All in the Family
By Joseph Janes
American Libraries Columnist
Assistant Professor, Information School, University of Washington.
intlib@ischool.washington.edu
Column for December 2005
My mother was a genie. Mercifully, not the bare-midriff, Barbara Eden variety; I mean that she was a genealogist, as well as an amateur local historian (and stamp collector, dollmaker, quilter, freelance pagoda designer, etc.). Had I ever been able to get her online, she would have been able to indulge those passions—and who knows what others—even further.
I was thinking of her, and my family’s history, at my partner Jan’s family reunion out on the Olympic Peninsula. Their pioneer homestead was on the Queets River, an unbelievably lush and verdant area that drew and kept those people there for generations.
The reunion went as reunions go: food, bonfires, old stories and shared jokes, food, and parallel body postures, facial expressions, and mannerisms. And also out came the photos, the documents, and the old ledgers that everyone who stayed at the family cabin signed, with notations about weather, hunting and fishing and clam-digging successes and failures, and the like. Such a vivid demonstration of the power of family, the feeling of connectedness to the past and to each other, the oldest, simplest, and most enduring form of network.
As people reminisced over the old pictures, I noticed a curious phenomenon: They would try to identify people, locations, and events, looking on the backs of photos for notations. Often those notations wouldn’t be there; moreover, when people were identified, nothing then got recorded. What a missed opportunity.
I saw several family members, of all ages, clearly dedicated to keeping these stories alive and vibrant and known for generations to come. I also saw photo albums slowly self-destructing, with images fading into oblivion toward an unmarked, unremembered, and eventually unmourned end. There are a lot of photographs out there, plus scrapbooks, records, and other materials, as well as a growing interest in family and local history—saving, recording, and telling the stories of our peoples.
Librarians’ online role
So how do internet-savvy librarians fit here? I see three areas: First, there’s a considerable amount of locally held genealogical and historical information that is or could be brought online, as well as sites such as cyndislist.com, ancestry.com, and familysearch.org. People often need assistance as they begin investigating their family history and when they get to dead ends and brick walls.
(There’s a Joseph Janes who died in 1849, buried in North Bay, New York. People searching for him occasionally find me and ask for help in moving forward on their research. Want a creepy experience? Search for your own name and the word “cemetery.” Shudder.)
Assistance of this type often goes beyond the ready-reference, World Almanac level, which is important for us to focus on. In a search-engine world, we can distinguish ourselves by our ability to engage in deeper research, helping people in ways beyond the superficial, in areas they care deeply about. For a sizable number of people, this is one of those areas.
Second, we can help to bring them together and build community. As is so often the case, the internet can be a vehicle for people with common interests to find each other and communicate and work together.
Finally, we can be of help in advising folks on preserving, labeling, organizing, and most importantly, sharing the materials and stories they have. This movement is alive and well (visited flickr.com lately?) but also could desperately use our skills in moving their works beyond the facile and simplistic.
In days gone by, it wasn’t unusual to see libraries provide typewriters to support writers; now computers are commonplace. As people create websites and digital films, should we facilitate these and more complicated digital creations with scanners, cameras, software, technical support, or network resources?
These three ideas (and there are others, of course) are a microcosm of where libraries and librarians should be intersecting with people and networks. Searching, communicating, organizing, sharing—a powerful combination and one that’s uniquely suited to our backgrounds and current needs.
As you and your families prepare for your holiday season, here’s how you can help me be a hero. Jan’s family is eager to find the diary of one John Banta, which describes homesteading life in the area in the early 20th century. Apparently there is at least one copy plus the original, perhaps in private hands or a historical collection somewhere. If anybody has this or knows where it is, let me know! But that will be another story. . . .
|
