Eira Tansey @TeamMidwest@glammr.us

2019 goal: read Marx's Capital (gulp) so I can apply Marxist theory to the private marketplace of manuscript purchasing (this may or may not be inspired by recently watching "Can You Ever Forgive Me" and "American Animals")

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If you want a whole boatload of pictures of NARA staff doing their thing between 1935-1975 then here is a great resource https://catalog.archives.gov/search?q=*:*&f.parentNaId=518146&f.level=item&sort=naIdSort%20asc#.XAbrpNawdWQ.link

Does anyone maintain a list of the history of archival/recordkeeping journals (e.g., publication title, dates of active publishing, associated organization if any, etc)?

Love how they don't actually answer the final question in #5. It's almost like the board - many of which are library admins themselves - do not want to admit that pay inequity exists in our profession and that admins making lots of money talking about social justice while core staff are getting fired isn't a good look

I can't stop thinking about a line I read in an article earlier about how there is an emerging landscape of information inequality re: news access as more and more things go behind paywalls. People with $ can buy access to fact-checked sources like the NYTimes and other media outlets, while poor folks get whatever fake news percolates across social media. I guess things are a little more complicated than this since places like Guardian never have a paywall, but it's still got me thinking.

Reading lots of essays about how people began reading feminist theory is self-indulgent and embarrassing. What are you doing to decentralize power away from yourself? How many of these so-called feminist library directors have published salary parity studies, or pushed their administrations to implement paid family leave?

I'll probably end up blogging about this, but the first several essays take a very individualized liberal feminist approach - the leftist joke of "what we need are more female prison guards!" comes to mind

I am reading "Feminists Among Us:
Resistance and Advocacy in Library Leadership" and my early take is.... not impressed.

Cincinnati has the worst train service in the country (only 3x a week and you have to board at 3:30am) but by god I am determined to take Amtrak to at least one conference this year

Real talk, has anyone on the Board talked about this? https://dp.la/about/board

The defense of DPLA's dumb move is pretty stunning, the phrase "right-size our staff" is the most Orwellian/FA Hayek kind of euphemism I normally expect to see out of private enterprise but pretty disappointed to see this neoliberal garbage coming out of the library community. Gee, it's almost like library "leaders" don't have a great analysis of public resources and capital </end rant> https://dp.la/news/dpla-update

HELL YEAH it's about time for this https://www.southwestarchivists.org/poor-pay-in-archives-how-top-archives-directors-and-our-national-organizations-are-failing-us/

I'm going to have to call an archivist at another institution who is not returning my emails about a time sensitive issue, please send me thoughts and prayers

wtf is happening to DPLA?

Extremely Hot Take that one day I'll have the stones to write about: the obsession with community archives combined with the reactionary opinions about records management issues by people who have no idea what they're talking about is the latest revival of the manuscripts tradition, but with a social justice gloss that tends to insulate it from criticism

Like, multiple blogs have been tried over the last year directly concerning and adjacent to the current SAA section being proposed. If we can't keep a blog going, how are we gonna keep a section going, fam? </logging off now before I relapse and sign up for twitter to keep indulging my hot take tendencies>

Extremely hot and borderline authoritarian take: Moratorium on any new SAA sections until the criteria created a few years ago to lay down fairly inactive sections is enforced

@jbfink hey I have an urgent-ish question related to a very infamous person who used to work where I think you work. What's a good email to get in touch with you at?