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. 

 

Freedom Made Visable

 Kolbie Peterson, "Freedom Made Visable." Salt Lake Tribune August 29, 2021, p. E1-2. 

On a Saturday morning in August, volunteers at the Glendale library are arranging pairs of shoes, folding jeans neatly on long tables, and hanging  tops and dresses on racks.  At one end of the large meeting room is a table of new binders (which flatten the breasts to create a more masculine-looking chest) and packages of underwear, sorted by size for easy browsing.

Organized by Salt Lake Community Mutual Aid, the community group's first gener-affirming clothing closet was tailored specifically to teenage and homeless transgender people, although anyone in need was welcome.

... 

 The decision to hold the Aug. 7 pop-up clothing closet at a library was a deliberate way to ensure a welcoming environment, said organizer  Cameraon (who uses they/the pronouns and requested to be identified only by their first name).   "Libraries tend to be a very accessible place, they tend to be places where a lot of people com, they tend to be a place where people feel safe," they said.

Glendale library staff worked with the team to set up two private changing areas, so people could try on a variety of items and "see what connects best with them," Cameron said. 

COMMENT

Library safe space provides a way of finding identity throught fashion. 

Gratitude and Praise

Editors. "Gratitude and Praise" Orion, Autumn 2021, p. 4.

We also partnered with the Brooklyn Public Library to cosoponsor discussions of Lauren Groff's Florida and Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass as part of their monthly Climate Reads series.  If you missed us live, you can find recordings of these events and more archived at www.orionmagazine.org/connect/events.

COMMENT

The public library partners with an environmental magazine to hosts public presentations that address climate change.

Alice McDermott

 Alice McDermott, "By the Boo", New York Times Book Review,  August 1, 2021, p. 6.

I've also always loved to read in some quiet corner of a university library -- all the books I'll never get to standing by, lending their fragrance to the place.  An occasion I'm sorely missing of late.

...

My father gave me a brand-new hard-cover edition of W.B Yeat's "Collected Poems" when I was in my mid-20's.  I think it must have been the most expensive book he'd ever purchased (he and my mother both were advocates of the public library), and it signaled to me that he had resigned himself to my troubling ambition to write.

COMMENT

The library is a place of refuge, nd a place to share books (and save money).  It represents aspirational future reading.

The Invention of Wings

 Sue Monk Kidd, "The Invention of Wings," Penguin Books,  2014. 

Acknowledgements
...
The following institutions, which along with Historic Charleston Foundation and Drayton Hall, served as resources: The Charlesong Museum, the Charleston Library Society, the College of Charleston's Addlestone Library and the Avery Research Center, the Charleston County Public Library, the South Caroliniana Library, the Aiken-Rhett House Museum, the Nathanial Russel House Museum, the Charles Pinckney House, the Old Slave Mart, Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, Lowcountry Africana, Middleton Place and Boone Hall Plantation. [p. 371]
...

Jaqueline Coleburn, rare book cataloger at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., for her enormous assistance in providing me with a treasure trove of letters, newspapers, Anti-Slavery Convention proceedings and other documents related to Sarah and Angelina Grimke and early-nineteenth-century history. [p.371]

COMMENT

To write her historical novel, Kidd made use of a resources from a wide variety of cultural institutions including museums, historical societies and libraries.  She mentions one librarian by name who was especially helpful to locate historical materials that contribute to the historical accuracy of a fictionalized story. 

The Radical Feminism of a 17th-Century Priest

 Judith Shulevitz,  "The Radical Feminism of a 17th-Century Priest,"  September 2021, Atlantic pp. 94-101.

I stumbled upon Poulain at the Barnard library in 2016.  I was reading up on feminists of the past because I felt stifled by the feminism of the present, particularly the kind just then embodied by Hilary Clinton, whose presidential campaign leaned hard on the notion that she would shatter the glass ceiling -- never mind that most American women were just trying to get by.  I wasn't struggling to get by, but I wasn't soaring either. 
...

Fully forgotten by the 19th century, Poulain took a long time to resurface.  In 1902, a young French graduate student named Henri Pieron pulled Poulain's dusty books of the shelves of the French National Library, apparently by chance (the copy of On the Equality of the Two Sexes had likely never been opened, since the pages were uncut).  Pieron recognized the significance of his find: He was something of a radical himself, and precociously well read in philosophy.  In a pioneering essay, he described the experience or reading Poulain: "Sometimes the astonishment is such that you feel the need to return to the first page and make sure that the Roman numerals really do say 1673."

COMMENT

A radical feminist book from 1673 is re-discovered twice-- once by the author who feels that there is something missing from "glass ceiling" feminism, and once in 1902.  Shulevitz says that instead of crediting Poulain's ideas, other writers simply adopted them with their own modifications.  Returning to the original source re-introduces caregiving as a feminist issue and one that had been utterly  left out of much contemporary feminism until COVID exposed the lack of support for mothers and other caregivers.  

 Kelly Jensen, "Anti-Critical Race Theory Parents fight The Hate U Give," book Rion, August 10, 2021. https://bookriot.com/the-hate-u-give-challenge/?fbclid=IwAR3xZMSlv3isO98FaNDjN_BxJ_A3708MG1uTShFYKHpVh_Y6mR5fUUEqZdQ

In most parts of the US, if public schools aren’t back in session, they will be soon. If fights about masking or not masking during a global pandemic and rise of the COVID-Delta variant weren’t enough, nor were protests against access to inclusive sexual education material, now teachers and librarians have to fight a third front. Opponents to Critical Race Theory (CRT) are flooding school and library board meetings, hoping to squash use of titles that explore anti-racism. Angie Thomas’s award-winning debut The Hate U Give is one such title under the spotlight by anti-anti-racism activists in Putnam County, New York.

...

The Hate U Give is no stranger to criticism, having been on the American Library Association’s most challenged list since its publication in 2017. Reasons for its continual challenge include it being “‘pervasively vulgar’ and because of drug use, profanity, and offensive language.” 

COMMENT

Librarians are in the role of defending a book from angry parents and maintaining a list of banned books.  Without saying it in so many words,, the article makes it clear that the censors have not read "The Hate U Give" but then again, censors almost never seem to have actually read the books they object to.