Fire at CitiStorage warehouse, Brooklyn

Last Friday, a CitiStorage records storage warehouse in Brooklyn caught fire. The facility housed tens of thousands of cubic feet of records created by several New York City agencies, including the Administration for Children's Services, the Health and Hospitals Corporation, the Department of Environmental Protection, , and the Department of Correction; earlier reports that the Department of Parks and Recreation, and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development also had records at the facility have turned out to be incorrect. In addition, it may have housed records created by courts that are part of New York State's Unified Court System; however, some or all of these records may have been stored at an adjacent CitiStorage facility unaffected by the fire. In addition, approximately 300 cubic feet of archival UJA Federation records were destroyed by the blaze; fortunately, the bulk of the federation's archival records had been taken out of the warehouse and transferred to the American Jewish Historical Society well before the fire began.

With the exception of the UJA Federation records, it seems that most of the records destroyed in or dispersed by the fire were ultimately slated for destruction. However, some of them contain information that is restricted under state or federal law -- and the ferocity of the fire, firefighters' efforts to combat the blaze, and weather conditions scattered large quantities of them all over the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg. Records found on the streets and waterfront of Williamsburg included "charred medical records, court transcripts, lawyers’ letters, sonograms, bank checks" and a host of other documents containing personal medical, financial, and legal data. Some were marked "confidential," and some contained Social Security Numbers. The City of New York has dispatched contractors to retrieve and securely destroy as many of these records as possible, but "scavengers and artists" and other area residents are also picking up the documents they encounter.

Earlier this week, the New York Times published an article that, in an roundabout way, questioned why city agencies "would store thousands of paper records in cardboard boxes stacked floor to ceiling" and why medical records were housed in a commercial storage facility.

As a records professional, I couldn't help but roll my eyes. We place boxes of records on shelves not only to maximize space but also to minimize the impact of fire; stacked boxes of records catch fire more slowly than stacks of loose papers. We generally use cardboard boxes not only because they are cheap and practical but also because they provide records with a modest degree of protection from water used to combat fire and because, unlike plastic, it won't melt.

As far as use of commercial storage facilities is concerned, I would much rather have records stored in a clean, secure, climate-controlled, and adequately fire-protected facility than in some government buildings I have visited. (Of course, one might question whether the CitiStorage warehouse was an appropriate choice: it's literally a stone's throw away from the East River -- in an area that may have experienced some flooding as a result of Hurricane Sandy -- and close to an oil refinery. However, no storage facility is ideal, and cost and convenience may have made CitiStorage seem like a reasonable choice.)

Investigators are still trying to figure out what caused the fire, which was actually the second of two fires reported at the facility last Saturday morning, and why the building's sprinkler system didn't douse it before it got out of control. At the time of this writing, it seems unlikely that the fire was deliberately set.

I'm not helping to respond to this disaster, and at the risk of passing on misinformation I'm not going to say much about the response effort. However, I do know that records professionals from multiple government agencies are actively working to assess losses and determine how best to deal with damaged records and that more information will emerge as this effort progresses.

Fire at the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences, Moscow

Last weekend, two facilities housing large quantities of records were affected by fire. Last Friday, the library of the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences in Moscow, Russia caught fire. The blaze affected approximately 21,500 square feet of the library building and caused approximately 1,000 square feet of the building's roof to collapse. The damage to the institute's collections, which include published and manuscript materials, is staggering:

According to preliminary estimates, the library lost about 15 percent of its collection, which was estimated at 14.2 million documents.

Among the destroyed works were rare publications from the 16th-20th centuries, as well as unique United Nations documents. Works that were not destroyed completely suffered severe damage from smoke and water. The computer servers holding 3.5 million digital copies of the collection may also have been damaged. Additionally, the collapsed roof of the building has left many remaining documents exposed to the elements.

It will be difficult to determine exactly what has been lost since most of the library’s content had not been digitized and both card catalogues were entirely destroyed in the disaster.

At the time of this writing, the cause of the fire is unknown and recovery efforts have just begun. My heart goes out to the staff of the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences is Moscow, who are about to embark upon a long, arduous journey -- and who will not live to see the journey's end. My own repository suffered a devastating fire almost 104 years ago, and some of my colleagues are still rehousing and stabilizing damaged materials and investigating new techniques for recovering information obscured by charring and other fire-related damage. I expect that this work will continue long after we are all gone.

I hope that the international library and archives communities rally to support the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences. I'll keep an eye out for developments on this front and will post updates when appropriate.

Jump In: electronic records

Do you lack hands-on electronic records experience? Are you growing more and more concerned about the floppy disks, CD's, and other portable media lurking in your paper records?  Do you work best when you have a firm deadline? Do you like winning prizes?

If you answered "yes" to most or all of the above questions, you need to know that  the Manuscript Repositories Section of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) is sponsoring its third Jump In initiative, which supports archivists taking those essential first steps with electronic records. Using OCLC Research's excellent You’ve Got to Walk Before You Can Run: First Steps for Managing Born-Digital Content Received on Physical Media as a guide, Jump In participants will inventory some or all of their physical media holdings and write a brief report outlining their findings and, possibly, next steps.

Jump In participants will be granted access to a dedicated listserv, and every participant will be entered into a raffle to win a free seat ($185 value) in any one-day Digital Archives Specialist workshop offered by SAA. In addition, select participants will be invited to present their findings at the Section's 2015 annual meeting in Cleveland.

The deadline for committing to Jump In is 16 January 2015, and the deadline for submitting reports is 1 May. For more information about the survey process, possible report topics, and rules of participation, consult the Jump In 3: Third Time's a Charm announcement.

This is a great way to start taking some electronic records baby steps; even if you're a lone arranger, you should be able to craft a survey project that can easily be completed by 1 May. Kudos to the Manuscripts Repositories Section for creating and sustaining this initiative.

Oakwood Cemetery, Troy, New York

18 October 2014

By the early 19th century, the small cemeteries and burial vaults that had been established within American cities during the colonial era were overcrowded -- some so much so that they offered only temporary storage for the dead -- and widely regarded as reservoirs of disease. The rural cemetery movement, which first arose in England and France and spread to the United States, was a response to this situation. In sharp contrast to the cramped, utilitarian, and typically sectarian burial plots that no longer met the needs of burgeoning urban populations, rural cemeteries were expansive, non-denominational, and attractively landscaped spaces that were meant to serve as permanent resting places. The were designed to give visitors a beautiful, tranquil space in which to mourn and to contemplate the fragility of human life. However, they quickly became de facto parks for city dwellers seeking a respite from crowding, pollution, and noise. Their design heavily influenced the design of New York's Central Park, Albany's Washington Park, and many other urban parks created in the second half of the 19th century.

18 October 2014

 The first rural cemetery was established in Boston in 1831, and other cities quickly moved to establish their own rural cemeteries. Albany, New York established its rural cemetery in 1844, and the nearby city of Troy established its rural cemetery, Oakwood Cemetery, in 1848. Oakwood is one of the largest cemeteries in the United States, and at present it contains approximately 60,000 graves.

As of late, I've been returning again and again to this vast, beautiful city of the dead.

13 December 2014

If you enter Oakwood via its main gate, you will quickly encounter the gorgeous Gardner Earl Chapel. Gardner Earl (1852-1887) was the only child of an extremely wealthy Troy couple and an ardent champion of cremation. There were no crematoria in the Troy area at the time of his death, and his parents transported his body to Buffalo in order to have it cremated. In the wake of this experience, the Earls hired noted Albany architect Albert Fuller and told him to spare no expense in designing a chapel and crematorium that would honor their son's memory. The Richardsonian Romanesque chapel's interior features, among other things, eight Tiffany stained glass windows, intricate marble mosaics, and hand-carved oak pews and exposed beams. The crematorium remains in operation today.

13 December 2014

If you walk onto the covered walkway that connects the chapel to its south tower, you'll have a commanding view of the Hudson River Valley. Oakwood is situated on an escarpment overlooking the valley, and as a result you can often see the valley and, in some places, the river itself as you explore the grounds.

18 October 2014

Oakwood, which appears wholly natural but was in fact carefully engineered, was designed by Philadelphia engineer John C. Sidney. He was assisted by Troy native Garnet Douglass Baltimore, the first African-American to graduate from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Oakwood was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.

18 October 2014

Oakwood is the final resting place for many of Troy's most prominent citizens and families. Samuel Wilson (1766-1854), the meatpacker who supplied canned provisions to the U.S. government during the War of 1812 and in the process became the progenitor of a national symbol -- "Uncle Sam" -- is perhaps the most widely known of these individuals. Wilson's gravestone is actually quite small; the modern memorial depicted above was installed in 1931 by his granddaughter.

7 December 2014

Emma Willard (1787-1870), the pioneering educator who established the Troy Female Seminary (now the Emma Willard School) and insisted that girls could and should study mathematics, science, philosophy, and all of the other subjects then reserved for boys, is also buried here. Her son and daughter-in-law, who took over the school in 1838, are buried next to her.

18 October 2014

Nine Civil War generals are buried here. Joseph P. Carr (1828-1895) was born in Albany to Irish immigrants, began his military career as a colonel, and rose to the rank of major general. He distinguished himself at Gettysburg and Malvern Hill, played a key role in recruiting the Second New York Militia (also known as the Troy Regiment), and commanded a division of the U.S. Colored Troops. After the war, he was active in Republican politics and was thrice elected Secretary of State.

18 October 2014

Russell Sage (1816-1906) was a Whig politician, railroad company executive, and financier. After his death, his widow, Olivia Slocum Sage, established the Russell Sage Foundation, which supports social science research, and Russell Sage College, a women's college located in downtown Troy; the college's coeducational junior college and graduate programs are situated in Albany. She also supported other organizations that conducted social science research, safeguarded the public health, and advanced the education of women. Sage's mausoleum was purposely left unmarked.

18 October 2014

Troy was a booming industrial city at the time Oakwood was established, and its wealthiest inhabitants purchased family plots and purchased elaborate monuments. Some families of means favored memorials that featured exquisite sculpture. The mourner atop the gravestone of Ephraim and Sarah Waldron is a particularly beautiful example.

18 October 2014

Other wealthy families recognized that Oakwood served as both a place of mourning and commemoration and as a leisure destination for the area's inhabitants. The Schleicher family monument is one of several that feature benches encouraging visitors to sit down for a while and enjoy the surroundings.

13 December 2014

 Other affluent families built ornate mausoleums. Oakwood is home to twenty-four of them, most of which are Gothic Revival or neoclassical in style. The Tibbits Mausoleum, which houses the grave of Troy mayor and U.S. Representative George Tibbits (1763-1849) and other family members, is a superb example of the former.

18 October 2014

The Green family mausoleum, built in an Egyptian Revival style, is a fascinating exception. I can't tell whether it was built in the middle of the 19th century, when Egyptian-influenced design became popular in the United States for the first time, or sometime after the 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb brought the style back into vogue. I'll need to do some research; fortunately, Oakwood's archives are largely intact.

11 November 2014

Oakwood is still an active cemetery, and its managers anticipate that it won't run out of room until some time in the 23rd century. For the most part, the headstones in the newer sections of the cemetery are smaller and simpler than many of the older markers. The striking modernist memorial marking the grave of Roy Whitwell is a noteworthy exception, and it has become one of my guideposts.

11 November 2014

Eight weeks ago, my mother and I had to select my father's final resting place. We chose Oakwood because of its beauty and because we both thought that Dad, history buff that he was, would find it an interesting place. Dad was also fascinated by the Hudson River, and I purposely chose a burial plot that features a view of the valley. I took the photograph above while standing at the head of his grave, which is about seventy-five feet to the west of the Whitwell memorial.

18 October 2014

Oakwood may be a city of the human dead, but it is teeming with life. Squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits abound, Canada geese have established themselves at the pond close to the cemetery's eastern entrance, and ducks swim in the cemetery's four other ponds. According to cemetery personnel, deer, woodchucks, foxes, muskrats, opossums, coyotes, skunks, porcupines, other mammals, and a wide array of birds also make their homes in Oakwood.

13 December 2014

 We experienced a Nor'easter earlier this week. Downtown Albany and the Troy neighborhood in which my mother lives got about six inches of snow, but the escarpment on which Oakwood sits got substantially more; my father's headstone is currently covered by a foot of snow. The heavy, wet snow brought down many tree branches and at least two whole trees. Oakwood's grounds crew is cleaning up the mess as quickly as it can.

As I walked and drove around yesterday afternoon and noted the storm damage, it struck me that the trees, many of which were planted long before any human currently alive was born, are also subject to the ravages of time. Every living thing is. And yet life itself continues (at least for now). New trees will gradually replace the old ones, the young squirrel I startled as I drove toward my father's grave will soon be followed by future generations of squirrels, and tiny new people keep being born.

This thought isn't particularly original, and it isn't new to me. The chaplain who led my father's memorial service devoted a substantial amount of time to it, and I couldn't help but notice that the hospital room in which my father received one horrible test result after another was a few floors directly above a birthing center. However, I suppose it helps to be reminded of it from time to time.

13 December 2014

 As I got closer to the downed limb, I was startled to discover that some of its branches were sitting atop one of my favorite monuments. Several generations of Ruoffs are buried in the surrounding family plot, and the family monument was obviously crafted by a skilled monumental mason and was deliberately left incomplete.

Death so often leaves all manner of unfinished work and loose ends in its wake. Oakwood is one of the few places in which this sad truth seems bearable.

University at Albany, SUNY seeks a University Archivist

If you relish the thought of working with awesome people, doing a lot of hands-on electronic records work, and living in or around the capital of the Empire State, the University at Albany -- one of the four research universities within the State University of New York (SUNY) system -- you need to know that UAlbany is hiring a new University Archivist:

The University at Albany Libraries seek to hire a skilled, flexible, motivated and service-oriented librarian to develop an electronic records program, manage archival processing, and provide reference service in the Libraries’ University Archives. Working collaboratively with other members of the Department of Special Collections and Archives, and other campus faculty, staff, and students, the successful candidate will:  provide reference and research service for the University Archives to students, faculty, staff, alumni, and the general public; supervise archival processing of the University Archives in paper and digital formats including arrangement, description, and preparation of EAD-encoded finding aids; plan, develop and implement an electronic records program for the University Archives; manage digital curation and preservation tasks including digital media inventorying, digital forensics, and applying metadata schema for access and preservation; develop ingest and web capture workflows for the acquisition of digital content; train and supervise student assistants and interns to assist in archival processing and digital projects; and contribute to efforts to expand access and use of special collections through exhibits, tours, and other forms of outreach. Tenure-track library faculty at the University at Albany, SUNY, are expected to engage in research, publication, and service to the Libraries, the University, and the profession, as required for promotion and continuing appointment.

Required qualifications

• Master’s degree in librarianship from an ALA-accredited program or foreign equivalent, from a college or university accredited by a U.S. Department of Education or internationally recognized accrediting organization, with a concentration in archives administration or related coursework
• Professional level experience in a special collections or archives environment
• Experience processing, arranging and describing manuscript collections in both paper and digital formats following archival standards, including EAD, MARC and DACS
• Experience providing reference and research service to students, faculty, staff, and the general public
• Strong command of archival theory and best practices, especially as they relate to the particular issues posed by born digital content, computing operating systems, storage systems, and file formats
• Knowledge of digital preservation principles, digital forensics techniques, and knowledge of digital standards such as PREMIS, OAIS, TDR, Dublin Core, METS, and MODS
• Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively with colleagues and constituents in a diverse environment
• Excellent organizational and time-management skills as well as excellent oral and written communication skills
• All applicants must address in their cover letters their commitment to equal opportunity and affirmative action and their ability to work with a culturally diverse population.

Preferred qualifications

• Master's degree in history or related field
• Knowledge of the history of the University at Albany
• Supervisory experience

The successful candidate will be hired as an Assistant Librarian or as a Senior Assistant Librarian; rank will be determined by the candidate's qualifications. Although the job posting doesn't contain any detailed salary information, SUNY faculty are covered by a collective bargaining agreement and the salary ranges for librarian positions are publicly accessible. As of 1 July 2014, the salary range for Assistant Librarians is $40,137-$74,709 and the salary range for Senior Assistant Librarians is $46,003-$91,926. There is at least some room for negotiation within these ranges. 

Summary information about benefits is also readily accessible (FYI, "UUP" refers to United University Professions, the union that represents SUNY faculty).

The closing date for applications is 5 January 2015, and the successful candidate should expect to begin working in April 2015. For more information and detailed application instructions, consult the position description.

Full disclosure: I worked as a student assistant in UAlbany's Department of Special Collections and Archives several lifetimes ago. If you take this job, you'll probably oversee students charged with revising or expanding some of my very bad early finding aids.

SAA 2014: preserving and making accessible HIV/AIDS history

I'm back home and feeling a lot better than I did last week, but I'm still in the process of settling in at home, getting back up to speed at work, and tending to some family matters. As a result, I'm going to post about this year's joint meeting of the Council of State Archivists, the National Association of Government Archivists and Records Administrators, and the Society of American Archivists as my schedule permits. Archivy is a relay, not a sprint, and it's more important to pass the baton correctly than to hand it off quickly. (That having been said, I was really under the weather last week and my notes and recollections are a little jumbled. Apologies in advance for any omissions or inaccuracies.)

Last Friday morning, I was planning to attend session 410, "Beyond the Floppy Disk: Rescuing Electronic Records from Complex Systems," but the room was stuffed to capacity by the time I arrived. I could have slipped into session 401, "Digital Forensics," but I didn't think I had the presence of mind needed for particular topic. I instead ducked into session 407, "Documenting the Epidemic: Preserving and Making Accessible HIV/AIDS History." I've long had a personal and professional interest in this topic, the compelling (and unabashedly partial) How to Survive a Plague rekindled it, and I'm glad that I had the opportunity to sit in on this session.

Robin Chandler (University of California, Santa Cruz) capably led this session, which took the form of a panel discussion in which participants furnished overviews of their institutions' holdings, identified gaps in documentation, and broadly applicable lessons (e.g., the value of collaboration) they learned as they sought to document the history of HIV/AIDS.

Vicky Harden (retired, National Institutes of Health Office of History) discussed the oral history interviews she conducted with National Institutes of Health personnel who were involved in HIV/AIDS research and her involvement in the American Association for the History of Medicine's AIDS History Group. She noted that, owing to budget cuts and other factors, the U.S. Centers for Disease, which played a pivotal role in tracking the emergence and spread of HIV infection and AIDS in the United States, has not sought to gather archival materials or conduct oral history interviews documenting its HIV/AIDS work.

Polina Ilieva (University of California, San Francisco) discussed the development of the AIDS History Project, which from its outset in 1987 sought to document the crisis in all of its facets and from all perspectives. Its collections include materials created by community-based organizations, clinical and research units, and individual activists, clinicians, researchers, social scientists, science journalists, and people with AIDS. In addition, the project captures content found on relevant websites. Ilieva stressed that, owing to the speed with which community organizations are created, merge, alter course, and cease operations, archivists seeking to document HIV/AIDS must establish and sustain ongoing relationships with creators/donors; she hopes to close some of the gaps in her repository's holdings by tracking some of these shifts in the organizational landscape. In addition, she indicated that we need more oral history interviews with (presumably non-activist) people who are HIV positive or have AIDS.

Ginny Roth (National Library of Medicine, Prints and Photographs Collection) indicated that her repository's holdings, which span four decades, include posters and other ephemera relating to safe sex, myths about HIV transmission, human rights, and other matters. These materials target multiple audiences (e.g., gay men, intravenous drug users) and are in multiple languages. However, the collection does not include photographs documenting past or current activism.

Michael Oliviera (ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives) stated that his institution has a wide array of materials relating to HIV/AIDS, among them: periodicals, records documenting the first theatrical production relating to AIDS, the International Gay and Lesbian Archives' AIDS History Project collection (over 200 cu. ft.), and the organizational records of ACT UP Los Angeles and Treatment Action Group. ONE holds few oral histories and collections documenting the experiences of people of color.

Jason Baumann (New York Public Library, or NYPL) focused on his repository's recent exhibit, Why We Fight: Remembering AIDS Activism, which consisted almost exclusively of materials drawn from its extensive holdings of the organizational records of activist organizations and the personal papers of activists, artists, political leaders, and other individuals. The exhibit exposed significant tensions between those seeking to understand and interpret the history of HIV/AIDS and some of those focused on the suffering and death the disease still causes. ACT UP protested its opening on the grounds that it gave people the impression that HIV/AIDS was a thing of the past, and two young Canadian activists incorporated reproductions of two posters featured in the exhibit into a new poster entitled "Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me" -- much to the dismay of the creators of the original posters.

NYPL dealt with the uproar by, among other things, co-hosting a symposium that brought together the creators of the original posters and the creators of "Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me." Although he didn't explicitly identify this experience as a lesson learned, I can't help but think that it is. Archivists (myself included) tend to be introverted, mindful of their subordinate position within institutional power structures, and unnerved by the prospect of controversy. However, we sometimes need to treat controversy as an opportunity to engage, learn, and enable others to do the same. If we can't acknowledge the existence of difference or probe the status and power differentials that give rise to archival silences, we can't document society equitably and comprehensively.

Baumann did identify as a lesson learned something I found a bit surprising: NYPL's customary donors were not willing to fund the processing of collections relating to HIV/AIDS activism and the activist groups themselves were focused on treatment, human rights, and other pressing concerns, but NYPL found that corporations were quite willing to do so.

The panelists wrapped up the session by discussing the possibility of jointly developing and administering a survey that would identify all of the archival collections that in some way documented HIV/AIDS in the United States. They agreed that this would be a mammoth undertaking, but it seems that serious discussions are underway. I for one would like to see this project get off the ground.

Image: shadow cast by Alexander Calder's "Red Polygons" (c. 1950), Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, 16 August 2014.

SAA 2014: integrating history

 One of the advantages of paying my own way to SAA is that I don't have any reservations about attending at least one session that interests me but doesn't have anything to do with my work responsibilities. Yesterday morning, I passed up two interesting-seeming electronic records sessions and sat in on session 309, "Integrating History: A Search-and-Recovery Effort in Alabama Archives." I'm glad I did: of all the sessions I attended this year, this one was my favorite. (N.B.: I was really ill on Friday, so what follows might be a bit hazy.)

Two of the archivists who participated in this session are employed by repositories that have traditionally reflected the experiences of white Alabamians, and two work at historically black universities. All of them spoke with passion and nuance about the challenges of comprehensively documenting their communities and institutions, and in the process discussed a host of things familiar to archivists working in a variety of settings:

• The ugly way in which an ever-growing processing backlog reduces institutional visibility and makes it ever harder to obtain the resources needed to tackle the backlog.
• How differences in power and perspective fuel tensions between small, resource-starved archives and large, well-funded collecting repositories.
• The importance of and hard work involved in winning the trust of donors, particularly those whose experiences have in the past been under-documented.
• How efforts to document previously under-represented groups may force one to confront the unsavory past of one's own community, one's own uneasy relationship with that past, and anger and fear in those who have a vested interest in maintaining certain archival and broader societal silences. 
• The importance of intimately knowing one's own collections and working collaboratively with repositories that hold related materials. 

Rebekah Davis (Limestone County Archives) discussed the importance of collecting materials that not only documented the history of the county's black community (e.g., programs distributed at community members' funerals) but also what that community had to live with (e.g., color photographic prints of a Ku Klux Klan rally that took place in the 1970s). Quoting fellow presenter Susannah Leverman, she emphasized that even though she and her colleagues at times felt deeply uncomfortable about accessioning and furnishing access to some of the materials in the latter category, "to pretend things didn't happen is to take away the victory of those who overcame it." Davis also stressed the importance of making sure that older white volunteers who expressed distaste when they encountered collections documenting the county's African-Americans understood that they could privately believe whatever they wished but needed to understand that bigoted statements reflected poorly upon the archives and to keep their opinions to themselves while working there.

Susannah Leverman (Huntsville-Madison County Public Library) highlighted her institution's efforts to build relationships with her community's African-American inhabitants. Although the library has collected materials documenting African-American art and education, segregated city directories, church histories, portraits, information about black-owned businesses, and other aspects of African-American life, Leverman was convinced that the documentary record was incomplete. She began going to black churches and civic meetings, hosted a traveling exhibit relating to Lincoln, created a public history exhibit commemorating 50 years of school integration and a related sub-exhibit concerning the Ku Klux Klan, developed a phenomenally popular exhibit relating to African-American sports history, and tries to ensure that other exhibits accurately reflect the community's diversity. The library also hosts talks focusing on Huntsville's black business district and other topics and posts recordings of them to YouTube. She described her approach thusly: "we need to provoke people into thinking instead of forcing them to remember or memorize." It seems to have paid off: the library has recently acquired collections documenting civil rights activism and a substantial collection of African-American sheet music.

Veronica Henderson (Alabama A&M University), who is relatively new in her position, discussed her efforts to tackle a decades-long processing backlog, create finding aids, sharpen collecting efforts, and sort out some custodial issues. The Alabama state legislature established the State Black Archives and Research Center in 1989 and charged it with acquiring, preserving, and providing access to materials documenting the state's African-American history. Henderson determined that the collection included some materials that didn't relate specifically to the history of black Alabamians, and she has sought to refocus the collecting scope. She's also trying to smooth relations with alumni of a defunct black high school who are questioning why the university archives has some of their memorabilia; the university doesn't have a deed of gift, but it did have a longstanding and close relationship with the school's administrators. Fortunately, at least some of the alumni are satisfied with digital reproductions.

Dana R. Chandler (Tuskegee University) also discussed his university's efforts to tackle a large processing backlog and to identify and recover items that have gone missing. He also recounted his repository's efforts to right an old wrong: in 1943, the Library of Congress (LC) took possession, with the university's consent, of a body of materials that it called the Booker T. Washington Collection but which were actually the early organizational records of Tuskegee University. Chandler found that the agreement that enabled LC to take custody of these records specified that the university would receive a microfilm copy of them. However, LC filmed the records only after Chandler pushed it to do so and maintained afterward that it retained the copyright. and I've held them to this; LC had to spend approximately $69,000 to microfilm the records. LC tried to maintain that it held the copyright, but Chandler's position is that these "papers" are in fact the records of a public university.

Chandler then profiled two phenomenal collections that came to light when Tuskegee addressed its processing backlog:

• Records of the Southern Courier, 1965-1968. The Southern Courier was a civil rights newspaper run by Harvard Crimson volunteers. It was unprocessed for years, and Chandler and his colleagues discovered that it contained detailed accounts of the dangers and difficulties that staff faced, including mad dogs, beatings, and death threats. They also found evidence of young black and white people working together toward a common goal -- a story not commonly associated with Alabama. 
• George Washington Carver Notebooks. Scholarly biographies of Carver published to date conclude that he did not make any significant scientific discoveries. However, Tuskegee has six notebooks containing Carver's scientific notes, drawings, and observations, and Carver's work must be reassessed in light of these manuscripts. 

I was particularly heartened to learn that the longstanding informal collaboration between the presenters and other Alabama archivists seeking to ensure that the state's documentary record is equitable and balanced may give rise to a multi-institution Web portal centered on archival materials documenting the lives of black Alabamians. Alabama archivists have a long track record of working together and accomplishing amazing things with modest resources, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if this proposed portal is a rousing success.

Image: anemone buds peek out from behind a bench on the grounds of Washington National Cathedral, Washington, DC, 16 August 2014. Anemones symbolize, among other things, anticipation.