year... there are stories for almost everything I eat - when I first discovered the food; what I like about it and why.

On my drive home from the bakery I began thinking about all of the snapshots of food that I have in my photo albums. I have one of me laughing as a teen with my mouth closed tight full of cake. It's one of my favorites because my hair looked good that day. I have another one of me holding up a birthday cake that I shared with my aunt because her birthday is around the same time as mine. I have one of me cutting cake with my husband at our wedding... In fact, I realize now that I think about it that most of the food images I can remember involve birthday cake or sweets. I guess that most people must document birthdays and cake events better than any other event in their lives.

The black and white images in this post are orphan photos that I found in antique shops to illustrate my "Life in Context" project with professional organizer Sue West. Part one of the project focuses on food. All of the images involve meals at the table, foods half way to the eater's mouth or piled on plates. They are very informal images, capturing a moment in time and illustrating a shared human experience. [hmmm...There is no cake.]

It wasn't too hard to seek out images of food for illustration. The images are plentiful, yet we give them little thought. I'm going to try to go dig mine up today and see if they tell some sort of story about my life - a tale of who I am through what I eat.

How are you documenting your food memories? Do any of these images kick off memories for you about food? What role does food play in your life? How do the choices you make reflect your communities and people in your life? Have you won any food contests lately?

(This one is my favorite!)

Share your food memories at https://www.facebook.com/groups/lifeincontext/ and look for these images in the upcoming Life in Context Food Memories Workbook!

The Heart of the Community. The Library.

2012-01-05T15:52:00.000-05:00

The library has always been the heart of my community and the grounding place for my sense of self. This is its past and its potential for the future.

As a child, my mother brought me to the library once or twice a week. We did not have a large free library in our "hamlet" and were required to pay for membership at the larger town libraries, which were free to residents of areas outlying my own. (I never quite understood the geographical and legal limitations of the hamlet, but I don't think that matters. All I know is that our taxes did not go toward library services and we paid at the library for our cards.) Mom taught me that a library was something worth paying for, directly if necessary. We were lucky that we could afford the fee and that we didn't have to travel too far get there. The library was a destination. It was a building filled with knowledge and a place where my imagination could run wild. I could borrow books, and posters, and records and think of them as my own for a short while because I was part of a special community of library patrons.

The right to be part of a "special" community that provides a physical space where one can have a figurative key to a bigger world heightens empathy. The library allowed me to see and explore commonalities among diverse peoples all over the world, so I could better understand my own place and those of others. I believe everyone should have free access to such a place.

I have a memory of sitting in my elementary school library. Mom was meeting with my teacher and I was lovingly parked in front of a display of Dr. Seuss books. The round carousel in the middle of the room held "Green Eggs and Ham," "The Cat in the Hat," "One Fish Two Fish..." Mom was away long enough for me to read every single book on exhibit. I had such a feeling of accomplishment. I felt warm and cozy inside and always identified that space as a piece of me; it was a place from which I took a memory that was partly responsible for making me an enthusiastic reader.

Reading library books gave me a safe way to explore who I am. It gave me confidence to define my personal identity and acknowledge my uniqueness.

In college, I spent a lot of time at the library. The building was old. The spaces with my favorite collections were dark. The seating was not comfortable. It didn't matter to me at the time. The library was an old friend - a relative of my home town library. I went there not only for the books that I needed, but also for its welcoming arms that allowed me to feel the pulse of my education and to feel "home." (Some people seek familiar food when in a foreign place. I seek the familiarity of a library.) Computers at the library became a new key to my community. The computers allowed me easier access to the knowledge and creativity embodied in my favorite building on campus.

The realization that I could develop my brain as others had done in that building helped me better understand what education could do for me.

Libraries are changing. They began their biggest change in 100 years during my time in college. Computers brought into libraries were yet to reach very far out when I was an undergraduate student. Few people had them in their homes. There was little information available on them. Things are so different today, two decades later, that many people feel we don't need libraries anymore. They believe that so much information is available through computers in our homes and in our pockets that libraries are obsolete. I am a big Internet user. I spend much of my day getting my information from remote machines and connecting to other people and worlds through them but I still actively use the library. Libraries have never just been about the books or even the information they provide.

Libraries give knowledge some tangible structure, providing a contained place and some authority to learn to evaluate information. Libraries attach local support and familiarity to large bodies of human ideas that are often different from our own.

The library in the Town in which I settled as an adult has provided me with reading material and a comforting place to do my writing and research. As a young mother, it was a haven where I could meet with other young mothers finding their way. It allowed me to hand my daughter a key to knowledge and assisted me with helping to instill a love of learning and curiosity. My library has remote access to reading materials and databases. It provides a place for local artists to display works, for community groups to meet, for people to discuss big ideas in a neutral space. My town has even been working for the past few years to build an outdoor gathering area near our library. There is a gazebo with plans to have outdoor concerts. They will even be putting in a skate pond. My fellow townspeople seem to feel as I do - that the library is our local heart that can serve as a grounding point for our shared activities, the growth of ideas, and the building of a better future.

A library gives us a heightened sense of place that embodies civic pride. It allows us to discover, articulate and even show off who we are and who we want to be.

A library building and the human support within is a monument to civilization. It shows us all bound together with our dreams and our potential represented in one building. That is where libraries stand in my opinion. That is where they will always stand - reminding us from where we came while pointing us toward where we are going. Libraries will change, but they always have the potential to be the heart of every small community and a thread from one community to the next.

My Home Movies are Crying out for Respect

2012-01-02T16:39:00.001-05:00

To begin the new year, I welcome this post by guest blogger David Rowntree. David has over 10 years of audiovisual archiving experience in a wide variety of libraries, archives, and broadcasting stations. He is working on two very interesting projects in 2012 including an inventory project in my home state with New Hampshire Public Radio (as part of the American Archive Project). He is also co-authoring a book with Chris Lacinak (Audiovisual Preservation Solutions) called Audiovisual Digitization, Preservation, and Access: A Handbook for Legacy and Born Digital Collections. Neal-Schuman Publishers Inc.

This post seems particularly appropriate, following just a few short days after the announcement of the most recent additions to the National Film Registry's list. (I particularly like an article in today's news related to the Film Registry called "Some Thoughts on These Amazing Shadows...") The care of old media is a problem with which we all grapple. Thank you David for sharing your unique expertise with the readers at the ArchivesInfo blog so that we may all safely care for our own personally valuable films!
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If you are like me, you probably have a box, or multiple boxes, of old audiovisual recordings of family birthdays, celebrations, travels, and other events (both special and mundane) tucked away in a closet, basement, or attic. Whether it's film, videotape, optical disks or hard drives we have increasingly turned to moving images to capture our memories. However, as technology rushes forward, these collections are increasingly forgotten and neglected. It is a classic case of “do what I say and not what I do.” I work with archives and organizations to preserve their film & media collections… but I have left mine in the closet for too long.

Home movies have been a part of our history from the time film was invented. By the1930’s both16mm and 8mm cameras had entered the home consumer market. Although home movies were the exclusive hobby of wealthy individuals until the 1950’s, as equipment and film stock became more affordable they became more accessible. With the advent of video, and later digital cameras, home movies have become an integral part of documenting our family history.

What is generally an intensely personal record, despite our recent propensity to want to share them with the world via Facebook and YouTube, home movies have caught the attention of scholars. In the past decade there has been a dramatic shift in the perception of homes movies in both film and social history. Critical historiography and film studies have been expanding their views of what should be considered a part of the historical record. This shift signifies a move from predominant “official” histories, to one that includes popular memory, is more informal and personal… thus allowing for a richer (and visual) interpretation. Editors Karen L. Ishizuka and Patricia R. Zimmermann capture this shift in their book Mining the home movie: Excavations in history and memories (2008). http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520248076 I just checked the book out from the library myself.

Film archivists have been at the forefront of this change. In 2003, a group of archivists created Home Movie Day - http://www.homemovieday.com/ an international event that allows individuals to project their home movies in public screenings. In addition to the joy of watching these programs, the forum provides an opportunity to showcase why it’s important to care for these films and to learn how to best care for them.

A couple of years later, the non-profit group Center for Home Movies (CHM) http://www.centerforhomemovies.org/ was established to administer the growing Home Movie Day events as well as “engage in new home movie projects” and act as a “clearinghouse for information about home movies.” A sampling of home movies from the CHM collections can be viewed on the Internet Archive http://www.archive.org/details/home_movies

This new scholarship may be an interesting read, and it may be fun to participate in a HOME MOVIE DAY event, but you may be asking ‘what does this have to do with my stack of old tapes?’ To start, this new focus has resulted in an increased number of resources dedicated to the preservation of home movies. In addition to the Center for Home Movies, the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) http://www.amianet.org/ is a treasure trove of information and is full of individuals dedicated to audiovisual preservation. The are several resources on their website (see the Preservation Committee http://www.amianet.org/groups/committees/preservation/preservation.php

and Small Gauge/ Amateur Committee). http://www.amianet.org/groups/committees/smallgauge/about.php

You can also conduct a search on the AMIA listserv archives or post a question to the group http://www.amianet.org/participate/listserv.php. Over a decade of intimate knowledge has been archived here. http://lsv.uky.edu/archives/amia-l.html

Time to Take Action

First, if your audiovisual materials are in the attic or basement… move them. Apart from physical damage, environmental storage conditions have the largest effect on the lifespan of your materials. Fluctuating temperatures and high humidity often found in these locations will accelerate the breakdown of film and video materials. I keep my materials in a closet on main floor where temperatures are generally drier and more stable.

If you have film, unless it reeks of vinegar it is probably in decent shape. Film has already proven to be able to survive 100 years, so it is less vulnerable than many of your videos. However, if they are stored in rusty cans or cardboard boxes consider re-housing them to avoid particles from scratching and damaging the emulsion. You can buy archival cans from places like Gaylord, University Products, Tuscan, and Urbanski.

Viewing film is obviously a problem if you do not have a projector or viewing equipment. If you do have a projector or are considering buying one on eBay be sure to conduct some research about inspecting and projecting your films – especially if you don’t know what you’re doing. Film can shrink, curl, and warp as it breaks down, or contain splices in need of repair (where the film is taped or glued together). Running uninspected film through a projector can physically damage the film. The most practical solution is to transfer them.

Making a DVD or video file is great because you can share your memories and not subject your films to the wear and tear of projection. However, it is very important not to throw out the film originals. They will be better quality than your digital access copy and will last longer. A DVD is not a preservation format. If you no longer want the actual film… consider donating them to an archive. Northeast Historic Films http://www.oldfilm.org/ in Bucksport, Maine has one of the largest home movie collections in the country.

I have a small amount of film given to me by my uncle (from the 1970’s) sitting in boxes which I will get to at some point. Ironically, my newer videotapes and digital video are more susceptible to loss than the film so I am going to focus on preserving these first. If you are not sure what you have in your collection, the Texas Commission on the Arts: Video Conservation Guide http://www.arts.state.tx.us/video/ is a good site to help you identify your tapes and gives a good introduction to the problems and risks associated with video.

My first problem is that I do not have all the equipment to play back and access my tapes. I also have many recordings on small formats such as Hi-8, digital Hi-8, and mini-dv. These formats are very unstable (the more narrow the tape the less stable they are generally). I plan to send most of my analog tapes to be digitized by a vendor. I will migrate the digital formats myself. I have worked with SceneSavers http://www.scenesavers.com/index.htm. They are a bit pricey but are a reputable archival preservation company. There are other alternatives as well, just do some research.

A common misconception is that digitization equals preservation. There is both digitization for access and digitization for preservation. While digitizing an old tape onto a DVD may save the footage from further neglect (and you get the benefit of viewing it) it generally involves compression (loss of detail). When digitizing your old tapes for preservation purposes (or having a vendor do it for you) be sure to create an uncompressed file (you can save this on a hard drive) in addition to the DVD copy you will want for access.

Unfortunately, the work does not end there. Once I have my digital files I can no longer just ignore them. They will need to be managed.

1. I need multiple back-up copies.

2. I need to be mindful of the file types I have, as well as continually migrate the media every few years going forward (file types change and are updated).

3. I need to migrate because the hard drive, DVD, or computer will not last indefinitely either. Common archival practice is to migrate approximately every 5 years.

4. I also need to take the time to add metadata, such as well thought out file name. I have dozens of songs in my iTunes library titled Track 01, Track 02… Don’t let this happen to your memories. Linda Tadic talks about metadata and the challenges and practical solutions for archiving and preserving digital video. http://www.loc.gov/podcasts/digitalpreservation/podcast_tadic.html

I know it will be a rewarding, nostalgic, and exciting process going through the old tapes and being able to see the events I’ve recorded and long forgot about. Moreover, my kids will finally get to see their parents wedding and know that we too were once young… and that I could dance. Time to roll up my sleeves and dig in!
***
Find David on Twitter @davidrowntree and see his web site at http://www.archivalmediaconsulting.com/

Year in Review - Building Communities - Looking Ahead

2011-12-31T11:20:00.000-05:00

Helping kids understand that history has a role to play in
their lives is an important goal of ArchivesInfo in 2012.

Libraries, Archives and Museums have an important role to play in keeping cultural heritage alive through documentation, access, and outreach. But institutions cannot act separately from the communities that they serve. We need to consider our "audience" more as active partners in the work we do. During 2011, I have worked to develop projects that emphasize the importance of communities and community building for the study of history and the protection of historical resources. The following ArchivesInfo projects have been launched in 2011 with these thoughts in mind. I look forward to sharing ideas, continuing to build community identities, and working to promote cultural heritage with you all! I hope that you will join me on my 2012 journey. Visit my web site. Find me here, on Twitter, or on Facebook. Or better yet, I hope we may get a chance to build a sense of community together, in person.

Happy New Year!

1. The Diary Project - "On this blog on May 6th, I introduced a diary I found in a local antique shop. The diary covers a six month period in 1882 and includes the names of many people, places, and events in Southern Maine [probably Kennebunkport, based on research we've done thus far.] My elementary school aged daughter and I are working on a project to uncover the name of the person who wrote the diary and to find out more about this person's life." Our diary provides a window into the past that we think can help the community it reflects build a stronger sense of identity. Stay tuned for our diary project blog!

2. What I Know. What I Wonder. What I Imagine. - An introduction to the program states: "This program introduces historical thinking to elementary school students. The photos in this program include children from the past doing all kinds of different things. They are children like you, but most of them lived a long time ago. I don’t know the kids’ names, where they lived, if they were happy, or their ages. I want to know because these children are part of my heritage. They tell me something about kids in the past. They tell me something about history and culture. They show me that civilization has come a long way and yet, I have a connection to people who lived long ago. They are not so very different from me!" With the goal of "Teaching Kids the Value of History" this workshop allows students to identify facts about images; encourages them to ask appropriate questions based on those facts and what we don't know; and allows kids to use their creativity to imagine what life was like for the children pictured. I will begin introducing the program to local schools in 2012.

3. Life in Context - "Your story helps define the 21st century for future generations. The narrative of your life should describe your personal journey and can be viewed as a piece of a larger puzzle reflecting values, traditions and trends in society. Colleague and certified professional organizer Sue West and I have developed the workshop Life in Context: Telling Your Story to help people think about their places in the world. Through an exploration of personal objects, individuals can define what aspects of their lives are most meaningful to them. Sue and I encourage people to pursue a greater understanding of the context of their lives to help them focus on what is meaningful, and to collect and preserve stories that are essential to better understanding ourselves, our communities and our culture." Learn more at our web site and join the Life in Context Project on Facebook.

4. Unofficial Family Archivist - "This new book advocates for the value, recording and care of your family memories. Are you passing on a well-rounded collection of personal papers, photographs and memorabilia or are you passing on bits that leave more questions than answers?" An outgrowth of the ArchivesInfo "Preserving Memories" workshop, The Unofficial Family Archivist helps individuals recognize the value of their personal historical materials and family papers for communities. I continue to arrange book signings and workshops in 2012 with the re-release of the book in early January.

5. Social Media, Digitization and DPLA - At the end of 2011 I joined the DPLA Content and Scope workstream to add my voice to help with the creation of a national digital library. I encourage all cultural heritage professionals to join DPLA to offer your expertise to making this important project successful. ArchivesInfo will continue activity across social media platforms and work to help small cultural heritage institutions to better understand and gain a foothold in the digital world. I am especially proud of the connections I've made to non-professionals interested in learning about archives and cultural heritage institutions. In 2011 I've also made many connections to genealogists, oral historians, and others in related fields -- some of whom I've begun working collaboratively to promote our mutual interests. I have included guest bloggers to expand their reach and to add their voice to mine to promote our field. 2012 will bring more guests to this space.

We Know the Real Santa. Who's Documenting This?

2011-12-20T08:36:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Celiac Santa. We discovered him when my daughter was very young and he's been the "real" Santa ever since.

Earlier this week, I learned that a friend has a different "real" Santa. He is one town over. Like our Santa, this one sets up a little building at the end of a well lit cul-de-sac. Kids drive from all over to see the lights and to see Santa and Mrs. Claus.

I've always thought that our Santa was extra special, sitting out every evening in December, waiting for people to visit him with no ulterior motive whatsoever. It turns out that there may be a whole community of Santas sitting at the end of cul-de-sacs! Has anyone ever done a documentation project to record their thoughtful actions? I don't remember Santas at the end of cul-de-sacs when I was growing up. Are these Santas even a sign of the times in some way or are they geographically noteworthy? (I didn't grow up around here.)

These Santas are certainly symbols of our community. I'm sure that my daughter will remember Celiac Santa forever, as will many little kids in our neighborhood, but will he be immortalized in a memory institution somewhere or will the memories of his time with us fade in a few generations? Who's documenting this?

Home is Where the Photos Are

2011-12-19T09:01:00.000-05:00

My grandparents continue to smile
upon us from the walls of my home.

My friend Marian over at Roots and Rambles said that I got her thinking when I wrote this on my Facebook wall, "Hanging photos of my family makes home seem even more like home." Now she's got me thinking about how family heirlooms help us create a sense of place, making our house into a home.

Photos are always the first thing that come out of boxes when I move to a new home. I must hang at least a few pictures of my favorite people around me before I can turn to the unpacking of dishes, clothes, and other living necessities. When I unwrap my wedding photos from newsprint, look at the giggling face of my daughter from when she was a baby, and place a photo of my siblings on the mantle, I feel like I am branding a new home. To me, putting out photos is like breaking a glass of champagne over the bough of a ship. Photos launch my new life in a new place, on untouched waters that hold awaiting happy memories.

Marian feels similarly about some heirlooms from her childhood and wrote about them, "I never realized the impact that having items from my family and from my childhood would have on how I felt about my environment. The connection with my family and with my past was strong and powerful. It gave me a tremendous sense of comfort."

My Facebook post about hanging photos referred to some pictures I took this Thanksgiving when my siblings came to visit with their families. And indeed it was comfort that I sought when I hung them. It has been a difficult year for me, but Thanksgiving marked a turning point and a long weekend that I hope to remember forever. I sit at a new desk that I have placed next to my Christmas tree. The walls were bare. The lights of the tree helped further warm a sunny room on a cold weekend, but the space needed these photos to make it perfect.

I have family heirlooms that instill similar comforting feelings, but for me, it has always been photos that warm me most. I was attracted to photography in high school and studied to become a professional photo-journalist in college before switching majors. Photographs seem to capture the essence of a person and freeze it in time in a remarkable way. So, while my brother and sister may live a distance away, I feel their essence smiling at me right now while I write this from my desk. Home is where the photos are because I have those faces smiling at me from every wall and I feel blessed by their presence.

Food Memories and Culture

2011-12-15T10:54:00.002-05:00

How are you documenting this festive season? Some of the primary things we think about when we consider the holidays are the special foods we serve. Give a little thought to what you serve, how you serve it, and why. Share your holiday food memories with your loved ones. Write down your memories. Pass on your recipes and stories you have about them. Photograph your dining events and those who attend them. Record information about your special serving pieces so that loved ones always remember the stories behind these heirlooms.

***

"Food is a vital part of culture. Our food heritage -- the dishes themselves, the dining company we keep, the places we associate with a good meal, our heirloom serving items, and more -- reflect our cultural identity, giving us a sense of who we are and what is important.

"Food is part of the culture that cultural heritage professionals refer to as “intangible” because many of our food traditions are not recorded and are passed from generation by word of mouth or by live demonstration. For example, I know how to cook a meatball properly (the Italian way) because my Italian mother-in-law stood in the kitchen with me and showed me how her mother showed her.

"Think about the foods you eat that have special meaning to you because they were passed down by your family or were integral parts of your community life. Consider what foods represent your heritage and how that heritage has been passed on to you. Did you learn to cook standing at your mother’s side? Do you have a dog-eared, food splattered recipe book that once belonged to your grandmother? Do you have the sedar plate or the Christmas cookie platter that served your family well for generations? Is there a dish that reminds you of a favorite community eatery? This book offers you the opportunity to explore behind your everyday food experiences to discover the more meaningful side of sustenance. Why do we eat the things we eat and how do our meals reflect our life in context?

"We can think of the context of our lives in two parts: a little context and a big context. Our little context considers each of us at our very core. Who are you? What do you like? What specific memories do you have? The foods and food related things we like give some insight about us. We are a person who prefers salt or sweet. We may like to cook. We may prefer to go out to a restaurant. Those closest to us know our preferences and may acknowledge our food desires by serving us certain meals or helping us create food habits that suit our schedule. This is the little context of our food memories.

"The second part is a larger context. Who are you and who is in your community? What do you like to eat and how does it reflect your ethnicity, geography, or other community group? Do you like certain foods because they are part of your community? What specific memories do you have about certain foods and do other members of your community have related memories? How do your community’s memories differ from people in differing communities?

"... When you begin thinking about the value of your activities, your traditions, and objects, you begin to piece together a puzzle that provides a better understanding of your role and your place in the world. Understanding your food heritage is a vital piece of this puzzle because food says so much about your values and your culture. Indeed, you are what you eat!"

- From the upcoming, The Life in Context Project: Food Workbook

Join The Life in Context Project on Facebook or follow us on Twitter @URLifeinContext.

Learn more about this unique collaborative endeavor on The Life in Context web site

Read about simplifying and reorganizing food traditions to suit our lives from my Life in Context Partner @Space4U

More Finds at the Local Antique Shop - Etsy Descriptions

2011-12-12T13:38:00.000-05:00

I've noticed something when I peruse online sites for items to use as samples in classes. Some people who sell ephemera and photos come up with some pretty strange titles and descriptions for their wares. For example:

A seller titles a photo "But She's Got Cooties" and explains, "This is an original vintage photograph from the 1940s. It shows a brother and sister sitting on a bench, the brother doesn't seem very happy about it." Actually, to me, the brother seems perfectly comfortable to be sitting on a park bench with his sister, but he SEEMS to be squinting into the sun!

I have wondered about these descriptions lately. Does labeling images with a cute or catchy title, pointing out people's flaws, or otherwise subjectively responding to an image enhance its worth to a potential buyer?

For another image, the same seller titles it "Mischief on His Mind" and writes, "This is an original vintage photograph from the 1940s. It shows a young boy on his porch with toy gun at his hip and a trouble making look on his face." I don't see trouble. Here I see boredom. I wonder if the boy is unhappy to be stopped during his play so that a grownup can take a picture, but I don't know this for sure. I certainly would not call this image, "Taking a Breather from Cowboys and Indians So Mom Can Take a Picture."

I find myself connecting these labeled images to museum paintings. Is this labeling of images a way of marketing or a way of "curating?" Do the sellers really believe the things they point out in the images or is it solely a gimmick? If these sellers really are interpreting these photos in these ways that are perplexing to a professional, does this give cultural heritage professionals some room for educating? I wonder if a museum can use online Etsy images as a tool for helping individuals better interpret the images they see.

Does it really matter that people subjectively interpret and label such photos? I think it does and that's why I feel compelled to point out these strange descriptions in this blog. The meaning we attach to images we see should be backed by knowledge and research. It is easy to ascribe meaning to something based on our own point of view and experiences. It is much harder to put our personal feelings aside to make educated interpretations about the things we see and hear. So while the descriptions may be "clever," they help perpetuate stereotypes, prejudices, misinformation, and ignorance.

And on that note, I'm going to share an image I purchased that one might call "cute." It has a great composition, and the kid's eyes just pull me in. I am not going to say something such as the girl is playing mommy or that she is taking her new carriage from grandma for a spin because I just don't know if that is true. I hope that you enjoy it anyway - without a catchy title.

A Student of Communities and Santa's Celiac Baker

2011-12-08T12:35:00.004-05:00

Forgive the cliches, but sometimes I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb. Other times, I feel like a square peg who fits comfortably in a much larger round hole. Please bear with me while I explain.

I have never been a "traditional" archivist. At various times in my life I have worked as an assistant curator, a reference librarian, an "Internet Coordinator," as well as an archivist. I've worked in historical homes, city archives, museums, a science institute, public libraries...in fact, probably a wider variety of places than I can count on two hands. So, rather than self-identifying with any one type of place or profession, I lately have been calling myself a cultural heritage professional with a specialty in archives. I spend my life exploring all of these institutions -- examining archives as a common thread among them. Today, while taking a long walk, I realized that I should also consider myself a student of communities because what really interests me about all these institutions is their community connection.

Outside of my consulting work, one of the largest projects on my plate is my Life in Context Project in collaboration with Sue West of Space4U Consulting. I will not rehash what I've written before about "Life in Context," but a meeting with Sue yesterday got me thinking about this subject. We are currently working on an aspect of "Life in Context" called "Food Memories." I am not a foodie by any means. I eat what I can on a restricted Celiac diet. I usually only cook big meals at Thanksgiving and other special occasions. I like to go out to eat, but I'm not a connoisseur. However, food is a good launching point for self-exploration and for exploring how one fits into a larger society. We all eat! And once I start thinking about a particular subject, my mind jumps to connections. Sometimes, serendipitously the connections present themselves.

As a case in point: This week, my daughter and I are preparing for our baking weekend. We bake cookies for our friends and for Santa. I only bake gluten free, since I have Celiac Disease. One year, we were concerned that my daughter might have Celiac Disease too, so gluten free baking was particularly meaningful. That year, we discovered that each December Santa sets up a fabulous little shed-like house at the end of a cul-de-sac in a neighboring town. We were told that the lighted houses along the street were a sight to see and Santa would be waiting for us at the end of the road to listen to what we want for Christmas. We drove up in our car. My daughter hopped onto Santa's lap and he offered her a candy cane. I told him, "I'm sorry Santa, but my daughter needs to eat gluten free and we are not sure if the candy cane is okay for her." Maybe I shouldn't have said anything, but I'm glad I did. Mrs. Claus started practically jumping up and down. "Santa has to eat gluten free too!" Who knew? So I drove home and grabbed a tin of my special gf cookies. I drove back with my family and gave Santa the tin. "Merry Christmas Santa! You can have these cookies. They are gluten free." I thought Mrs. Claus was going to cry. We visit Santa's special shack every year and bring him his cookies. Mrs. Claus gives my daughter a special ornament instead of a candy cane. (I don't have the heart to tell her that after receiving medical test results we learned my daughter can eat normally now!) We also leave gluten free cookies and milk for Santa on Christmas Eve. I tell my daughter to not divulge to her friends that Santa is a Celiac because they would feel badly about leaving him gluten cookies all of these years!

Why am I telling you this? Besides being timely, this food story reveals my interest in communities. First of all, and perhaps most obviously, this annual December "event" is special to my whole geographic community. Cars line up down the street to see Santa in his shack. Secondly, I feel like I have a special connection to Santa since we are both members of the Celiac community. Third, I find it funny that I tell my little girl to not divulge Santa's food secret. When I was young, I didn't celebrate Christmas and my mother used to tell me to not tell other kids that Santa isn't real! My daughter is a member of a community in which I was not and it's interesting to see how some aspects of her childhood differ from mine because of it.

So, as a student of communities and a cultural heritage professional with my feet in many different camps, I sometimes see things in unique ways. I suspect that is the case with us all. While we may identify firmly with certain communities to which we belong, we may just have a bit of a toe dipped in others. To me, cultural heritage and "memory" institutions are fascinating for this very reason. They stand as their own communities, they can be vibrant parts of a larger community or communities, AND their holdings include the resources that shed light on societal groups - how they overlap and differ.

So perhaps my world-view and my professional view is a little different. (In fact, I was even the girl in high school who floated from one group to another group. I was a jock, an artist, and a school newspaper editor - taking it all in and examining my place.) I have always explored the idea that no matter what you believe, where you live, or what you do, you can find some community connection to anyone else on earth. I find this fascinating. I'm looking forward to continuing my exploration of documents as a "lens" into communities and to exploring communities more fully through my work with our collaborative "Life in Context" project.

***
If you are interested in learning more about our soon to be launched "Food Memories", See "Life in Context" on Facebook or follow URlifeincontext on Twitter.

For more about my work with communities see www.archivesinfo.com

Book Recommendation - "A Secret Gift"

2011-12-05T08:24:00.002-05:00

Are you looking for a feel good book for the holiday season? I've found one that promotes compassion, community, and the value of archives.

"A Secret Gift: How One Man's Kindness - and a Trove of Letters - Revealed the Hidden History of the Great Depression" tells the story of how one man's generosity helped lift the entire city of Canton, Ohio. Author and investigative reporter, Ted Gup, uses a family collection of papers as a thread through his story. In 2008, Gup's mother handed him a suitcase of family papers for him to explore. Within the collection was a newsclipping from 1933. It contained and ad that offered money from an anonymous donor to families in need so they could have a happy Christmas. Along with the clipping was an envelope stuffed with letters requesting assistance and also letters of thanks from those who received it. Gup's story unfolds as he discovers that the donor was his generous grandfather. He sets out to learn more about a larger than life man full of mysteries and along the way uncovers a tale of civic pride and personal survival.

"Then, one night at three in the morning...I sat up in bed and recognized the letters for what they were - not a dusty archive but a time capsule addressed to the present, one that had taken on a sense of urgency."

"A Secret Gift" links the voices from the Depression to those struggling today. It discusses parallels between generations while advocating for humanity's resilience. It shows how history helps us understand ourselves and society; how a knowledge of history can steer us toward making things better. From the work I feel a call to contemporary society to examine its past, to explore the goodness of mankind -- to see the parallels between our last "Hard Times" and today -- to find guidance through our current economic troubles.

"The letters helped me understand what our neighbors had endured and how the legacy of their suffering shaped the character of my community and my family..."

Gup does a remarkable job of uncovering the back story of families represented in the letters and locating descendants of correspondents. Through extensive research that he discusses in his publication, he reveals what happened to each family, and how the secret gift helped or sometimes changed them. While weaving his own family story among the lives of others, he recognizes their similar struggles and dreams regardless of religion and social "class." Early on he states, "community is more than collective self-interest." That, to me, is the moral of his story.

As an archivist, I see the suitcase of letters as the type of collection about which my profession dreams. Filled with first hand accounts that reveal a more personal history than most papers, the collection can take a researcher in many directions. In this case, it took one thoughtful grandson on a remarkable journey that will enlighten the reader and certainly fill one's heart with seasonal warmth.

Occupy Wall Street and Archives

2011-12-01T09:17:00.003-05:00

I'm sorry. I'm breaking my promise to myself and to you and am going to post about something a little serious this morning. Despite vowing to write only lighthearted post from now through the holidays, I just didn't feel like I could let this article go by without commenting. I couldn't leave myself all riled up with no place to post.

Please read:

National Museum of American History collects Occupy Wall Street memorabilia

This article makes it sound like archivists and museum professionals are wandering aimlessly looking for OWS artifacts, but I assume the Smithsonian and other "major historical institutions" have a collection plan of some sort. In my opinion, the article shows some lack of understanding about what cultural heritage professionals do. It seems to me that if our profession is to be valued and funded that we need to fix part of the perception presented here. We do not collect what is popular or what people remember. We collect TO remember and Occupy Wall Street is an important part of our current events that needs to be evaluated by historians in due time. Those out collecting "ephemera" are doing exactly what they should be doing as good professionals and this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

Attempts to collect Occupy Wall Street items may present a good opportunity to teach the public about the role of memory institutions. We should explain why we are collecting these things. We should use the opportunity to show other similar things in our collections -- how our collections show the rise and sometimes the fall of movements. Our collections help historians and others better understand our past so that we better understand ourselves and can move more surely into the future.

I do think it is a shame that a major newspaper such as the Washington Times presented our work in such a cavalier way. While not wrong in their facts, they create a perception that museum collecting and ebay sales should be thought of in the same way. In fact, it was the first paragraph that made me jittery right off the bat:

"Early in October, staffers from the Smithsonian Museum of American History went through the Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York’s Zucotti Park collecting hand-made posters and other material to build up a record of the embryonic movement in case the protesters end up in the history books - and not just in jail for unlawful assembly and messing up public spaces. "

"In case the protesters end up in the history books..." I wonder... from where do they think the historians get their information for their history books?

Gifts of Heritage 2011

2011-11-30T11:44:00.000-05:00

Last year, I posted about Gifts of Heritage in October. I am a little behind in thinking about gifting this year. However, in keeping with my theme of upbeat posts through the holidays, I return to this subject. It certainly is not too late to be a little crafty about your gifts. (Trust me, it is hard to bite my tongue about Mitt Romney's records and to not write a post about it...but I made myself a promise to continue giving thanks through my blog this year by writing happy posts.)

I am in part inspired by Marian Pierre-Louis at Roots and Rambles and her "Simple Gift for Non-Crafty Family Historians."

Here is a list of some additional simple gifts that don't take a long time:

Create an ornament with your name and the date. My tree is overstuffed with ornaments and each one reminds me of the time I got it. Some of my favorites are the ones I made. You can paint on plain ball ornaments. Or, this year, I took my daughter to a local pottery place where they provide ceramic ornaments to paint that are then fired.
To up the ante a bit, consider Creating Your Own Heirloom Photo Ornament
Last week, I mentioned my project to create "art trading cards." These little cards are a little larger than a business card. With a little effort, they can be very beautiful. Consider using copies of materials from your personal archives as embellishments. Here's a web site with good artist trading card info and samples.
Paper mache is a fun craft that can be useful for a fun afternoon of creating heirloom gifts. Make copies of your treasured documents and use the copies to mold tree shapes, snowmen and more.
Give a traditional calendar gift a little twist by adding a favorite family recipe for each month. I use Shutterfly to create calendars with pictures of the grandkids for my parents. For non-relatives, sharing your treasured recipes is a good way to share a bit of your family's love with dear friends.

Quite honestly, last year's list is a pretty good one. So check back there for more ideas if you haven't done so already.

If you are inspired by anything here and do create something, I'd love to see it and share it with other readers if you're game! Drop me an email and a picture at Melissa @ mannon dot org to show me what you've done. If you've got other unique ideas, I'd love to see those too. Happy holidays! Happy archiving! Happy crafting!

More Finds at the Local Antique Shop - Cranberries and Pumpkin Pie

2011-11-22T09:02:00.000-05:00

I had the pleasure of coming across a large stack of holiday postcards at my local antique shop the other day. Out of the pile, this one caught my eye.

This is how I picture Thanksgiving Day. Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. Despite the convoluted history, and the religious and political meanings that many attach to it, for me it is a holiday of sharing and giving thanks.

However you "celebrate", I wish you the very best of everything. I hope that you have the opportunity to make wonderful family memories, to explore rich traditions, and to express what Thanksgiving means to you and your community. Our diverse experiences and varied historical memories are what keeps civilization vital, interesting, and moving forward.

Thanksgiving in the Archives and Beyond

2011-11-18T12:54:00.000-05:00

Turkeys have been roaming my neighborhood since late summer. They move around like a gang of teenagers, picking up new members in the area and returning to their favorite hangout spots in larger numbers each time they visit. I haven't seen them in a few weeks. Were they smart enough to hightail it out of here before Thanksgiving?

Perhaps I began a new annual tradition last year when I posted interesting online finds representing Thanksgiving related holdings in archives around the United States. This year I bring you more:

New York Public Library vintage Thanksgiving menus are part of the library's spectacular menu archives The collection is also notable as the subject of a NYPL crowdsourcing project that seeks to digitize the holdings.

I found lovely, nostalgic photos of Americans celebrating Thanksgiving by searching the collections of the Library of Congress.

Historic New England is known for their collection of New England ephemera. Their materials include thanksgiving, cards, menus, and dinner tickets. This Thanksgiving postcard caught my eye.

The Thanksgiving art work of Norman Rockwell (which I hoped to find on the Norman Rockwell Museum's page) is highlighted on a Norman Rockwell Collector site. Rockwell's work helped mold our modern ideas about Thanksgiving celebration.

Though not specifically Thanksgiving related, the University of Illinois Archaeology and Public Engagement Department's Plymouth Colony online archive has interesting documents that we generally associate with the "founders" of the Thanksgiving holiday. The site includes unique analysis of the records, so that we can better understand them in context and encourages us to "undertake [our] own analysis and interpretations."

I had a fun time searching for events of past Thanksgivings in the Google news archives. I searched the year of my birth and found that dinners were served to soldiers and native Americans protested the holiday.

***

This year, perhaps because of my focus on personal papers through my book and workshop, I am also thinking about how I can relate these archives finds more strongly to my family's celebrations:

Perhaps I'll find a new dish to use in the NYPL menus. (I began decorating oranges for Christmas one year when I read about how it was a Victorian tradition.)

I plan to make some Thanksgiving "art trading cards" to
share with friends and add to our personal collections.

I do plan to show my daughter some of the postcard images from Historic New England. She came home a few weeks ago with a school project to create "art trading cards." We have been using dried wildflowers and markers to decorate business card sized oaktag pieces to swap with friends. Perhaps Thanksgiving art cards can become a new rage!

Photos are always part of our celebration. Recently, I have been sure to get a new photo with my siblings each year. My home has become the Thanksgiving hot spot and it is the one time we are sure to be together to capture my brother and sister and me in transition...

Whatever I decide, I'm going to practice what I have been preaching in my writing all year and create documentation that records our special time together. I will not just look beyond my home for history. I'm going to see myself as the center of this special time and stop to recognize how at this moment I am living history. I hope that you will do the same.

However, at the same time, this activity has put me in the mood to visit my local antique shop and track down some holiday ephemera that is not connected to my family. Perhaps I'll have a new find to share with you next week.

The Thanksgiving Tree

2011-11-16T10:35:00.000-05:00

Last year, around this time, I introduced my family's "tree of thanks" on this blog. I started a tradition four years ago of drawing a tree and posting thankful leaves on it throughout the month of November. My intention is to instill a sense of gratitude in my daughter and to promote a family tradition that she will remember for the rest of her life. The tree also allows us to look back at changes and growth in our lives.

My house is a great big mix of traditions. My husband and I were raised with different faiths. We were both raised outside of New York City, but now live in New England. Though in distance we haven't settled that far from the place of our birth, what is accepted as "traditional" in New Hampshire is often foreign from what we experienced growing up. For example, this time of year, my neighbors place bales of hay and cornstalks alongside their mailboxes. To me, such things belong on a farm and are not materials for decorating. So, creating some traditions that are all our own, that do not seem unusual, is important to me.

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. I welcome the opportunity to remind myself of the things for which I am grateful and to share that gratitude with other. I have saved all of our thankful trees thus far. They are folded and rolled in my closet alongside my archives boxes filled with family papers. Looking back at the trees of past years shows me changes in my growing daughter's handwriting and changing interests. It also shows consistencies as we remain thankful for friends, family, books, "hugs and kisses."

We invite those who visit us to contribute to our tree. Some of their postings are humorous. For example, one friend who spends a lot of time with horses wrote that she is thankful for "Shampoo and soap! (really!)" Some of the postings are hopeful. "I am thankful for an honest mechanic," reminds me of when I switched to a new garage that stopped telling me that my car was broken every time I brought it in for a regular checkup. The postings sometimes remind me of larger historical events as in leaves indicating that their poster was thankful for election results in 2009.

Our trees are a valued part of our personal archives. This year's will be especially poignant...

Last week, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center had a table set up in the hall near where I had a scheduled appointment. A large tree held leaves of thanks. I was happy to extend my gratitude out from my home and to connect to a larger community. I wrote on the Dartmouth tree that "I am thankful for my health and for my good doctors."

I just completed my last cancer related surgery on Monday and for that I am very, very grateful. My home tree has become a place to remember all of the good things that remain, have come back to me, and that I have found on this journey. I am also thankful that I can close this chapter of my life, share my experience with others, and perhaps help others feel gratitude for the traditions that keep us going. I am thankful that I can find some good in what I have gone through and that I can show my daughter that illness is a part of life from which we can often learn, grow, and move on.

This blog post begins my holiday celebrations. I wish you a wonderful holiday season and hope that you may find some peace and gratitude no matter what you now face. Focus on the traditions that help give our lives meaning, savor them, record them and make your memories strong. My postings over the next month aim to be lighthearted and filled with the gratitude that I feel right now. Happy almost Thanksgiving!

Sense of Place: My Heart's Original Home is Not My Daughter's

2011-11-09T12:50:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week I talked about my first book signing. Today I thought I'd share one of the book passages that I read from "The Unofficial Family Archivist." "A sense of place" is a topic I return to again and again. I even consider Robert Archibald's "A Place to Remember" as one of my professional bibles with its focus on place as a center point for our memories and community. Capturing a sense of place should be a vital part of the work of professional archivists and non-professional "citizen" archivists. Thinking about our environment feeds our identity, helps us understand human differences, and helps give personal stories context and meaning.

Figure 36. I asked my mother to send me photos of her and Dad from their childhoods that demonstrate a sense of place. Their city upbringings are evident in these images. Mom stands with her little brother in a carriage. Dad is the little boy on the lower left in the other image.

Sense of Place [p. 179-180 "The Unofficial Family Archivist]

"The backdrop to your personal story provides a valuable bit of information toward the understanding of your personal history, but it is one of those intangible elements that you will likely need to consciously convey and incorporate into your documentation efforts. A setting can influence us and the events around us in poignant ways. “Who am I?” has been influenced by the places I have lived.

"For example, I grew up in a suburban environment, in a town about 45 minutes outside of New York City. I could walk to school and to the grocery store. Wildlife consisted of birds, bugs, and an occasional raccoon in the garbage. Sidewalks were the norm, and my cul-de-sac enabled me to learn to ride my bike without fear of being hit by a car. I now live in a more rural suburban environment. I need a vehicle to get almost anywhere. The hills are too big for easily learning to ride a bike. I have had deer, fox, and fisher cats in my yard. Frogs keep me up at night instead of traffic, and friends have told me that there is a bear in the neighborhood. My formative years were certainly different from my daughter’s early years, and her sense of self has a distinctly New Hampshire tinge to it. When we visit a city, she is struck by all the people and buildings, noting them as distinctly different from her norm.

"The place from which we come gives us shared memories with other community members.[1] The place may also deeply impact us so that our “otherness” is obvious to others. Transmitting remembrances about our spaces is vital toward helping others understand us. One who lives in the inner city will have a very different perspective than one who lives in the country. A person of a particular nationality will also have alternate views from someone from another place. Explaining these differences is vital toward promoting harmony among diverse groups and can help us better understand ourselves and each other.

"Try to capture your environment in your documentation work. Use visual tools to relay your setting to others. Describe what makes the place or places you have lived unique. Try to convey how your sense of place has impacted you. Use sense of place as a thread through your other documentation work, or focus exclusively on it by describing the setting directly. To convey your sense of place, think about the location itself. Consider the buildings, natural elements, and infrastructure that you recognize as your own. Also mull over the cultural environment that your residence has that makes it unique. What characteristics of the community reflect its uniqueness? What language, ideas, history, and recurring events are distinctive elements of this place?

The Sense of Place passage is part of a U.S. registered Copyright. "The Unofficial Family Archivist," Melissa Mannon. ArchivesInfo Press, 2011. No part of this passage may be reproduced without the written consent of the author.

[1] For more on “sense of place,” please see Robert Archibald’s A Place to Remember: Using History to Build Community (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 1999).

Wearing Your Heart on Your Sleeve as a Writer and Speaker

2011-11-07T11:59:00.000-05:00

This past weekend, I had my first book signing for "The Unofficial Family Archivist." I had a small table set up at the Toadstool bookshop in Milford, New Hampshire. (It's a fabulous independent bookstore by the way.) The store arranged a small cluster of seats behind my table for people to sit and hear me speak. I chose to use my standard informal style by pulling a few interesting old photos out to generate conversation, but I also decided that I was going to try my hand at reading from my book -- an experience I have never had in the past. As a public speaker, I have learned that when you speak from your heart people tend to perk up. I hoped that the book signing would be the same and that I could move from local author to friendly woman with expertise who wants to share ideas.

Public speaking has not come naturally to me, but after ten practiced years, it is now one of my favorite things to do. I love sharing my passion for archives, history, museums, and a whole lot of other things that keep me happy and busy. But, this book talk route is new for me, despite "The Unofficial Family Archivist" being my fourth publication. Reading one's own written words out loud to strangers is a jarring experience. It's not the same as preparing a speech to which I'll refer from time to time while presenting. And it, at first, was certainly not the same as the more cozy workshops I run that often flow like a conversation of give and take from teacher to students. But I wanted it to be more like the latter and purposefully sought to make it so. I acknowledged this before I went in and tried to prepare myself by choosing passages that come from the heart and connect to my audience.

After talking to the audience and sharing my pictures, I learned that a nice gentleman was a collector of local history papers. So, I thumbed to a bookmarked passage about a local collector I met while working as an archivist in Waltham. This was a good warm up. I have genuinely strong and fond memories of the elderly gentleman who eventually donated one of Waltham's most fascinating collections to the library. I hope that those feelings came through as I stumbled across words that seemed a little strange reverberating around the bookstore instead of in my head or against my living room windows. Though I read through my book out loud while editing, it felt much different to read in public than in private. And, while I happily read children's books to my daughter's book club and in her classroom when I teach art history, reading my own words to an adult audience was very, very different.

The audience was quiet.

Did they like it?

And then it began. We addressed the connection between personal papers and repositories. We talked about our desire to promote history and how a local collector can do that in collaboration with his local historical society of library. We talked about how to preserve valuable personal items and how to share the family information we have with other family members.... And pretty soon, many of the most important concepts of my book were out there because my written words jogged memories and thoughts and questions.

It quieted down and I decided to give it another try. I opened to another passage. After all, no one had gotten up to leave yet. I might as well keep going and pretending that my words were valuable prose that shined my ideas on caring for your personal papers in the best light possible. I read a passage on conveying a sense of place, which talks about how my daughter's childhood differs so greatly from mine because I grew up a few states away from where she is being raised. Again, I wore my heart on my sleeve and this time, I chose a passage that was even more personal than the first. But this time, I also immediately felt like the audience was right there with me. They were listening, and understanding, and agreeing, and perhaps even thinking about their own sense of place and what kind of documentation they could make to highlight how their environment has influenced them.

People wandered in and out of my little sitting area. The crowd was small, but electrifying. The experience was not only empowering to me individually, but I do think that we all walked away with a great sense of community on Saturday. Our shared experiences and the differences between our lives hung in the air like stories waiting to be assigned to paper or organized and preserved for posterity. The book signing was one of the best experiences that I ever had and I am anxious to do it again.

The Family Dinner

2011-11-02T10:55:00.000-04:00

Things have been a little crazy here in New Hampshire. We received over one foot of snow this past weekend. I have never before seen snow like that preceding Halloween. The storm knocked down many trees limbs and took out power lines. Many schools have been closed all week and Halloween in my town has even been postponed until next weekend.

Despite the Halloween delay, I am getting in a Thanksgiving mood. I am also in no mood to write a serious blog post. So, I thought I'd share an image that I just purchased for our Life in Context Project. Part one of the project focuses on food memories. (Apropos for this time of year. Don't you think?)

I love this distinctly period piece. Everyone is lined up on one side of the table, much like one would see in a tv sitcom -- posed facing the camera so all characters can be seen. Here, I suspect that the photographer belongs in the empty chair, since there are five glass on the table. I just wonder about the funny arrangement of the drinking glass in the bowl and the serving platter in front of the empty chair.

This is not a Thanksgiving meal, but it gives me the feel of one. It's that feeling of the family community. The media and others have told us that family dinners help maintain a healthy family unit. This image is an "old-fashioned" idealized view of family life with Dad at the head of the table surrounded by his wife and kids. It is quaint and a little funny --the manner of dress, the idealized happy family, even the chandelier -- but it is an iconic theme of life in mid-twentieth century America. It is an ideal that I know many of my friends still struggle with today.

My family does not always eat at the family table, but we try to do so at least half the week. And when we do, I keep in mind scenes like this. I remember my family sitting at the table when I was a child. I think of all the stories we shared about our days. The family table, especially during the holidays, was also a place to share family "heirloom" stories...the ones that get passed down from generation to generation. I strongly remember Dad telling me about growing up, playing stick ball and handball in New York City. I remember the warmth of the memories and of the foods my mother and aunt so carefully prepared for Thanksgiving. They had a long table set up in my cousins' playroom and a smaller table for the kids. We were surrounded by trains running along the outskirt of the room that filled our afternoon as cooking smells were generated in the next room.

This is the time of year that these stories come back to me in full force. It reminds me the importance of continuing to share them and breathes new life into our common family table. I try to write the memories down when I can. I also try to tell them to the next generation so that they too can picture a family history that roots them to tradition and reminds them from where we came.

Maintaining a Sense of Place in Digitization Efforts

2011-10-27T13:37:00.002-04:00

Earlier this week, I wrote a post about the Digital Public Library of America and the challenge to make collections accessible online. I began discussing why we should not let small collecting institutions miss the great digital push. While DPLA has grand plans for making information from cultural collections accessible remotely, there seems to be a gap in their scheme for accommodating small repositories that still lack any digital presence. Antiquated access and a local focus does not negate the value of their collections to a greater society.

I believe that the small archives such as the town historical society have a place in this world and I have argued for that throughout my career. The community story is best told locally and this story has the ability to lift up its citizens. Assuming that the online world is just part of our existence and that our true locale still deeply influences us, it makes sense to retain a sense of place. Our buildings and landmarks provide us with a sense of identity and belonging. And, therefore, our physical repositories offer something beyond a shell for housing information. Local collecting institutions, their physical existence, their staff or volunteers, and their collections come together to support a community hub for sharing local culture in a tangible way.

What I will call "small stories" helped build the culture of larger United States society and knowledge about them remains important. How did we get to be the country we are? Our understanding of a larger history hinges on smaller stories housed in local repositories. When such institutions do not have an online presence, their local presence might still be strong. Some of their communities have a very large appreciation for their small stories and may even have an important sense of their connection to a greater national culture. Such repositories may host speakers, attract many visitors, and continue to accept new collections into their holdings. Other similar repositories might have a weaker presence, struggling to keep their doors open. Yet, inside their walls are still housed cultural materials that are valuable toward a better understanding of American culture.

A number of things can happen to these small places during this transitional time. (In anticipation of some discussion or confusion about this, maybe I should emphasize that I am talking about small struggling repositories, not strong ones that have a solid program established to encourage their success.)

1. The doors to many local historical societies, town museums, and stand-alone libraries will close forever due to lack of funding and lack of interest. Their collections will be discarded in the worst case scenarios. Or, their collections will be transferred to larger institutions. Those collections that are transferred may or may not go to local repositories. In many cases, towns will lose the resources of their heritage to distant universities or other archival repositories that have the means to handle them. They may not realize at the time this happens what exactly they are losing. But, in my opinion, moving the materials of local history to a remote location is not a good thing for the morale of any town.

2. Many small archives will struggle along for awhile, continuing to run on a shoestring as they have been doing for decades. They will continue to have issues with funding. They will continually be searching for new volunteers to take the place of those who want to move on. The new problem with this scenario, I believe, is that the end of this kind of fumbling along is near. There are fewer people willing to volunteer in such organizations as younger generations prefer to put their energies elsewhere. The money that such institutions once scraped together to keep the doors open has dried up. Many such institutions never had a clear mission or vision, and without that focused view, their purpose will become even muddier as other's move to digitize.

3. Small institutions can be buoyed by larger institutions. DPLA seems to be looking for ways to make all of America's heritage available online and if they are really committed to this, they need to encourage large institutions to look for ways to help promote smaller ones, whether or not they have begun to digitize. Local universities, library networks, state cultural heritage associations and others who can make a connection to these small repositories need to do so soon. We need to find creative ways to budget for the digitization of their collections AND to help them keep their doors open. Training programs to teach communities basic archives management skills should be a priority. We must make sure that whenever possible, our small local repositories have a solid management foundation that can be followed up with digitization. Make them strong internally so they can then reach out.

I know that what I am proposing is more easily said than done, especially in this economy. But, it is vital to include the challenge in planning efforts so that we do not casually lose collections, knowledge, and historical awareness. Additionally, efforts to collaborate for access -- so that it doesn't matter where physical collections are stored -- should not lose sight of what importance local physical ownership may take on for a community's sense of identity.

The Other Digital Divide - "Bringing the Local Community Out"

2011-10-24T10:25:00.000-04:00

The "digital divide" refers to the unbalanced state between those individuals and communities who have access to digital information and those who do not. The divide often refers to those who have access to the Internet (often the term refers to access to broadband service) and those who do not. But a digital divide does not only exist for access, I think it is also important to recognize those who cannot upload information so that it can be shared by a wide-range of people around the world. I am specifically thinking about cultural heritage institutions that are unable to take advantage of computers to share their holdings. Lacking a digital initiative, many such institutions are in danger of getting left behind and thus making themselves antiquated. I believe that allowing such institutions to fall behind puts their communities at risk and has the potential to leave broad gaps in our knowledge about the past few centuries.

Though this has been on my radar for a long time, I began thinking more about this last week when I was able to catch some of the proceedings of the Digital Public Library of America plenary meeting. There are large players on the steering committee of DPLA such the Library of Congress, CLIR, IMLS, NARA, government major universities, large city public libraries, and information management companies such as the Internet Public Library who have big ideas. DPLA even announced a collaboration with its European counterpart, Europeana, which has exciting and dynamic implications for the global sharing of cultural heritage resources. I was left wondering how small institutions with few resources can take part.

Many small institutions continue to struggle to keep their doors open. They may have fabulous collections, but they have no staff to administer them. They certainly have no money to digitize them. There have been many recent discussions among the professional literature about whether these institutions should stay open. Will the present economy in effect "weed out" the struggling small museum and historical society and make our remaining institutions stronger in the end? I think that the DPLA is another obstacle to the small institutions' success that needs to be evaluated.

I searched the DPLA web site to see how small local organizations are being considered. I think the American Culture and History Online project most closely matches the kind of project that I was seeking. It examines local collections that are being digitized primarily through state run library projects. The vision of the project includes these illuminating words,

"In the prior, unconnected age, the public library was the intermediary for bringing the world in to the local community

In the current, connected age, the public library can be the intermediary for bringing the local community out to the world."

The project makes sense for states and regions that are supported by library systems that already have a networking culture, but states like my own (NH) that lacks much formal networking will find it difficult to work with DPLA in this way. It will be a challenge for DPLA to find ways to reach out to those who do not already have a collaborative culture.

It seems obvious to me that any community that does not get "brought out" is at a great disadvantage. They may be left as ghost towns along the "information superhighway" (for those old enough to remember that term.) Will lacking the ability to provide information about a town keep people away from the town? For example, I think about the tourism factor, I am more likely to visit a place with a fabulous web site that stresses their local identity -- history, restaurants, events and the like -- rather than visiting a place about which I can learn little before my visit. Beyond tourism, lacking an Internet presence will also dampen the interest of researchers, businesses and more, shutting communities out of opportunities.

In my next post, I will discuss more about why we should not let small collecting institutions miss the great digital push. Antiquated access and a local focus does not negate the value of their collections to a greater society.

Part 2: Calling All Archivists and Archives Users...What Do Archivists Do?

2011-10-19T09:25:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I put out a call asking community archivists what tasks they do. Alison commented, "To me, Archives are mostly about Cultural Memory. Preserving & providing access to records that provide information about cultural memory. In my area, they also help teachers to teach about/ through primary documents, which is becoming a larger part of education...What do we do? More then I could list here."

Indeed! We do a lot! That's why I want to add to the two lines given to archives in the library article "What Do Librarians Do" that I mentioned yesterday. Let's make that long list!

This is off the top of my head. What have a left out?

- Arrange personal papers, photographs, media, and other primary source material
- Preserve materials using professional methods that maintain appropriate environmental controls and use appropriate supplies for the safety of collections, prioritizing the needs of items based on condition and budgets
- Manage budgets for preservation, conservation, local history books, exhibit supplies, office supplies, staff
- Determining which materials need outside conservation
- Purchase and manage appropriate secondary source materials to enhance the primary source collections
- Manage institutional records through retention schedules
- Promote local history and historical collections through programming and special events
- Assist genealogists, house historians, engineers, and others interested in local historical records with research by helping them find appropriate materials and referring them to other appropriate institutions when necessary
- Assist researchers with using equipment
- Supplement the public school and homeschool curriculums by helping teachers teach through primary documents and helping students learn history with original resources
- Promote a sense of awe and provide inspiration by giving users a direct connection to history through original resources.
- Create finding aids that describe specific collections and promote the larger collections of the institution and town
- Develop collections and fill gaps in the documentary record
- Work collaboratively with other local institutions to ensure that history is documented, preserved, and promoted
- Assist local businesses and the town with highlighting the town's history to promote civic pride
- Digitize and microfilm materials to promote access and preservation
- Index digitized collections using metadata and professional standards
- Work with potential donors to appropriately place materials, promoting good relations with the public
- Solicit, train, and manage volunteers and interns to assist with processing collections, shelving local history books, and other non-professional tasks
- Create exhibits that highlight community history and collection strengths
- Work with regional and national organizations that promote archives to promote the value and needs of historical records
- Choose and maintain appropriate electronic equipment including computer equipment, microfilm machines, and the like to enhance preservation and access...

Can you think of more?

Calling all Archivists and Archives Users...What Do Archivists Do?

2011-10-18T09:55:00.000-04:00

Volunteers guided by a professional
archivist process papers at the
Winchester Archives in Massachusetts.

Calling all Archivists and Archives Users...

Many librarians and other information professionals are finding themselves in positions that require them to justify their jobs. In a weak economy, many see the library as a soft service and see librarians as service professionals who can easily be replaced by volunteers. The many tasks of a public librarian are often not visible to every patron and can easily be dismissed by those who don't even use a library. A blog post called "What Do Public Librarians and Library Staff Do," written in support of professional librarians, gives us a bullet list that describes the workload of a public librarian in order to shed light on the role of this information professional. Within the list is a section called "Archives and Special Collections." It lists two tasks related to the care of these materials:
- Digitisation and digital preservation, making sure information will be accessible in future;
- Storing and conserving media (including old/rare books);

I thought that we could greatly improve on this particular section of the document. I am requesting that all community archivists who work in public libraries, historical societies and the like add their thoughts. Also, those who use public libraries who are readers of this blog may have something to contribute. Genealogists and other researchers, how do public librarians and local archivists help you get the information you need? From one on one research assistance, to community documentation and collection development, to arrangement and description, to preservation, to running local history events, and more...what do local archivists around the world from day-to-day?

Introduction to the Unofficial Family Archivist

2011-10-17T14:26:00.000-04:00

The Role of This Book

Fourteen years ago, my husband and I bought and moved into our first house as a couple. I began unpacking personal papers and heirlooms that had been boxed in apartments for years. They would have taken up too much space in cramped quarters for me to permit their release from confinement, but our new home afforded us the room to settle in and unpack the things that represented our family memories. As I worked, I took time out to flip through long-neglected albums and began noticing problems with them. All of the causes for concern were common preservation issues I confront every day as an archivist: The images of my childhood in the 1970s were beginning to discolor. The glue on the “magnetic” pages on which the pictures were stuck, not intending to budge, was browning. I found that I needed my professional skills in my personal life. Up until that time, I primarily thought of applying my archives background to collections within institutions. After this experience, I began thinking of all archives (records with long-term value) and personal memorabilia within anyone’s possession as mini “collections,” requiring similar care to those materials housed in professional repositories.

Within every home is a treasure trove of information. Unfortunately, many irreplaceable documents that help tell individual stories, and the stories of our communities, are deteriorating among our personal belongings. Photographs are turning yellow and fading. Papers are growing brittle. Staples holding items together are rusting. Files are getting lost among growing digital trails. The documents and keepsakes we have gathered over the course of our lives are often not given the attention they need to maintain their physical condition. Few are given organizational structure or are labeled in a way that would be understandable to people who do not have a direct connection to the items. Many memories are getting lost in piles of personal “stuff.” In my work as an archivist and consultant for the last eighteen years, I have found that most people think that their family records are important, but they do not know how to properly maintain them.

This book focuses on the care of personal papers, photographs, and memorabilia. Personal papers are created by individuals and families and are one type of archives. Archives are the recorded information that we create in any form during the course of our daily activities. They document our lives and shed light on our personalities, actions, and values. They tell about how we function in society. They include information about our communities and the culture that surrounds us. Our photographs help illustrate these moments. In addition to creating this information during our lifetimes, we also collect “memorabilia” that is meaningful to us and helps describe our activities. Memorabilia makes it easier to celebrate the events and special occasions we cherish. Ribbons picked up at state fairs, postcards from trips, and buttons we wore in support of campaigns tell much about who we are and what we value.

Clients often tell me that they have been called or see themselves as “the family historian.” They develop an interest in family history that is sometimes sparked by finding old papers or photos in their home, or they are thrust into the role when they inherit a pile of old materials. Interested in the past and concerned about the neglect of the resources that shed light on it, the family historian attempts to care for these materials with little guidance. This book will give you or the person protecting personal papers the knowledge needed to begin caring for materials thoughtfully and in a competent manner. You will be capable of creating a valuable resource that you can access for family information and will learn how to safeguard your materials for the future.

The Unofficial Family Archivist: A Guide to Creating and Maintaining Family Papers, Photographs, and Memorabilia grew from a presentation focused on one aspect of safeguarding personal materials—the act of preserving them. I have addressed varied audiences on this topic in a workshop I offer titled Preserving Memories: Maintaining Family Photographs, Personal Papers, and Memorabilia. I find that attendees are often people with an immediate need. They bring in treasured personal papers and objects that they see are in danger. The materials are usually discolored, disintegrating, or moldy; items are brought in shoeboxes and manila envelopes. Simple changes in the way they are kept will promote their longevity, but there are other aspects to consider. This book addresses a wide variety of topics so that you gain a broad, encompassing perspective on your personal items and the history they represent.

Think of the papers in your home as a “collection.” This grouping of materials tells the story of your life. People who influence you, important events, and topics in which you take interest should all be represented. The papers you create are the raw information (or the “primary sources”) that one would use to write your biography or examine to better understand how you lived and worked among your peers. Think about how your personal papers represent you. What aspirations and activities are evident that explain the real you? How do you want your children to remember you? What personal papers among your archives show your humanity and highlight your role in society? When we save the records of our past and work to define the context for them, we strengthen our family traditions and values. We increase our knowledge of humanity and better our communities. Understanding a personal and larger history goes hand in hand with protecting its resources.

The Unofficial Family Archivist is organized into eight sections that discuss preservation and other methods you can use that will protect your family history. Topics relate to creating and identifying materials that represent you; how to properly organize, preserve, and describe these items; and how to prepare them to pass on to future generations. This book provides information to guide you so you may enjoy your materials, easily access them, feel comfortable that they will last for a long time, and be confident that you can pass them on to future generations.

Important Things to Keep in Mind as You Read

First, please realize that it is not necessary to be perfect. For example, my home has wide temperature fluctuations from one end to the next. Though changes in temperature increase the possibility of materials disintegrating, I do not have much choice. Most of my materials are stored in the room that is hottest in the summer. This is not ideal, but that is where they fit, so I make do. Rather than focusing on achieving all of the suggestions in this book, focus on those that you can most easily achieve first and work to improve things over time. Do not get frustrated if you cannot afford all of the supplies that I recommend, do not have perfect storage conditions, need to keep certain things separated throughout your house for space reasons, or cannot identify all of the people in your photos. Changing just a few things about the way you care for your personal papers can greatly increase their longevity and informational value.

Second, consider your personal papers as a whole. Take account of your old and new records. Think of all the materials that represent your life. The concern that you have for the letters your mom passed on to you should be given the same care as the emails you send to your daughter in college. “Personal papers” can take a variety of forms. The information that we collect and create is becoming more complex over time, but the basic strategy for viewing your materials as a whole “collection” representing you remains the same. The basic archival methods described here—preservation, arrangement, description—apply on a general level regardless of the medium of your personal papers.

The Unofficial Family Archivist: A Guide to Creating and Maintaining Family Papers, Photographs, and Memorabilia explains the basics of managing personal papers in a way that is understandable to nonarchivists, while retaining accuracy about archival methods. Some of the information is quite in-depth for those who wish to fully control their personal papers. The chapters on arrangement and description primarily are those that go into more detail than many users may want or require. Adapt and abridge the field standards for your individual needs and do not see them as a set prescriptive to which you must adhere.

This book highlights a selection of the personal collections for which I have cared that are held by small repositories in New England. These samples demonstrate how individuals and families living their “normal” lives can prove extraordinary to future generations. Some of these stories make up the most respected parts of the American psyche from major events such as the Gold Rush, the Civil War, and the suffrage movement. They include the struggle of immigrants and working professionals. They reveal common people with big dreams that often take them to great places. They should serve as models for caring for your own materials and demonstrate the value of each life story to a larger history. In the appendix, I outline these and other collections from repositories with which I have no professional affiliation that are also mentioned in the book.

The end of each chapter includes short exercises to help you with the care of your family records. A glossary at the end of the book may clarify unfamiliar words. Though I would like to avoid jargon, I think it is important for readers to get a handle on the most common words that archivists use when they think about collections and caring for cultural heritage resources. The words are intended to inform and to spur interest. I do not want them to be a source of frustration. The technical names for things do not matter—the concepts behind them do.

The Chapters

Family heritage keepers need to consider whether they are passing on a well-rounded collection of experiences through their written pieces of lifetime evidence or whether they are just passing on bits that leave more questions than answers. The first chapters of this book explore how to ensure that you are keeping the important things. I teach you how to eliminate clutter to highlight important resources. Removing unimportant papers from your files tightens your remaining items into a core collection of valuable informational resources for your family. Chapter One helps you begin thinking about the important elements and stories of your life. Chapter Two assists you in identifying which records best reflect your narrative to help you form a strong informational source.

Then, whether preparing your records for your own personal use or for future generations of relatives or community, this book assists you in making your family information accessible. After reading this book, you will be able to put in place an organizational system for family papers that highlights your life and values. Chapters Three and Four introduce established arrangement systems and accepted, easy techniques for preparing collection indices or lists of documentation. They explain how recording the subject matter found among your materials and creating an inventory of file names provides additional assurance that your organized collections are also comprehensible. For those interested in more thorough tools for “indexing” collections and ways to make information more accessible, I introduce a few professional concepts for describing collections. Among these are describing the scope of the collection, including essential biographical information related to the creator(s) of the materials, and other elements that provide a more complete overview of one’s personal papers.

These chapters are particularly important because many people have told me that they are concerned that family materials are not valued, and that once they no longer personally care for them, the items may be discarded. This book will eliminate anxiety concerning the future security of your family’s history. The value one can inject into a family collection through proper boxing and description methods makes the need to properly maintain the materials obvious to anyone who takes over archiving responsibilities after you. Your preparations will secure materials as a noteworthy family asset.

In Chapter Five, we explore preservation problems and techniques that keep items safe to ensure their longevity. This section explains the basic elements that cause deterioration so that you can avoid common problems. I provide information about storage supplies and what to look for in a safe storage space. I make you aware of issues for which you should seek expert help and where to get that help, while providing tricks for smaller pesky problems, such as eliminating a musty smell from materials. My goal is to show you that a few simple measures can make a tremendous difference. I offer advice about disaster preparedness to ensure that you are ready in the face of a threat such as a flood.

Chapter Six encourages you to also think about what aspects of your life are not recorded. We explore projects for recording previously undocumented information. Oral history, journaling, crafting, and more are considered and examined for appropriateness in documenting personal history. Readers are encouraged to try to capture a sense of place in their written records. I explain how different formats are valuable for conveying different information and also to suit different personality types.

Chapter Seven discusses digital information. Thinking about electronic documents as a standard part of modern personal archives, I describe their unique preservation and management needs and explore how to deal with common personal digital files. I note places where we leave our digital footprint, how to organize our electronic personal information, the role this information plays in telling a life story, and the challenges ahead for maintaining information in a quickly changing digital environment.

The final chapter of this book encourages individuals to consider donating materials to local repositories to add pieces to a puzzle of a community history. The addition of personal papers to established collections helps ensure the protection of a larger cultural heritage. This chapter discusses how to approach local professionals to donate papers, how to provide information about your family’s historical role in the community, and what to consider when offering your papers to an institution.

Cultural Heritage Collaborators

This book relates to the concepts presented in my previous book, Cultural Heritage Collaborators: A Manual for Community Documentation, which aimed to encourage partnerships among cultural heritage repositories and communities. The Unofficial Family Archivist further explains the role of families to ensure the complete documentation of historic events in our times. These two books may be used together to encourage communities to take better care of their historical resources.

I promote the idea that, beyond their family connection, our personal papers tell what it is, or what it was, like to live in a particular place at a particular time. Within cultural heritage institutions around the world are the personal papers—diaries, correspondence, photographs, and other documentation—of common citizens like you and me. Our stories are important for understanding what it means to be of a certain race, sex, or ethnicity. All of our historical documents, whether kept in professional repositories or in private homes, have value to the human story. We must all work together to make sure our heritage is secure and that the documentation that tells this story is inclusive and comprehensive.

This book unlocks the world of professional archivists so that you are aware of how your personal materials relate to those held by cultural heritage repositories. It introduces you to archivists’ methods and how to get in touch with an archivist when you need additional assistance. It provides information about fields related to archives management, such as museum studies and library science. Our personal papers are a valuable resource that forms the backbone of history, but materials hidden in homes and unknown to cultural heritage experts often hold as much historical value as materials found in professional repositories. I encourage you to seek partnerships with professionals who can help you better understand your personal and community history. I encourage you to play a part in working with professionals to create a plan for effectively documenting your community and your contributions to your community.

Use this book to start thinking about your collection and your place in history. Treasure your personal papers and recognize that they are a valuable cultural asset. You can choose to highlight your place in civilization through the records’ care or inhibit your legacy with their neglect. Recognize that the role you play as an individual can assist cultural heritage institutions formed with the purpose of preserving wide-ranging heritage. Your role as an “unofficial archivist” is vital for capturing personal experiences that illuminate larger trends. By maintaining your papers and supporting the care and safekeeping of diverse historical resources, you help guarantee the long-term memory of civilization. Know from where we came so that we can better plan where we are going.

What Does American Archives Month Mean to Non-Archivists?

2011-10-14T09:52:00.001-04:00

Happy American Archives Month! This month provides archivists with an opportunity to raise awareness about archives and archivists.

According to the Society of American Archivists web site, "For 2010-2013, SAA is focusing its public awareness efforts on the campaign—I Found It In The Archives!—which reaches out to archives users nationwide to share their stories about what they found in the archives that has made a difference in their lives."

I have written extensively in the past about the value of archives. I have advocated for visiting repositories and for archivists in posts such as Making Personal Connections to History. This year, in celebration of Archives Month, and in celebration of the release of my new book on the subject, I would like to advocate for archives in the home.

Many people do not realize that they have "archives." The paper records, digital files, photographs, and other recorded information that we want to keep permanently are archives. These materials have long-term value for family use and often possess additional value for communities beyond the family.

SAA (The Society of American Archivists) invites individuals to tell them about items they have found in repositories that have impacted their lives. "I Found It In The Archives! is a collective effort to reach out to individuals who have found their records, families, heritage, and treasures through our collections." I would like to challenge you to also tell us about the unique materials that you own in your own personal archives collections. What materials mean the most to you? Has your family passed on materials from generation to generation? Is there one item or a few that represent(s) your life in a special way? Do you have a special collection of documents that are meaningful to you?

So, I thought I'd tell you about one such item in my own collection. This excerpt is taken from my book "The Unofficial Family Archivist: A Guide to Creating and Maintaining Family Papers, Photographs and Memorabilia."

"My mother recently reminded me of how personal some seemingly impersonal official records are when we talked about how her dad had served in the American military as a displaced Polish citizen after World War II. My grandfather assisted with post-war cleanup efforts and, despite not yet being an American citizen, he was officially discharged from the United States Army when his work was done. This is likely the first official tie of any sort that my mother’s family had to the country to which she would move to when she was just a little girl. This piece of paper was created by the government for administrative purposes, but it also represents all that my grandparents went through to escape the Holocaust in the 1930s and all of their future dreams of a new place that would accept them and where they could raise a family. Mom’s collection of family documents includes records related to Grandpa’s military service. " [p. 19]

One of my favorite things about my job is hearing about your personal archives experiences. Everyone has a story to tell. What archives help you tell yours?

Response to Review of "Cultural Heritage Collaborators"

2011-10-11T09:18:00.000-04:00

It pays to "Google" yourself sometimes.

Last night, I found this review of my book "Cultural Heritage Collaborators."

I have written a lengthy response to its author, which I would like to share here:

Thank you Kevin for your thoughtful response to my book. I am especially glad to hear that your first response to it was that you need to hang out with archivists more. J

I would like to address some of your points if you will let me. You raise interesting ones.

First off, you are not reading too much into the title. Heritage belongs to everyone and the book intends to help people recognize this. The responsibility of maintaining cultural heritage belongs to the community, not to one single voice (as you so nicely put it.) If people get nothing else out of my writing, I hope that they understand that.

I have addressed the reason why I self-published in this blog post that may (or may not) interest you. http://archivesinfo.blogspot.com/2010/08/self-publishing-experience.html . To address your specific points: The word archives was capitalized when I was referring to an institution or place as in the Archives. It was not capitalized when I was discussing documents. It should be that way throughout the book. My editor read it with an eye toward that after I explained it to her and I think I explained it somewhere in the book, but it has come up since publication. I may have to find a way to change it if I ever write a second edition. It was my intention to do that to help avoid confusion, but it seems I have created confusion instead. I noticed the missing text on page 17 too late and that too will be fixed if enough people buy the book so I can go back and revise it. Tightening up…I have nothing to say about that. Everything any one writes can be tightened over and over and over again. There comes a time when one has to stop. As for the margins, I think I have moved closer toward a better solution in my latest book (released last week,) but I’m still not there. I have used my small budget on a professional editor and am working out design issues myself. In the latest book, I have already spotted errors in fonts and a few missing things in the Table of Contents. (Maybe I can start a game: Find Melissa’s errors and win a prize. I think I’m just kidding about that…but maybe it’s not a bad idea?)

I purposely left out digitization. I mentioned this in the self publishing blog post and after re-reading it, I realize that I did so rather cavalierly. Digitization is an important topic and is one which many of my colleagues are writing about very thoughtfully and thoroughly. I did not feel I could add anything profound. Furthermore, digitization naturally invites collaboration and I want to see this play itself out more. Then, I may have something more profound to say. And lastly, in my own defense, the principles of “collecting” digitized materials remain basically the same. One should collect with an eye toward focus. For example, one would not collect the digitized records of a famous person if that figure had no ties to your institution or community.

However, this is a topic that has been growing in my brain. We are most assuredly moving toward a digital world and there are things I left out that need to be addressed. This is what I’m thinking about: 1. Should we be collecting and keeping everything in a digital world? Do the same appraisal techniques always apply? How would we fine tune them? 2. For the most part, the collaboration I’ve seen for digital has involved collaborative access and not collection development. How should one think about collaborative community documentation of digital files? I don’t think we are yet at the cross-roads in terms of technology where we can know the answer to this. Going back to the idea of ownership of cultural heritage or your wording about a single voice…I wonder for how long an institution will be a place to hold archives in a digital form or will it all one day be held in a place like “the cloud?”

I hope that you are pleased to know that I have a whole chapter dedicated to digital in my recently published book, “The Unofficial Family Archivist.” (Shameless plug, but relevant.) I do think we can and must begin thinking about this form of documentation, even if we can’t quite think of it in a collaborative collection development framework yet. On a repository level, I am particularly fascinated by the Salmon Rushdie archives at Emory University. Rushdie donated his computers to the University and they have done a remarkable job of figuring out what to do with it. My book talks about this and other examples of “personal papers” in digital form. The thrust of the publication though is on what an individual (non-professional) should do with his/her own personal documentation.

Finally, “To discern truth from reality” was admittedly written during a time when I was feeling frustrated with some things that were being said on a national political level. Admittedly, “discern truth and reality” is a bit corny. I agree with you.

Thank you again. I’m glad that you found the book worthwhile. Thank you also for sharing your thoughts and for allowing me to share mine. Now I’m going to track you down and follow you on Twitter!

Best,

Melissa

Book Release

2011-10-07T08:54:00.002-04:00

Today, I am pleased to announce the publication of my second archives book. It is aimed at individuals who wish to care for the personal papers in their homes. The Unofficial Family Archivist is a guide to help the non-archivist create, maintain and preserve personal papers, photographs and memorabilia. It will help people with an interest in caring for their family history and heirloom items to manage their documentation and historical resources in a thoughtful way.

My first archives management book, Cultural Heritage Collaborators, focused on how my colleagues could create a foundation for successful collaboration. I am pleased that John Fleckner at the Smithsonian and Ryan Lewis of the Illinois Humanities Council among others found value in it. I am especially honored that it was commended by the Auslib Sense of Place conference this past spring and that I was asked to attend the conference to speak about it.

The two books can be used by communities in tandem to help individuals and cultural heritage professionals work together to promote and secure local history. The two books are particularly valuable for institutions such as historical societies that seek to make stronger community connections.

For more information, please see the recent ArchivesInfo Press press release. The new book is currently available through Createspace, but soon will be available through wider distribution channels.

From the author's collection

[One of my favorite things about the book, which I haven't had the opportunity to share in press releases, is the beautiful images it incorporates. I've included a few in this post]

Courtesy of the Waltham Public Library

Is It Important to Recall Memories Accurately?

2011-10-06T10:04:00.000-04:00

I had an interesting conversation with my mother the other day. (Sorry mom, all conversations are writing / presentation fodder unless they obviously aren't or you instruct me otherwise!) I often use family stories to illustrate points about saving and preserving archives. Mom mentioned that I get her stories all mixed up sometimes when I write about them. Then she said to me, "Oh well. It doesn't matter. They will never know." We laughed about my deranged memories while I wondered, "Which do I get mixed up?" but I didn't actually articulate that thought. (I've got a feeling that we might have long conversation about this in the next few days.)

How important is it really to get the stories accurate? Are family stories just a matter of remembering our loved ones and having a general idea of what they went through? Or, are the details important? And to whom should those details be important?

Memories are like a game of telephone, especially with family stories. One generation relates tales of upbringing to the next. A mother tells a daughter what her mother told her. The story gets changed a bit in the telling. This happened with my own daughter the other day. I explained to her that like her, I was very good at math and I loved it, especially geometry. Then when I was in high school, I had a teacher for trigonometry with whom I didn't click. My interest moved away from rigorous study of math in part because of the teacher, in part for other reasons. Whereas, Daddy is a definite math type. He studies calculus for fun. I told my elementary school aged daughter that one day Daddy will be the one to help her with her calculus. Somehow, this got mixed up in her head and came out a few days later as, "Mommy you are not good at math like Daddy and me."

Never mind that I don't want to be remembered for not being very good at math, especially since I use it all the time for things like space planning and for adding the grocery bill in my head. How important is it that the detail that mommy was an excellent math student gets passed down one day to my descendants?

Information about our activities may never end up in a repository. The details of one's life may never be studied so that a researcher better understands society and culture. But, then again they might. Even if they are not examined by a wider community, I believe that the truth about our lives has a place in family memory. I almost titled this post "How important is it to record memories accurately?" And I think that is the point here. Record what you know. Keep the important details safe by having evidence of them. Allow the accurate memory to stand up for evaluation so that others can learn from you and have a better understanding of their own place in the family history. Do not settle for heresay.

Memory is a very funny thing. Of course even our own memories of events can be distorted by point of view and time. Two people who participated in the same event could have very different memories of it. I also love to think about how memory gets translated into documentation. How we choose to record our memories can impact how they get passed on and what bits are savored later on by us and by others.

...I'm just hoping that mom has saved those straight A math report cards as evidence.

Reaction to Burning the Diaries

2011-10-03T12:06:00.002-04:00

I had planned to write about something else today, but I think this article is poignant and thought provoking. I hope that you will take the time to leave a comment to let me know your own response to it.

Read: "Burning Diaries" New York Times September 30, 2011

My reaction:

I have not saved all of my own diaries. I threw one away, but it took me years to decide to do it. It was weeded carefully.

I once returned to my alma mater and had a conversation with my advisor about this very subject. She is a well-respected art historian who specializes in women's studies. I knew that she was an avid journaler. It was early in my archives career and I was telling her about the work I do. Somehow, we got to talking about diaries and I brought the conversation to a personal level. I asked her if she ever considered who might read her diary. She told me that she didn't want anyone to read her diary. She thought it was too personal.

That conversation puzzled me and has stuck with me for a long time...

I assume that one day, someone is going to read my diaries. I have read too many stories about little sisters finding hidden diaries under the mattress. (I think that I even saw an episode about this on the "Brady Bunch.") As a young teen, I read passages professing my feelings toward a young member of the opposite sex. I was too shy to just tell him that I thought he was the coolest, so I read it to him.

As an archivist, I very much value diaries. Some of the best information about life is found in a diary. I like to think that my diaries tell a lot about me and about life during my times. I have written about wars. I have recorded my feelings about people, which sometimes very markedly changes over time. I have written about my battles with depression, infertility and cancer. I have also written about the birth of my child, falling in love with my husband and buying my first home. Like anyone's life, mine is filled with ups and downs. I want my descendants to see me as human, to understand what made me happy and sad, to be a part of the most momentous moments of my life. I hope that maybe someone will learn something from my mistakes. I hope that they will understand that my diaries do not always reveal the best parts of me.

I want my daughter to have the writings that I have been keeping since I was eleven years old. I want her to see her mother as a woman. I want her to be able to evaluate my life in context -- even in a different context from what she is accustomed to.

I am not leaving everything. The part I removed is reserved just for me. After careful thought, I came to the conclusion that it is not a vital piece of the whole story and I did not wish to share. Much like any collection, mine has been carefully considered and appraised. I couldn't conceive of consciously burning a lifetime of memories the way that the author of the New York Times article did. I feel sorry that people might think that others cannot appreciate the greater parts of an individual story without judging all of the particulars. I couldn't imagine the archives of the world without these gems of humanity.

In Celebration of Banned Books Week

2011-09-28T10:52:00.003-04:00

I wanted to post something for banned books week, but what else is there to say? In the United States, banned books are big news. Anyone with even a remote interest in the subject of books seems to post about this topic.

A different kind of blog post earlier this week caught my eye. It was written about a woman in India:
"My post on Banned Books Week, and why we don't have it in India":

It reminded me of the importance of this day and what it means to Americans. I thought perhaps I'd approach the topic from an International angle. I am thankful to the author for sharing her very interesting views.

Then I found this article:
A comeback for banned books in Indonesia: After chasing out former President Ben Ali and his Family, Tunisians can't stop reading about them

This provided more reminders about the freedoms we enjoy in my country.

But, it was an American article that made me decide just to reiterate my opposition to censorship rather than seeking another clever angle. Banned Books Week, 5 Books Almost Anyone Would Ban : Even Ardent Opponents of Censorship Could Hesitate When It Comes to Titles Like These. I opened the page with some excitement. I thought maybe indeed here was a new angle -- Books that I would actually want to ban. Here's the let down, I did not even hesitate despite the article's title. An argument that comes up again and again for those who want to ban books is that these books are so awful that they are "seriously taboo" topics and no one should read them.

The first book listed was Mein Kampf and my bubble was burst right off the bat. As the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, I most certainly want this book to be available and read. I want people to know about the history of the Holocaust and why it occurred. I think the same should be said of number 2, which is Osama bin Laden's "Messages to the World." 3,4 and 5 are also terrible, but should not be banned. Banning something terrible doesn't make it go away. It just makes us less able to deal with the issues when the ideas it spews come up again in the future.

So, I guess I really have nothing new to add to this argument. It will keep coming up again and again. And though I have nothing new to add, it bears repeating over and over so we never forget why we celebrate "Banned Books Week." I have been verbally attacked for my views on this issue. I suspect that this posting may encourage new comments arguing against my views. Please, before you comment negatively, please read here and here. Feel free to reword what has been said because it has indeed all been said before. Don't expect that you will change my mind.

Clever Ways to Share Your Memories

2011-09-26T17:41:00.000-04:00

I have some very clever neighbors. Yet, when I sidle up to a conversation about recording memories at the neighborhood potluck, some of them feel the need to qualify their statements, "Well, she's the professional. she probably has better ways to do this." Despite their reaction to my presence, I am usually fascinated by their stories and try to just listen so I can learn better ways to document so that I can share them with you.

For example, I have one neighbor who has a beautiful garden. She cans food for the winter. She raises chickens. She home schools her daughter. She has a PhD in education and teaches at a local college in her spare time. Phew! She is a a very creative person and I was thrilled when she shared her secret about creating a memory archive for her five-year-old. "Once a year we write a letter to our daughter. In that letter we put information about the changes we have seen in her over the course of the year. We talk about special events that occurred and fun times we've shared." This struck me as a remarkable way to make sure the highlights of her daughter's life were recorded despite everything else that keeps this family busy.

I have neighbors who talk about making quilts out of t-shirts that document events that are important to them. I have a neighbor who keeps a beautiful hope chest that she treasures and her love for the heirlooms she places in it is palpable. One neighbor talked about writing a page to record her memories of a childhood friendship. Her entry was to be placed as just one among many in a birthday book for a friend who was turning 40.

Keeping a collection of family papers that reflect your life does not have to be a chore. As one attempts to document family history, one should explore one's talents and use a documentation style that suits one's personal style. For example, every year, my daughter and I make a thankful tree at Thanksgiving. This documents the things for which we are most thankful at that point in our lives. It's a fun way for us to be artistic and to invite our loved ones to share their thoughts with us on one of our favorite holidays. I save the tree each year and when we finish the next year's tree compare the two to see how we have changed and grown. Documentation does not need to take the form of photos, diaries, letters and the traditional documents we tend to think of as personal papers that belong in a family archives.

***

Explore more ways to document your life with me in my upcoming book The Unofficial Family Archivist: A Guide to Creating and Maintaining Personal Papers, Photographs and Memorabilia due out in October.

What are your creative methods for documenting your life?

More Finds at the Local Antique Shop - Orphan Suitors

2011-09-23T12:31:00.000-04:00

I have been saving this photo for a rainy day. (Not literally...though it is literally a rainy day here in New Hampshire. So that works well, I guess.) This image just tickles my funny bone. I often find orphan images of people outdoors in a strange location and I find this one particularly appealing.

Orphan images are those that have been separated from their owners with no identification that links them to those who took the photos. Sometimes, orphan photos have some identification, but you need to dig to figure out who the people really are. Sometimes these images are labeled with a name. If you are lucky, you'll get a first AND a last name. Sometimes these images have a location with or without a name. Sometimes the images list a photography studio, though that doesn't happen often with these outdoor images and is instead a clue when looking at formal portraits. All of these elements can help you do research to find more information about the image.

This particular image has no identification, but it reminds me of a spot in nearby Manchester, New Hampshire. When the leaves fall in another month, I plan to check out a local park that I know well from its old birches. I found this picture at an antique shop within thirty minutes of that park. Many times the images I find in shops are not from the area, but making the assumption that the image is from around here gives me a good place to start.

This image is pleasing to me because it ties the past to the present. We often don't think about our ancestors being silly and climbing trees. This could be me in a tree. (This even reminds me of a photo I have of myself upside down with my sister, hanging from a fallen tree in the woods.Though we were not dressed nearly as finely.) The old-fashioned garb here is a bit surprising as my mind sorts out a familiar landscape with the people sporting trends from the past. People have been silly forever, I bet. Yet, somehow we focus on dates and names and events. We can forget the simple humanity of those who came before us -- the small joyful moments and memories that dotted their lives. This is a part of history that I love -- seeing the common threads that bind people. This lucky lady has two handsome beaus with her. Is one her boyfriend? Is the person taking the picture another girlfriend? Why did they decide to pose in the tree? I am so happy that they did. I can relate and thus, history and their lives are more meaningful to me.

Food Memories Contest. Be part of the Life in Context Project!

2011-09-21T10:54:00.000-04:00

Sue West of Space4U and I teamed up almost two years ago. Sue is a professional organizer and I am an archivist. We are from very different worlds that overlap in the area of organization. Sue takes an "Organize for a Fresh Start" approach that helps you find your way-- to find a balance. I take an organize to document community approach that invites you to explore your role and examine your personal history. Our collaboration is turning out to be the perfect partnership.. Our specializations come together in a holistic way, helping people better understand themselves and the world around them. The Life in Context Project explores ways you can organize your life and your legacy, and tell your important "heirloom" stories to pass on to the next generation.

We are creating the first in a series of workbooks to help you document what is meaningful to you. This series aims to support you while you define the values and traditions you want to pass on to future generations. The workbooks will help you mold your legacy. Food Memories – our first workbook – examines the role of food in your life. This resource will help you consider the meals, the events, and the heirloom serving pieces tools that define your precious food memories.

We are looking for your food related stories to include in the book.

We will choose our favorites to publish alongside our tips for telling your story, organizing your life, and preserving your heritage. The writers of stories chosen for inclusion will be mailed free copies of the workbook when it is completed later this year. One grand winner will then be randomly chosen from winning entries to attend our upcoming “Life in Context” webinar for free.

Email melissa@mannon.org with your entries in pdf format or with questions.

Here’s what we are seeking:

- Write 2-4 paragraphs about a food related object that is important to you. Record your memory associated with it.

- Consider if there are people involved with this memory. Why are these people important to this particular memory?

- Do you have related documentation? Can this be put into a cultural context? When did this happen? To what community does this relate?

- See our worksheet for help with organizing and recording your thoughts here:https://www.facebook.com/groups/lifeincontext/doc/223010991088364/

Samples!

Sue and I have chosen a couple of our own food memories to write up as samples for you:

Melissa’s Food Memory #1 – Bagels

A heavenly smell would fill the air when my mother brought a bag back from the bagel store in our neighborhood. Such places dotted the retail areas where I grew up on Long Island in New York State. Behind the counters were multiple flavors of cream cheese and lox. Most commonly in my parents’ home, we ate the bread-stuffs with butter and plain cream cheese. On weekends, we would slap cold cuts between a sliced bagel or turn it into a pizza with sauce and cheese. We used cherry preserves (the kind with the fat red fruit spread throughout the sweet sticky goo) around Passover time when we also ate the treat on our matzo. Once in awhile, mom would excitedly shuffle her three kids off to school and run to the gourmet bagel shop for special flavors to share with her girlfriends over morning tea. I spent the day hoping that some flavors — maybe chocolate, chives or pineapple — would be left for us to sample when we got home.

I remember the bagels, but I can barely remember how they tasted and I cannot eat them anymore. My daughter will readily tell you the story. I have a photo essay I made that I made to hang in my kitchen when I was first diagnosed. I made a collage of four separate pictures of four different off limits breakfasts. My daughter finds this quite funny, in a way that only a small seven year old can find such things funny. “Remember that photo that was in the kitchen that you called ‘Not My Breakfast’ since you can’t eat those things because you have Celiac Disease, Mom?” She smiles at me as if she is proud that she understands this inside joke that tries to convey my loss of bagels to the world. This beautiful girl was impossible for me to conceive ten years ago because of a disease that went undiagnosed for twenty years (even though it is considered the number one case of unexplained infertility.) My daughter does not understand the full irony.

When a person is diagnosed with Celiac – a disorder that makes the body unable to process the gluten protein found in wheat, barley and rye – that person needs to eliminate the offending foods entirely from the diet. At first, it is a difficult thing to do. Some, like me, even get nauseous at the smell of bread for a short time. I remember walking into a bagel shop during my “recovery” period to get some lunch for my husband. I had to turn around and walk out because of my physical discomfort. It was as if my favorite food had turned on me, until I put a new spin on it and realized it was just warning me away like an old friend looking out for my best interest.

To me, a bagel is one sign in my life that represents a lot. It embodies my Jewish heritage and my New York upbringing. It also stands for what I now cannot eat. It represents the struggle I went through to become a mother and to live a healthy, normal life. My daughter does not hope for me to save her some of my special food when I shuffle her off to school. Instead she anticipates that I will think of her and stop in the local bakery to get her a fancy sugar cookie…New Hampshire bagels are just not the same as New York ones anyway.

Sue’s – Rice Krispy Treats Food Memory

Rice Krispy Treats are back in vogue! At a favorite restaurant & café recently, the dessert tray included a childhood favorite, Rice Krispy Treats – only different. The treat had a peanut butter layer, with chocolate frosting. Like Proust and his Madeleines, I was transported to my childhood.

Aunt Ludy and Aunt Esther, “the girls” as they were called by my mother, always made and brought RKT’s to Christmas, along with homemade fudge. They started their tradition in the days when my grandmother hosted Christmas, which would have begun in the 1950’s. It was a very sad Christmas the years following Esther’s death; Ludy did not join us but sent her gift.

We called them “the girls” because in those days, that’s what you called women of a certain age who had not yet married. Story was, Aunt Esther had turned down a marriage proposal. Aunt Ludy we didn’t know much about, but she never married.

My great aunts lived into their 90’s. Their personalities were very different. Esther had a lively sense of humor. She was the rebel of the two of them. Ludy took great care of her older sister; her life was more planned and structured and she liked it that way. In their later years, Ludy would become Esther’s caregiver at their childhood home.

They inspired me just because they’d never married. In a time when most women in my family were married, and assumed from a young age that they would find Prince Charming, these two lived together in the house that their father built around 1900.

They were the biggest of Red Sox fans, taking the T into Boston until they were well into their 80’s. They had season tickets as far back as my mother can remember. Season tickets!

For their work, Ludy was high up on the Girl Scouts in New England, working out of their headquarters. Esther worked for the Universalist Association. In the year before I was born (1959), my mother worked across the street from Aunt Esther in Boston. Mom worked for the Unitarian association, for Dana McLean Greeley, who became the first president of the merger of Unitarians and Universalists.

Kellogg’s had created Rice Crispy cereal in 1928 and it was fine as far as cereals go, but in 1939, when Mildred and her friend Malitta needed an idea to help their Campfire Girls raise money, they put their heads together and a new delicious food was invented. It was Rice Crispy Treats!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_Krispies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_Krispies_treat

The original recipe: http://www.ricekrispies.com/recipes/the-original-treats.aspx#/recipes/the-original-treats
2001: Students are working to make Iowa State’s annual spring celebration a record-breaking – and tasty – event by building the world’s biggest Rice Krispie Treat. (ISU is the alma mater of Mildred Day, who invented the Rice Krispy Treat recipe while working at Kellogg’s.)

The Value and Pitfalls of Tagging Tweets

2011-09-19T11:47:00.001-04:00

Hashtags are used on Twitter so twitter users (tweeters) can indicate appropriate keywords for their postings (tweets.) Users interested in a particular topic can search for keywords to easily find information about a subject of their choosing. For example, I often tweet about archives. So, at the end of a tweet on the subject I use the appropriate hashtag, which is #archives. I use the software Tweetdeck for most of my Twitter interactions. In Tweetdeck, I keep open a column for that #archives listing, so I can see what others are posting on the subject. I also usually have open #sschat (Social Studies chat) and #history (self-explanatory.) Lately, I've been following #twitterstorians to see what that's all about because it seems like a bit of a hodge-podge.

And that is precisely what can be the downfall of the hashtag system. They are user imposed standards. There is no one body making sure people are using hashtags in a uniform manner. For example, people post #archives, #archive, #archivist, and #archivists. In theory, I am interested in all of those areas. Yet, I do not wish to have columns open for all of them. It would take a lot more browsing and time to find interesting information. I just cross my fingers and hope that most of the news filed under related hashtags eventually makes its way to #archives. Even the use of the term "archives" has been a problem with non-archivist computer people telling the archivists to go away and leave their tag alone because they have their own agenda for it. There are ways that people can try to check how a term is being used before applying it. There are ways for people to lay some kind of claim to a term, as with the use of Twubs, but there is still no guarantee that it will stick. (Where are the catalogers when you need them?)

I remember a problem a year ago related to this issue. I think it related to the #AskaCurator event that invited individuals to post questions to curators who were standing by all over the world to answer questions. There was some confusion about whether the hastag was #askcurators or #askacurator. (I could be getting my events mixed up. It could have been #askarchivists or some other similar day. Nonetheless, there was confusion and lack of standardization and some people were tagging one way and others were tagging another way.)

The use of symbols is old hat for librarians and those in related fields. We were using what are called Boolean operators long before the Internet was popular. Symbols such as +, -, * and parentheses help us explain exactly what we are seeking when we search for information. For example, arch* means in my search find me everything that begins with "arch." the ending could be "ives," or "ive", or "ivist." It could event be "aeology." When I began using Twitter a couple of years ago, # seemed somewhat natural to me. Categorizing my world is the norm and symbols are familiar.

For me, I find hashtags useful for three main things. 1. for telling others interested in a particular topic about something interesting I am doing that relates to it or for sharing news I have found on the subject 2. for following a few select hashtags to stay on top of specific topics and 3. for helping me track trends in my own posts. The third area is perhaps the most useful to me because I know what my hashtags mean to me. I know which ones I use for different topics. At the end of last year, I did a year end review of archives related topics that were hot online in 2010. I realized after going through all of my tweets to compile the list that my hashtags could be really, really handy at year's end to pull out these trends. My hashtags help me find information about specific subjects so that I can go back and review them.

Hashtags are a really useful tool and there are many ways that you can use them to your advantage. If you don't use them yet, give them a try. If you do use them, think about how and why you are using them and see if you can make them more valuable to you and your social media audience.

My Place, Changed

2011-09-15T09:20:00.000-04:00

Coincidentally, after I blogged about Capturing a Sense of Place yesterday, I received prints of my old neighborhood from a childhood friend. Despite my almost one-quarter century away from the place, the appearance of the home in which I was raised shocked me. My father had landscaped the whole yard. It now favors grass. More recent residents of the home have also removed a fence and in-ground pool. Trees in front are much larger. My favorite tree, a beautiful dogwood by my bedroom window is not only gone, but there is no trace that it was there. Even the facade of the building is different. The plot even look smaller than I remember. If my friend hadn't told me that this was my home, I would never have guessed it.

I remember when I was growing up how my mother reminisced about her old neighborhood in the Bronx. I remember passing through the area in a car and looking at burned out city buildings thinking, "This is near where mom grew up?!" And now I know somewhat how she felt though I'm sure that place was even more unrecognizable to her than my old home is to me.

I have been told that my childhood home has changed hands many times since I lived there. Some of the neighbors with whom I grew up remain. We have created a Facebook page to document our reminiscences, to share memories, and also to touch base to see where we all our now.

I remember last year reading about a town that encouraged residents to keep a house scrapbook in the front hall closet. (Unfortunately, the web page I had bookmarked for the story has been removed.)The scrapbook gets passed from old residents to new resident so that the house history always stays with the house for the next resident to see. I love this idea and think it would be a great project for local historical societies.

My neighborhood was built just a few years before my parents moved in. They told me that the area was once covered with potato farms. I now wonder what this site looked like 25 years before I arrived there in my mother's arms. I think that a little research work may be in order.
***
Have you documented your childhood home?
How does it differ from where you are today?
Are you in touch with former community members?
What memories do you share? How do your memories differ?
Can you combine your memories to create a resource that tells about your life?
How can you use, share, and pass this resource on to future generations?
Can you involve your local historical society in encouraging residents to create house histories that remain with the house generation after generation?

Capturing a Sense of Place

2011-09-14T09:24:00.000-04:00

This morning on my walk I was admiring the trees and the sounds of frogs, as I often do in my New Hampshire neighborhood. I also had cause to reflect on my hometown of New York, which has been in the news quite a bit over the past few days -- with the 9/11 remembrances and a contentious congressional election. This invited me to reflect on how different my adopted home is from my birthplace. I am fascinated by the idea of "sense of place" and how it affects us and thought this was a good connection to make and address on my blog this morning.With a book due out in a short while, this week I am polishing up some old thoughts and am unable to spend much time to delve into new ideas. So, I thought I would share an excerpt on this topic from my upcoming publication called, The Unofficial Family Archivist: A Guide to Creating and Maintaining Family Papers, Photographs, and Memorabilia. I hope that you enjoy this bit and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

***

The backdrop to your personal story provides a valuable bit of information toward the understanding of your personal history, but it is one of those intangible elements that you will likely need to consciously convey and incorporate into your documentation efforts. A setting can influence us and the events around us in poignant ways. “Who am I?” has been influenced by the places I have lived.

For example, I grew up in a suburban environment, in a town about 45 minutes outside of New York City. I could walk to school and to the grocery store. Wildlife consisted of birds, bugs, and an occasional raccoon in the garbage. Sidewalks were the norm, and my cul-de-sac enabled me to learn to ride my bike without fear of being hit by a car. I now live in a more rural suburban environment. I need a vehicle to get almost anywhere. The hills are too big for easily learning to ride a bike. I have had deer, fox, and fisher cats in my yard. Frogs keep me up at night instead of traffic, and friends have told me that there is a bear in the neighborhood. My formative years were certainly different from my daughter’s early years, and her sense of self has a distinctly New Hampshire tinge to it. When we visit a city, she is struck by all the people and buildings, noting them as distinctly different from her norm.

The place from which we come gives us shared memories with other community members.[1] The place may also deeply impact us so that our “otherness” is obvious to others. Transmitting remembrances about our spaces is vital toward helping others understand us. One who lives in the inner city will have a very different perspective than one who lives in the country. A person of a particular nationality will also have alternate views from someone from another place. Explaining these differences is vital toward promoting harmony among diverse groups and can help us better understand ourselves and each other.

Try to capture your environment in your documentation work. Use visual tools to relay your setting to others. Describe what makes the place or places you have lived unique. Try to convey how your sense of place has impacted you. Use sense of place as a thread through your other documentation work, or focus exclusively on it by describing the setting directly. To convey your sense of place, think about the location itself. Consider the buildings, natural elements, and infrastructure that you recognize as your own. Also mull over the cultural environment that your residence has that makes it unique. What characteristics of the community reflect its uniqueness? What language, ideas, history, and recurring events are distinctive elements of this place?

[1] For more on “sense of place,” please see Robert Archibald’s A Place to Remember: Using History to Build Community (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 1999).

Identifying with the Mill Girls

2011-09-06T12:56:00.000-04:00

I live just outside of the largest city in New Hampshire. Manchester was part of the New England mill movement that is best known for the production of textiles and the buildings from the city's manufacturing history remain today. My interest in the mills of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries started when I read Dickens in high school and were kicked into high gear when I was introduced to the "mill girls" in Lucy Larcom's A New England Girlhood, outlined from memory. The awareness of the hard life of these laborers made a strong impression on me that includes pride, a little bit of romanticism, and a much stronger awareness that my life is much easier than the lives of my ancestors. My interest in mill life grew when I worked as the archivist at the Waltham Public Library in Waltham, Massachusetts -- the birthplace of the American Industrial revolution. The mills in my area remind me of putting myself into the shoes of Lucy Larcom and the Waltham workers. Re-purposed mill buildings are an opportunity for cultural heritage professionals to make history more relevant to folks today by reminding them of this heritage and how such times allowed us to move forward to achieve a more comfortable way of life.

Recently, I took my daughter to a new dance studio, located in the Amoskeag Mill building known as Langer Place on South Commercial Street. We admired the wooden stairs going up and were greeted at our destination by the machinery to the left. (Bonus!) I tend to arrive to my destinations early (when I'm not late) because I have no sense of direction, so I try to give myself enough time to get lost and then find my way. Luckily, there were few necessary U-turns on our car trip over so we had time to explore. I asked my daughter what she thought this machine does. I had no clue and when she showed a little bit of interest I enthusiastically said, "Let's explore!"

Down the hall, we came upon a second machine. This one looks like it was manned by three people. My daughter noted that it has three "steering wheels" and was much bigger than the other. There was no label of any kind on the machinery. It stood like an old ghost watching over a historical landmark; its former life forgotten and ignored by current building occupants.

I turned away from the machinery and I was breathless. I've seen buildings like this before, but each time I enter one I feel transported back to the nineteenth century with Lucy Larcom. The wide empty hallway must have once been filled with this machinery. I told my daughter to picture these machines up and down the hall and to picture the mill girls working them. (Thanks to "American Girl" and the story of Samantha, my eight-year-old is familiar with mill girls and child labor.) The quiet we experienced was in direct contrast to the imaginary scene in my head, punctuated by the thought of loud machinery at work.

I was so pleased that the mill retained some of its artifacts to remind us of its history, but I think few people would notice. A few minutes into our explorations, another mom and her daughter came up a back stairwell into the large hall, looking for the dance studio. I told her that it was just down the hall and my daughter and I were headed there too. We were just exploring. "Oh," the woman said, turning and heading to our final destination. I wanted to jump up and down and shout, "Wait! You have some time! Check this out!"

What I want to know...am I really just a history geek or can we do a better job of getting people to stop and consider their history? What secret, fascinating stories can our historic buildings share with non-professionals? How can we better appreciate the Amoskeag Mill building's movement from housing mill girls to harboring tiny ballroom dancers?

***

For information about the Amoskeag Mills, see the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company Collection located at Harvard Business School.

More Finds at the Local Antique Shop: Deciphering Handwriting

2011-09-01T11:32:00.001-04:00

I am not an expert in this area by any means, but it is a fascinating part of archives, history and genealogy work. What does one do when one comes across something that looks like this?

Whether it's old fashioned handwriting or just plain bad handwriting, documents and ephemera with script like this can be a headache for an archivist or researcher. However, it can also be just plain fun.

I first started really thinking about old handwriting when I stumbled across a book on the subject in the early 1990s while working as a local history librarian / archivist. Since that time, the study of old handwriting has become a hot topic for books and on the Internet. Here are some helpful and interesting resources I've found to help you look into this subject some more:

Deciphering Old Handwriting from a genealogy course taught by Sabina J. Murray - a fascinating look out how one person solved a name dilemma

Handwriting in America - An interesting history from the University of Buffalo

How to Read 18th Century British-American Writing - brought to you by DoHistory, one of my favorite online sites for learning

The Impossible Art of Deciphering Manuscripts - from Slate.com, a look at how professional transcribers tackle the issue

Tricks for Deciphering that Careless Writing! - from Ontario Genealogical Society's Ontario Branch, just a few handy pointers

Unexpected Google Trick: Translate Bad Handwriting - auto correct to the rescue!

My mysterious postcard has been a puzzle for some months now. I keep taking it out of its folder and putting it back in frustration. One day, I will need to sit in earnest to figure this it...if you can help me decipher it, I would much appreciate it. The front of my postcard looks like this:

Doesn't this scene make you really curious about the author of this postcard and what the postcard says? I have so many questions about it!

And there may be some other uses for this knowledge besides deciphering historical documents. I am also hoping that these tips will help me read my own poor penmanship. Am I the only one who writes notes to myself that I can't read?

***

Here's a fun little bit of trivia I picked up... According to Wikipedia and other sites, Ovaltine was developed in Berne, Switzerland, where it is known by its original name. In English speaking markets it is called Ovaltine because of a misreading of the patent paperwork due to poor handwriting!

Summarizing "The Issue of Small Archives"

2011-08-30T16:05:00.002-04:00

I was very happy to see the thread "The Issue of Small Archives" on the Archmgmt and Archives listservs a couple of weeks ago. A student pursuing her Master's degree in History and Archival Studies made this observation and posed this question:

"...The trend in the literature I have noticed regards the disparagement of the creation and existence of small archives - that is, archives that receive minimal or no financial or physical support from another larger outside public or private agency. These facilities are seen as almost not only unnecessary but potentially dangerous to the materials they hold...

Do you think small archives have a place in the archival field?  What are the problems you can potentially see engendered or faced within small archives that could hinder or compromise their mission?"

The theme of small archives management has been central to my work since I entered the archives field twenty years ago. An examination of the practices of well-managed small archives is also a core thread in my book "Cultural Heritage Collaborators: A Manual for Community Documentation." Small archives do indeed have a vital place in the archival field. I think that there should be no question about this. Small archives often have more direct connections to the local population. They can be more visible and appear more approachable to citizens who will more readily bring their personal papers to the small repository's doorstep than to a larger institution. I want to also clarify that there are small archives that are run by professionals and also those that run on a shoestring. I think that the question is meant to focus on the latter. There are many problems that can hinder the work of these archives including most notably, very limited funding, high volunteer turnover, and lack of knowledge and training. However, these conditions are not a given. Many volunteer organizations are run in a very professional manner with committed "citizen archivists" who stay around for the long-term and have plans in place to solicit, accommodate, and train new "staff." Many also very effectively raise money for their repositories either through fundraising programs or by finding a steady source of funds through the local government, area businesses, or financial patrons. Many such archives run with expert support from larger institutions. Others find ways to manage by seeking out associations, consultants, or professional volunteers from nearby institutions who are willing to give up personal time to help out. In fact, thanks to dedication and collaboration, I have encountered some volunteer based small archives that run more effectively than supposed professionally run institutions.

Rather than re-hashing my own research and thoughts about the work of the volunteer archives in depth, the postings from two weeks ago provide great snippets for examination and reflection. I have posted below some of the thoughts of my colleagues that mirror my views on this subject. Thank you everyone for a provocative discussion. I have included job titles of individuals, but not individual names to respect privacy while also giving credit to those who shared their thoughts.

"In truth, the small archives are vital to many towns, counties etc, for not only collecting and preserving in whatever form that takes, but gathering these materials give these places and organizations an essential sense of community. After all, isn't that one of the functions of an Archives?...People feel a connection to these places as "their archives" and some are more willing to make the trip to someone they know than donate something that "would sit on a shelf" with thousands of other collections and never be used. So, as the our profession progresses, it is important to recognize not only what should be, but what is, and try to help small Archives cope with their issues. Small Archives are a vital part of our profession." - Head, Archives and Special Collections, Library of the Marine Corps

"In our case in particular, it is in large part thanks to well meaning volunteers of earlier generations that we have collections to save at all. It is also thanks to them that we have an endowment to pay a professional staff... Many towns do not have universities, and some may be far removed from a repository with climate control and reference hours, particularly one interested in preserving their records... Oh, and one more thing- the interdisciplinary approach that is trendy now among museum, library, and archives professionals has been in vogue within state and local historical societies for years." - Curator of Library and Archives, Litchfield Historical Society


"True, in terms of preservation and security many of these repositories are nightmares. ...But then, I know many “respectable” repositories that don’t have adequate climate controls, are susceptible to leaks or flooding (is it unethical to maintain a repository in a flood plain or tornado alley?), that make do with inadequate security systems, that don’t put catalog records or finding aids online, and/or who won’t permit researcher access to the 60% or so of their collection that’s unprocessed.  To a certain extent, the faults of community 
archives are a matter of degree not of kind." - Director, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming

"I completely agree

that we need to look for ways to assist the small community repositories.  This

is an area where our State Historical Records Advisory Boards should be

providing leadership.  A number of years ago the Montana SHRAB developed an

imminently successful “traveling archivist” program....See http://mhs.mt.gov/research/library/vol12_No1.pdf

(page 2) for a summary report on Montana’s 2010 traveling archivist." [this program is also a model highlighted in "Cultural Heritage Collaborators"] - University Archivist/Interim Head of Special

Collections, Oregon State University Libraries

"I have long been a proponent of state and regional archival associations reaching out to these smaller historical societies. Many of them are run by volunteers or a very small and/or semi-trained staff, but all that I have run across want to do the right thing with their records. Yes, they may be possessive but if we can deal with cranky patrons or high-maintenance donors then surely we can deal with them...Several years back archivists, including myself, would give Archives 101 courses taught through the Society of Ohio Archivists' education initiative, but that required people to come to us to ask for help, arrange for a class and so forth. I think this is an issue that we should be *proactive* on...we should visit the small historical societies near us, offer any support that we can and urge 

them to adopt professional standards. It may not always be a pleasant encounter but we still should try." - Archives Manager, Cincinnati Museum Center

"...I agree with much of what has been discussed, especially the fact that it is an issue of advocacy from all of us toward small archives, wherever and whenever we find them...There is a lot to do still and funding is an 

issue but sharing knowledge about free and low cost para-professional 

archival education is one of the many steps that we can offer to these 

small archives to be able to preserve their history... we need to be more proactive and offer free or low cost assistance to these small archives which don't have many resources or practically no resources except good intentions. - Subject/Liaison Librarian for Latin American & Caribbean Studies, Puerto Rican/Latino Studies, Spanish & Anthropology & Curator of the Latin American and Caribbean Collections. Thomas J. Dodd Research Center

Memories of Hurricane Gloria While Awaiting the Arrival of Irene

2011-08-27T18:40:00.000-04:00

This afternoon, while preparing for the arrival of Hurrican Irene, I remembered back to Gloria's visit. I was a high school student living on Long Island. I was already an avid diarist and was a budding photographer. I dove into the archives boxes in my office and quickly found my writings about the event. I share them below. It is interesting to me to see my use of language at the age of 15 and to read the impact the storm had on me. I remember little of this. My strongest memory of the event is painting my room with my father during the storm and of heading out to see the clouds over head as the eye passed over us. It is nice to have this documentation to revisit the moment while I await Hurricane Irene's arrival here in New Hampshire.

September 28, 1985

The sun was shining warmly on my back and a cool wind blew in my face. opened my stride and flew off my toes as I prepared for my net X-Country race. It was the morning of the scheduled Suffolk Coaches Invitational, yet I nor anyone else raced. The park where the meet was to be held was closed. All that could be seen were orange cones lined up across the road, forbidding anyone to enter the park and see what damage lay beyond.

As I ran on my own, I followed the path of leaves Hurricane Gloria made in the middle of the road. The leaves were soft under my feet. They were wet from the previous days rain. The path of leaves showed the path of the Hurricane's trek. The damaged trees leaned pointing in the direction the storm had been heading.

The neighborhood people were busy cleaning up the mess. They were dressed in their worst clothes, baggy jeans, t-shirts and flannel button downs. The people raked the golden leaves of the fall. They used their chain saws to saw fallen trees into little pieces.

The children were out helping move fallen branches. Then they would take a rest and play on the fallen trees, straddling the branches and bounding up and down. The trees would lie still, but their leaves would rustle under the children's weight as if to remind you of their long lives and cruel torturous deaths.

Antennas lay on houses, balanced carefully on rooftops, ready to fall at the slightest touch. Lights lay across the roads. The autumn flowers leaned in toward the murderer. Tress that were left standing were stripped of many branches. Stop lights were not functioning and many electrical lines were down leaving victims in their homes without electricity.

Though the raging storm itself could not be seen, it left its mark in my neighborhood. I ran and ran thinking. I thought of all the great damage left. All the way up the East Coast the storm had raged, leaving many people in the same position. Then I realized in other areas people lost their homes and even their lives. They were not in the same position as my neighbors. We were lucky.

***

Be safe everyone

More Finds at the Local Antique Shop: Are Archivists Just Nosy?

2011-08-26T13:50:00.001-04:00

Vandalia, Illinois
October 2, 1921

Mr Dear Aunt Mary and Uncle Wilbur,

You will no doubt be very much surprised to hear from me, especially after all of these years. And I hope that you will forgive and pardon the appearant [sic] neglect for it really was not exactly my fault. I often wished to write to you and the rest, but I always felt that Mother & Evelyn had always said and written unkind things of me, because in the letters which did come from home I was rarely if ever mentioned. It sometimes almost breaks my heart to think of the way our home has been broken up. I do not even know where Mother is, and that is one reason why I am writing to you, in hopes that you may know, and will send me her address. I believe that Evelyn knows where she is, but she will not tell me, and says that she does not know. the last that I saw or heard from Mamma was a year ago.....
Then I went to visit Evelyn where I was very much unwelcome, not by her husband who is rather nice but her owing to the fact that I had left most of my things in her care during my stay in Decatur, and she had used most of them and didn't really care to give them up. some of the things she locked away upon my arrival at her home, and claimed that Mother had taken them with her,such as silver ware & tabel [sic] linen and a few other things some of these I found and most of them I did not...

First of all, from this little paragraph I wonder, do you think Aunt Mary and Uncle Wilbur were happy to hear from this apparently long lost relative?

I found this letter among a batch I purchased online as a sort of potluck. Letters like this are sold online and advertised for use in heirloom craft projects. Purchasers are encouraged to cut up the letters and use them for collages. I prefer to purchase them, read them, and lament the fact that they have been separated from their families in this way.

My purchased lot of four letters are from the years 1921-22 and include some details of everyday family life. I know about the family baby. I learn from the letters about the domestic lives of the women in the household. They describe preparing beans and cakes. This is a farming family and the few letters in my possession discuss growing crops and managing livestock. The letters include lots of names - individuals who are ill, suffering business losses, taking time off. I get just a small sense of this family's life, as if I am allowed to visit each family member for an hour and then asked to go. I will never know these people. They probably don't want me to know them this way. I have a decided picture in my mind of what these people were like, but I formed this opinion about them with very little information

I'm nosy. I want to know more. I want to be asked to stay for a longer visit and get to know these people. I want to learn more about farm life in Iowa in the 1920s. Is there a better way to learn it then through the original letters of farming families who were right in the thick of it all? The collection, that I suppose would give me a full and realistic sense of these people based on the detail of the letters before me, has been destroyed. We will never be able to reassemble the original collection of letters from which these were obviously plucked. The loss of personal papers such as these are a loss for our better understanding of our culture. Our memories of our ancestors also suffer from this loss. Finally, the nosy archivist is left disappointed that the resolution to this family soap opera, for which the letter I quote gives us a glimpse, has been lost to time. These are just clips from life, out of context.

Linking Personal Experience, Medicine, and History

2011-08-24T11:44:00.005-04:00

Display about nurses at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center

I work with records of all types, but when it comes right down to it, I am a liberal arts girl at heart. On a personal level, I have always taken the most interest in archives related to women or records describing the building of community culture. Medicine was a realm reserved for my sister, who is a doctor. But, when I first walked into the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire this summer to manage a major personal health issue, it was their appreciation for their history that first welcomed me. I began a journey that raised my consciousness about medicine and medical history more than I ever could have imagined.

The original Dartmouth Medical College

At Dartmouth, images of the original Mary Hitchcock Center are displayed prominently on their walls. It was with intense interest that I first walked in and examined a display of early medical equipment and nursing gear that was used in the hospital from its inception in 1893. Here I was entering an unknown and frightening world, but right off the bat was being offered something with which I could identify. Admittedly, all my life hospitals have been one of my least favorite places to be, but I felt like I was being welcomed by an old friend and my previous interactions with medical archives came to my mind. I felt comfortably linked to what was before me and it helped me face my fears on a more intellectual level. It helped me to let go of emotion to realize how my current situation fits into the history of this place, my family, and of other communities.

Lobyb of Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, displaying
with pride their long and successful history.

I have previously written briefly about my current health issues. The situation has had such a major impact on me that it will likely become a regular part of my presentations discussing personal archives, including “Life in Context” and “Preserving Memories”. I went through what all women fear and am coming out the other end with some major intervention, but I am doing just fine. My body has had a lot of work done, but I no longer fear the kind of intervention I needed for my continued good health. And to link this with my work examining communities, I can say that I better see my interests inextricably linked with doctors and think there is a lot that liberal arts types such as myself can do with them to help others through experiences similar to mine. History is what binds us. Recognizing that others have gone through this before me, that technology has improved treatment, and that my own situation can help others who come after me seems like an important thread in medical treatment, in understanding our place in a historic timeline, and in cultivating a better sense of self awareness on an individual level.

Health concerns are and have always been central to our lives as humans. Our health issues are well documented in the letters we write, the diary entries we make, and the public records kept about our circumstances. I have encountered many such records in archives across New England. Hospital archives, government records, and personal papers all retain valuable information that can help us link ourselves to the medical community in a more personal way and to a larger history. Our emotional health benefits from evaluating these connections. This kind of thinking, I believe, has also made my physical recovery easier.

Health records I have encountered in my journeys include a diary from Maine that I found this past spring in a local antique shop. The diary clearly emphasizes the importance of health to its writer. In it, the author regularly records the diseases of his friends and acquaintances and the deaths of neighbors. One entry reads, “January 13, 1882 Uncle Joe Cousens is very sick with Brights disease of kidneys and cannot live long.” The diary lists many diseases with strange names, but with a little research, it is clear that though the names are unusual, the diseases themselves are still well-known today under pseudonyms more familiar to the non-medical community. (Brights Disease is kidney disease, for example. Here’s an online dictionary of 19^th century medical terms that makes an interesting read in case you want to look more into this.) When we consider modern society, we can realize that these diseases are still part of daily life and still part of our conversation.

Another set of medical records that stand out in my mind were encountered in my first professional job as an archivist. The Waltham Public Llibrary kept some early twentieth century health records from the area. As I remember them, they included quarantine information and I read with interest the journey of the flu pandemic of 1918 through this community located just outside of Boston. The entries tracked one by one the individuals who were afflicted by the outbreak. These record books are a valuable piece of information about an important worldwide event, linking the local population to a larger global event. History helps us appreciate the magnitude of “the flu” and our fight against it through time. It is a fight that we still face almost 100 years later.

As part of my personal journey, I have been recording what is happening to me in my diary and in an art journal. Someday, this may serve to help other family members better understand what I have gone through so they can be better prepared for their own personal journey. Creating documentation has also been valuable to me to look back on what has happened to me this summer to see how I moved from fear to resolve. I am proud of the decisions I have made that relied on the input of my healthcare professionals and a learned understanding of my family health heritage. I am now more aware of the health documentation I see around me. I am attuned to the medical messages of modern culture while I contemplate how this field of medicine has come so far. Like Dartmouth, I hope that other such institutions take time to reflect on their past to help patients realize that they are part of a miraculous evolving history.

In conclusion, I wish to give a great big thank you to the Doctors of Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. You are my heroes. Thank you for caring about my emotional health as well as my physical health. From you I have not only benefited physically, but I have learned so much. I will be forever grateful.

***

Knowing your own family health history is important. Here are some resources to help you understand its value. They will also help you consider and gather the information you need to know your medical risks and to understand the role this history plays in your life.

American Ancestors – New England Historic Genealogical Society - Family Health and Genealogy: Compiling a Family Health History

Mayo Clinic - Medical history: Compiling your medical family tree

Surgeon General’s Family Health History Initiative

Treasure Maps Genealogy Blog Why You Should Research Your Family History AND Your Family HEALTH History

Contemplating Personal Illness and History

2011-08-04T15:31:00.000-04:00

I have always contended that history is about each of us. History helps us understand how we got here and what role we play in the world. History helps us understand that we are influenced by others, that we are part of communities, and that our actions will impact those who follow us. These ideas have gained renewed significance for me this summer as I am confronted with an illness. At a turning point in my life, it becomes remarkably powerful and important that I can embrace the words and stories of others to guide me. Those who have documented their own journeys along a similar path have given me comfort and hope. I am not alone. When everything is stripped away, we all are made the same and the history of humanity runs as a thread that binds our most basic existence.

I recognize that the path I am taking has been taken by thousands of others -- that those who came before me have helped to make my own path easier. Each generation benefits as our knowledge grows and technology evolves. To record our experiences is to leave a map for our descendants that helps them feel part of something bigger. I need only look back two generations in my own family to realize that my grandparent who struggled as I do had a much more difficult time of it. In my heart, I thank her for for the sacrifices she made so that my own path is easier. She and I are bound by genetics, but also by historical events that reach beyond family and into larger communities.

During recovery from surgery, I will blog as often as I can. I hope that my personal experiences can help others embrace the community support they seek and look to history for additional wisdom. It took me a long time to decide to write this because at first I wasn't sure that sharing what I am going through now was relevant to my readers. However, during the past year I have worked on "A Life in Context" with my colleague Sue West and the point of our project and workshops is to invite people to share their stories. We have encouraged people to share the good and the bad. It seemed hypocritical to not share at least part of my current journey with you.

I am documenting my experiences in my diary and am also keeping a new art journal to record the things I can't put into words. The art journal has helped me get negative thoughts out and has helped me better articulate ideas that were bringing me down a hurtful path. Documentation has been a way to release sadness and frustration. I now find that I am on a good path to guide me into surgery and beyond. And I suspect that a record of what I am going through will help me look back to value how far I have come and to help others who may later experience the same emotions.

No matter where I am in my life, history and documentation are there as useful and comforting companions. Thank you for reading the ArchivesInfo blog. I hope to be back blogging very soon!

A Sense of Place AusLib conference Spring 2011

2011-07-25T17:26:00.000-04:00

I was honored to be asked to speak about Cultural Heritage Collaboration: A Manual for Community Documentation in Sydney Australia at the 2011 spring Auslib conference, "A Sense of Place.". Unfortunately, I was unable to make the trip overseas. Today, I received the conference proceedings in the mail and by all measures it look like I missed an interesting and noteworthy event. There are too few cultural heritage professionals focusing on this topic. It is encouraging to see a program with two days dedicated to the value of local studies that emphasized methods to collectively promote and preserve local history resources. It also bodes well for the future that the conference was run by and for librarians. It is imperative that we recognize the role of local librarians in helping to preserve archives. I hope that my American colleagues will take note and think further about the possibilities of collaboration across professions.

"The full proceedings of A Sense of Place contain all 20 papers by UK, Australian and New Zealand speakers plus transcripts of two panel sessions plus the targeted conference recommendations. If initiating or improving local studies is your special interest you'll find the pages of these proceedings an informative and inspirational resource." Email info@auslib.com.au or browse to www.auslib.com.au to order a copy of the publication.

Thank you to my Australian colleagues. I hope to join you at a future conference. Keep up the great work!

Online is More than Fine, but History is Still More Magical Hands-on

2011-07-07T13:40:00.000-04:00

A recent article in the Guardian called "Online is Fine, but History is Best Hands On" seems to be generating a lot of controversy. Based on the article's comments, I think some of this is a reaction to the writer and not what was written. (I am unfamiliar with this gentleman, so I had no knee jerk reaction either way.) Or, perhaps he should have titled his article "Online is More Than Fine, but History is Still More Magical Hands-on"

The author acknowledges the value of the "ubiquity of history," but points out that there is nothing like the excitement of accessing original documents. I agree wholeheartedly with both views. Providing online access to the information contained in original sources builds bridges for Archives to larger audiences. This kind of access helps spread a wealth of knowledge to those who would not otherwise be able to see the resources containing this information. Yet, anyone who has had the good fortune to work with actual original resources can hardly disagree that the original does indeed offer us opportunities for a better understanding of the "mystery of history." I wouldn't shake with excitement when I saw a letter by Thomas Jefferson reproduced online (or in a book for that matter,) but I did shake with excitement when I held such a letter in my hand.

I think many of the people who have responded to the Guardian article have mistakenly assumed that this is an either or proposition. I don't think that is what the article author intended it to be. Maybe I am mistaken about that. There is a place for online research and there is a place for in-person research too when we can do it.

Here's a case in point: I am currently working on a project to find more information about a diary I found in a local antique shop. Yesterday, I intended to drive to Maine to do original research, but decided that I would check online first to make sure I wouldn't spend time accessing in person things that could be accessed satisfactorily online. I ended up spending the day at home because thanks to Google I had access to business directories and newspapers that had valuable information. In fact, the newspapers were very welcome because I had spent some time with them in a microfilm version in Maine a couple of weeks ago. The film was scratched and the machine was temperamental. The online version was much more comfortable on the eyes. Yet, not everything I need is online AND I am hoping to find some resources down the road that fall into the "mystery" category. My diary covers 6 months in a man's life. Maybe he wrote more diaries and I can find them somewhere. I would love to see that in person to compare handwriting, ink color and marginalia. I would just like to hold the other one so that I can feel more a part of this man's life.

And here's another case in point: A few weeks ago the love letters of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn were made available online. I was terribly excited to see a copy of one of these digital letters because of a lifelong interest I've had in this particular royal. My very next thought was, "I hope that I can see the original one day."

I am lucky that I live close to Maine so I can explore the original sources for my diary project. Letters from London, especially those held by elite institutions, would be harder for me to access for my research if there were not some remote way to do it.

The wonder of the original is not easily explained. I think Archives in general should do a better job of making the original sources more readily available so people can experience this wonder for themselves. There is no good reason why local history original resources can't be made more accessible to their communities. These resources should not just be important to people who are undergoing projects like mine. They should be important to local citizens. Children should be brought to Archives as many are brought to museums to experience the past. Show a kid the diary of someone who lived a hundred years ago. Show him the type of pen he used to write it. Show him the desk at which this person sat....these artifacts make a difference in making the past seem more real and tangible. An experience with an original would then make a remote experience more valuable too. Once someone sees, touches, and examines an original, they have a better context for their understanding of digital versions of historical documents.

We are living in an age where we can have the best of both worlds - remote access and access to originals. Don't water down the importance of either.

More Finds at the Local Antique Shop - More Romanticism of the Female Portrait Photograph

2011-07-05T20:45:00.000-04:00

Last night I was watching the show American Pickers and was struck by a photo. The episode called "Danielle Goes Picking," which originally aired on the History Channel in December 2010, included the find of a portrait photo of a beautiful woman. Regular readers of this blog know the hold that these types of photos have over me. My photo find to the left is an example of a similar type of image to the one that appeared on the show. Like me, the pickers "oohed" and "aahed" over the image. I am on a mission to put into words why these images capture us and I hope that you have some input into the matter to add to the comment section.

In general, I prefer the caught in the moment action image. I like the informal glimpse into the life of the photographed as if they don't know that they are being caught on film. I like the idea of catching "A Life in Context" and I think that this is generally best done in snapshot type photos. However, there is something about the image of a woman dressed in her finery that I find alluring. It pulls my imagination back into another time and place faster than most other types of images. Posed in sumptuous dress with attention given to her setting, whether a Victorian, flapper, or 40s belle, the subject of a formal portrait like the one to the left is highly feminine and nationalistic.

Dress, hairstyle, pose, and environment are staged by the photographer to make these women look their best. Soft focus and carefully crafted lighting also helps to create a mood based in a bygone era. The women of these portraits are an American (or Western) ideal that is perhaps best expressed through the art of photography. These portraits show a "feminine" quality that promotes an envisaged view of the perfect woman. The women of these portraits display a dreamy quality. They can be said to reflect what many women want to be and the qualities that many men want their partners to have. They display a comfortable lifestyle and contentedness that we wish for ourselves and our fellow citizens. The prevalence of these images reflects the role of the female experience in shaping society and in developing our sense of history. They provide both insight into a woman's sense of personal identity, while also showing the context and collective molding of a national identity. This picture is what it means to be a successful American to many, many people.

Yes, I realize this is a narrow and somewhat flawed view of our society, leaving big gaping holes for stereotypes, chauvinism and other negatives to leak through. I realize that there are many potential arguments against idealizing this kind of display of wealth and this sort of objectification of women. The allure of the idea that we might all be able to get closer to this world of "perfection" by identifying with a portrait is at least in part fantasy, but I think it hits a sentimental button much like the Disney princess phenomenon. There are good points and bad points to the stereotype, yet there is still an attraction to it.

Nonetheless, I love these images for their beauty and sentimentalism despite any negative connotations that can be conjured from them. In the context of American life, these images tell a lot about our values and our history as a community. They tie themselves to an American dream that is evident in other forms of visual arts from the late nineteenth, early twentieth century period and in our literature from those times. As "orphan" photographs, these posed images ground the unidentified woman in a culture that forms a large piece of the American narrative. As items from the world of archives, they document the lives our foremothers led and reflect an image toward which we have been taught to strive.

***

Looking for more about women in portraiture? please see

More Finds at the Local Antique Shop: The Profile Image in Context

Interested in more images of women? Here are a few great resources from archival repositories:

Harvard University Library Open Collections Program Women Working

Library of Congress Women's History Picture Pathfinder

Women's History Photos on Flickr from the Smithsonian

Brooklyn Public Library Women's History Photo Gallery

The Value of Cultural Knowledge

2011-07-02T17:17:00.001-04:00

On this blog in the past I have written about the value of archives to society, but to treasure archives we must first recognize the importance historical knowledge in general. We must also understand how accurate historical knowledge is upheld by cultural heritage repositories. Why are our cultural heritage repositories continually under attack for funding? What can we do about it? Part of the problem is a lack of appreciation for our heritage, which can cause a casual, but often highly charged, denial of the fundamental value of understanding our past.

A few weeks ago I read an editorial in a local paper. I wish that I saved it so that I can quote it, but I have seen the sentiment in other places so I think I can paraphrase. There is a particular view that cultural repositories are "fluff." (I was going to write that "museums, libraries, and archives are fluff," but I think that many of these writers do not know what "archives" are. How can they possibly value them?) During difficult economic times, those who hold this point of view think that museums and libraries (and possibly archives) are the first that should be denied funding. These things are nice to have, but we don't need them to function as a society. However, this view is sadly misinformed. These institutions ARE necessary for us to properly function as a society, because they hold the truths that make us a "society" in the first place.

I am currently reading "Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know" by E.D. Hirsch Jr. This book, originally published in the 1980s, argues that kids "are not mentally prepared to continue the society because they basically do not understand the society well enough to value it." We have reached a critical point where these children of the 1980s are the adults making decisions today and they are misunderstanding the value of cultural institutions and heritage resources because they do not understand history. According to "Cultural Literacy, "Only by accumulating shared symbols, and the shared information that the symbols represent, can we learn to communicate effectively with one another in our national community." In other words, American citizens are not all on the same page. Some of us know our history. Some of us do not. Some know some of our history and others know other parts of our history. Many cannot identify the historical knowledge they do have as valuable because they do not understand the full context of that history in terms of how it influences our behaviors and decisions today. They do not recognize that repositories support our understanding of history and without them, truth and fiction are muddled.

I am reading another book with my young daughter. It is a children's book called "The Raucous Royals" and discusses historical rumors, exploring how rumors get started and if particular rumors that have pervaded historical knowledge have any basis in fact. The book begins, "Dear Reader, Once rumor is born, it never truly dies." I have used our reading together as a way to develop my daughter's critical thinking skills. One of the group of rumors examined relates to Richard III of England., It discusses how he is suspected of killing his nephews to get to the thrown. It also discusses how over time, Richard was portrayed as a hunchback with a withered arm. My daughter learned that Shakespeare wrote about Richard and based his writing on a biography by Thomas More, which was written after Richard's death. I asked my daughter if these writings were accurately portraying Richard. I asked if they were even trying to accurately portray Richard. Later in the book we learned about Henry VIII's eating habits. We learned that the king would often eat 4,500-5,000 calories for dinner. A menu of the foods he would serve for the meal was included for illustration. I asked my daughter if this was more accurate than the Richard III info. She said yes and I asked why. What is that menu? Where would they get that information? A small smile lit her face and she said, ARCHIVES!"

Today, it often seems to me that rumor is taken as fact without examining its context. Much of the information we believe and the growing amount of misinformation we see spread by media and politicians is not given an historical context. "I heard it so it must be true" is not good enough. Our cultural institutions, including the knowledge they hold and have the capacity to share, can level the playing field and give all of our citizens a common foundation of knowledge, cementing a national identity based in reality. Whether or not we agree on all issues is less vituperative when we know that we all have a common understanding of fact and hence of common cultural values. Cultural institutions hold the shared symbols to which E.D. Hirsch refers.They are part of the foundation that helps our citizens understand our society well enough to value it. Without the institutions, our sense of self is perverted and the glue that holds us together as a nation with a common identity falls apart.