Why beavers were parachuted into the Idaho wilderness 73 years ago

 Lucy Sherriff. "Why beavers were parachuted into the Idaho wilderness 73 years ago," National Geographic,     Sept. 16, 2021. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/why-beavers-were-parachuted-into-the-idaho-wilderness

“I’ve found it,” the voice on the other end said conspiratorially.  “You found what?” Clark asked, recognizing the voice of Michal Davidson, a collections archivist who worked in the Idaho State Archives.  “The beaver film,” she responded. It had been six years since Clark first learned of this now-infamous film which shows beavers parachuting from the sky in 1948 as part of a Fish and Game experiment to relocate them into remote wilderness.  She couldn’t wait to screen it.

…

Clark, who has worked in Fish and Game for 33 years, was determined to unearth that footage.   “It was the most fascinating story I’d ever heard.  I had to find it.”  She phoned the state archives and checked back roughly every six months to see if the film had turned up.  Finally, in 2014 she received the call.  The documentary had been mislabeled and misfiled. The old film was dry and the archivist worried it would fall apart if removed from the canister. They had to wait several more months for an expert to digitize the film before they could watch it.

COMMENT

A multi-faceted tale of superhuman librarianship-- the initial reference question led to a six year search for a missing film.  When it was finally located in the wrong place, it had decayed and was in need of digital preservation. 

 

The Needy Will Face Obstacles to Getting Stimulus Payments

Ron Lieber and Alan Rappeport, "The Needy Will Face Obstacles to Getting Stimulus Payments," New York Times, April 3, 2020, B6

     Filing even the simplest of returns could pose challenges during a pandemic.  The I.R.S. does have a free filing site, but those who lack internet access could be unable to use it because nonprofits, libraries and other places are closed. 

COMMENT

     People with no internet or devices are dependent on shared public equipment.  That means they need to go to the library in order to file a tax return.  When libraries are closed, there is no place to file online or even to print out paper tax forms.   COVID 19 has brought the digital divide into stark focus since people who have not filed tax returns will also need to file online to get COVID relief checks.  With libraries closed, where will they do that?
 
    The situation has raised the call for internet as a public utility, but that still wouldn't assure access for everyone.  There still needs to be a public option for internet connections and working devices, and that has mainly turned out to be libraries.

Robert Caro's Papers Find a Home

Jennifer Schuessler, “Robert Caro’s Papers Find a Home,” New York Times, January 9, 2020, p. C1. 

     The books are already monumental.  And now Mr. Caro is getting monumental treatment himself.
     The New-York Historical Society has acquired Mr. Caro’s papers  — some 200 linear feet of material that will be open to researchers in its library.  And just a as important to the 84-year-old Mr. Caro, it will create a permanent installation int its museum galleries dedicated to showing how he got the job done.

...

     The archive will be among the largest of an individual in the historical society's collection.  It includes research notes, drafts, annotated news clippings, correspondence, and other documents, from once-classified memos excavated at the L.B.J. Presidential Library to at least one artifact literally coaxed out of a secret trunk. 

COMMENT

     The article describes an archival collection acquired by a special library.  The collection originates from a research strategy that includes library research as well as other kinds of documentation.

     The article also describes Caro’s research process as “a kind of museum of a vanishing analog world.”  As a consequence of his careful gathering, his research materials can now be used by other historians.  This kind of idiosyncratic individual collecting stands in contrast to automated approval plans the mean every library buys the same things. There’s a photo of a typewriter, and the article says he has more than one just in case he needs spare parts. 

All Over the Map

Betsy Mason and Greg Miller, All Over the Map: A Catrographic Odyssey," National Geographic, 2018.

Some of these maps come from museums, prestigious universities, and famous collections, but we've gone out of our way to also include maps from less vaunted sources. They've been buried in obscure government reports, long-forgotten scientific papers, private collections and dusty corders of libraries. Some are products of popular culture, such as one from the blockbuster television series Game of Thrones. Others are part of everyday life-- the kind you might expect to find in the seat-back pocket of an airplane or that you would tuck into your pocket before hitting the ski slopes. 

COMMENT

 The book All Over the Map is not an atlas, but rather a picture book of curious and interesting maps.   It could conceivably be subtitled "why digital maps suck." The wide variety of geographic representation is a reminder of how GIS makes all maps look essentially the same. In the chapter on ski area maps, cartographer Jim Niehues frets that hand-draw ski area maps could become a lost art if he retires.  His technique involves creative distortion of the terrain, orienting the layout around peaks that serve as landmarks for skiers. 

   Yet again library dust is mentioned.  It doesn't indicate worthless unused objects suitable only for the dust bin.  Rather the dust has gathered on hidden treasures waiting to be uncovered, maybe even in some of those obscure government reports lurking in the Stygian library basement (See: Autobiography of Red).

     When the database Hathi Trust digitized government reports they did not bother to digitize map supplements or oversized foldouts.  The maps they did digitize were single-pagers, not in full color.  Cartographic information was sacrificed to expedite the digitization process, probably because whoever made the decision didn't think maps were are all that important since maps are seldom a heavily used part of any library collection.  Despite such sloppiness, some librarians base sloppy decisions about what to weed on digital libraries like Hathi Trust.  If the title is online, they conclude that it has been accurately reproduced and it's just fine to throw out the library's physical copy, regardless of map supplements.  This makes me particularly mad because I live in Utah where public lands politics have been driven for years by a poorly executed Utah Intensive Wilderness Inventory (BLM, 1980).  Without good maps, the text of that particular land use document and the many, many subsequent plans are meaningless.  Even if the maps were digitized, it's difficult to see them online.  For optimum viewing, they need to be spread out on a big table.

 

   

At Social Security, Service at Arm's Length

Mark Miller, "At Social Security, Service at Arm's Length: Fewer Field Offices and Longer Waiting Times as the Number of Beneficiaries Mount," New York Times, November 25, 2018, p. BU5.

Along with other community leaders, Ms. Holt mounted a campaign to save the office, proposing ways to the Social Security Administration to reduce expenses.  But the Quincy office closed anyway, in March 2014-- a casualty of the cuts required by eight years of Congressional budget tightening.
     For anyone without a car, public transportation to Tallahassee is severely limited: There is a once-daily commuter bus, s. Holt says, and it is often overflowing with riders.
      Social Security did install a video kiosk in the Quincy library. That kiosk connects benefit claimants with the Tallahasssee office; today it serves 75 to 100 people daily during library hours. But it's not a trouble-free solution, Ms. Holt said. " We have people who can barely read because of vision problems, or hiring problems. Video is not the answer for many of these people." 

COMMENT

     Since 2010, Social Security has closed 67 field offices causing long wait times, a jammed phone line and long delays in solving appeals and errors. Meanwhile, each year  about one million more people begin to receive benefits.  When this particular Social Security office closed, the public library became a substitute for a staffed office.  However, it's not a very good substitute. The video kiosk,  is not accessible to people with certain kinds of disabilities and is staffed only by librarians who lack institutional knowledge about  Social Security and can't trouble-shoot problems. 

     Social Security has tried to address budget shortfalls by increasing the use of technology, but has run into a problem that would be familiar to any librarian -- the digital divide.  Older people, people without internet access, people who lack of computer literacy, people who are not fluent in English, homeless people, people with disabilities -- all sorts of people have trouble using computers un-aided.  What's more, technology is hardly ever really do-it-yourself.  Customer support and human intervention are needed to help people fill out complicated forms correctly. For instance, the complexity of IRS forms has created an entire industry of tax-filing software and accountants. 

     When libraries used to hand out paper tax forms it was always problematic that people wanted advice about which forms they needed, but they were asking the wrong people for help.  The reported 75 to 100 people per day is a lot of people in need of help.  It seems like one solution might be for Social Security staff to periodically visit the library kiosk in order to offer personal help, similar to the way some large urban  libraries staff social service desks to help homeless people.  While it's a great idea to  put a Social Security  kiosk at the library, but it's still not free. The library clearly needs more support in order to make it work. 

Be Afraid, Jeff Bezos, Be Very Afraid

David Streitfeld. “Be Afraid, Jeff Bezos, be Very Afraid: Citing Amazon’s Dominance, a ‘Legal Prodigy’ Argues for a new Approach to Antitrust Regulation,” New York Times, Sept. 9, 2018, BU 1, 6-7. 

The dead books are on the top floor of Southern Methodist University’s law library.      

     “Antitrust Dilemma.” “The Antitrust Impulse.” “Antitrust in an Expanding Economy.”  Shelf after shelf of volumes ignored for decades.  There are a dozen tomes with transcripts of the congressional hearings on monopoly power in 1949, when the world was in ruins and the Soviets on the march. Lawmakers believed economic concentration would make America more vulnerable. 

     At the end of the antitrust stacks is a table near the window. “This is my command post,” Lina Khan said. 

COMMENT

     The photo accompanying this article shows law student Lina Kahn in law library stacks barely holding onto a toppling armload of hardbound library books.  She’s the author of a highly-cited paper [1] about the possibility of reviving and expanding anti-trust laws in order to rein in the outsized monopoly power of Big Tech. Khan is jump-starting her legal career by delving into historical legal scholarship on a topic that has been long ignored. The “dead” books she is using for her research sat on the shelf for more than 60 years but now it seems they were really just dormant, waiting for the passing of a fad for unregulated free markets. It’s a recurring library narrative -- finding intellectual treasure concealed in unused, supposedly obsolete books.  From an original research perspective, there is deep conflict with the  the commonly-held librarian notion that the most heavily used books are the most valuable.

    Big Tech, of course, is not responding passively to being labeled dangerously monopolistic.  As the article points out, Amazon has already hired its own lawyers to write rebuttals to Kahn. Shortly before this article appeared an op-ed [2] was published on the Forbes,com website (and then quickly redacted due to public ridicule) proposing that since public libraries are “obsolete” they would be better replaced with Amazon.com outlets. The idea was a logical if misguided extension of the tired old idea that public services would be more efficient if they were run like businesses. It’s hard to imagine an Amazon branded “library” outlet that would support antitrust legal research against its own parent company.  Yes, I know there’s a difference between public libraries and academic law libraries, but increasingly corporations are “sponsoring” university professorships in order to guarantee scholarship that is friendly to their own interests and political ideology. 

     Amazon really is overly powerful. Book sales statistics are not very precise, but in 2018,  Amazon sold about 1/2 of all print books, and about 80% of all ebooks (many of them self-published) in the U.S. Market. The company has been known to  promote or suppress publications, sometimes vindictively (such as the 2014 incident when Amazon attacked the publisher Hachette over ebook pricing).  It’s probably no coincidence that American democracy is in a state of crisis. A little trust-busting could be just what's needed right now. 

[1]Khan, Lina M. "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox." Yale Law Journal,  126 (2016): 710.  
[2] Mourdoukoutas, Panos. “Amazon Should Replace Local Libraries to Save Taxpayers Money,” Forbes.com, July 21, 2018 [deleted]

Autobiography of Red

“XXIV. Freedom,” in Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse, Vintage Books, 1998.

Geryon’s life entered a numb time, caught between the tongue and the taste.

 ——-

He got a job in the local library shelving government documents. It was agreeable to work in a basement
humming with fluorescent lights and cold as a sea of stone.  The documents had a forlorn austerity,
tall and hushed in their ranges as veterans of a forgotten war. Whenever a librarian came clumping down the metal stairs with a pink slip for one of the documents, Geryon would vanish into the stacks. A little button at the end of each range activated the fluorescent track above it.
A yellowing 5x7 index cardScotch-taped below each button said EXTINGUISH LIGHT WHEN NOT IN USE.Geryon went flickering though the ranges like a bit of mercury flipping the switches on and off.The librarians thought hima talented boy with a shadow side. One evening at supper when his mother asked himwhat they were like, Geryon could not remember if the librarians were men or women. 

COMMENT

     The words of the old spiritual say, "this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine." It's a reference to Matthew (5:15), Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house."

     The dreary government documents stacks are a dark night of the soul for our hero Geryon who has been dumped by his lover and is now obeying instructions to "extinguish light when not in use."
I find the metaphor particularly amusing since I am a documents librarian. And yes, we documents librarians are a lot like the ones in the poem —  heavy-footed, gender ambiguous trolls lurking in the basement with flickering lights, pink slips, and forlorn, joy-killing, unreadable books. But note also  the librarians' radical inclusion. Geryon is literally a monster, red with wings (incidentally also a queer, tortured artist) but to the librarians, he is a talented boy. In an depository, grand dramas of sex and passion are quite simply irrelevant.  If Geryon wanted to, he could become one of them.

     It seems probable from the nuanced description that Anne Carson experienced this particular documents library as an actual place. These days most government documents are online. One day the FDLP depository in the poem may seem like pure imagination, the fanciful invention of an impossibly drab, soul-sucking job.

Guidelines for the Treatment of Sacred Objects

"Guidelines for the Treatment of Sacred Objects," [poem] in Heid E. Erdrich. National Monuments. Michigan State University Press, 2008.

Guidelines for the treatment of sacred objects
That appear or disappear at will
Or that appear larger in rearview mirrors,
Include calling in spiritual leaders such as librarians,
Wellness-circuit speakers and financial aide officers.

COMMENT

Erdrich's poem refers to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990). It's not only delightful to see a poetic interpretation of a government publication, I also appreciate the tongue-in-cheek appearance of librarians in the role of spiritual leaders.  Libraries, wellness and financial aid are indeed useful support services, though let's be honest, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Much of Erdrich's poetic work references the role of cultural heritage organizations -- libraries, archives and museums-- and their treatment of Indigenous knowledge and artifacts. In National Monuments the theme is human remains presented as spectacle, as if there were no longer any living relatives of those mummies and bones, as if certain kinds of dead people weren't really people at all. 

I also recommend Erdrich's latest book of poems* for librarians who would like a poetic introduction to issues surrounding the collection of Indigenous knowledge. There are a lot of good scholarly articles, too, but they won't have the same emotional punch to the gut.

*Erdrich, Heid E. Curator of Ephemera at the New Museum for Archaic Media. MSU Press, 2017.