Forays and Highlights of Sacramento's Special Collections Libraries

After working in a few of the archives in California’s Capital City from September 2015 to present day, I have become particularly interested in the interplay between analog and digital information in libraries & archives. Digitization is an amazing technology and, as we shall see, a multitude of digital resources for genealogists are available through web sites such as the Sacramento Public Library. Other digital information is available through community organizations such as the “Root Cellar: The Sacramento Genealogical Society” and The Center for Sacramento History.

And a worldwide digital archive, The Internet Archive, mentioned in my blog and papers throughout the semester, even has its own Youtube channel!

Taking a leaf from their book, so to speak, I’ve made a rather rustic Youtube channel of my own for the purposes of this blog assignment. It features three (hopefully not too, too shaky!) hand-held videos that demonstrate the abundance of digital resources that exist within the genealogy community. Brief visits to some of the sites mentioned above reveal the accessibility, and creativity, of resources due to this Information Community’s use of technology.

My YouTube video of some of the Genealogy Resources offered by the Sacramento Public Library.

My YouTube video of some of the Genealogy Resources offered by the Center for Sacramento History (including a brief visit to The Sacramento Room Archive, and to the SacramentoHistory.org project.)

My YouTube video of some of the Genealogy Resources as offered by The Internet Archive.

And below is a link to an item in the Digital Collections of the Sacramento Room Collection, affiliated with the Sacramento Public Library, that I digitized myself last year. “The Cruise of the U.S.S. Sacramento: From Declaration of War, April 6, 1917 to Arrival at New Orleans, January 8, 1919.” I had the thought, when I was scanning and cataloging it, that this beautifully-preserved, color booklet with captain’s log, and black and white photographs and names of the crew, might be a great genealogical find for a relative of one of these sailors, someday!

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Top photograph is mine, taken at the History museum and archive The Center for Sacramento History, where I am learning to catalog and inventory history/museum artifacts throughout the Fall 2017 semester.

I have previously discussed generosity, the social fabric, and an inclination for information-sharing as three prominent characteristics of the Genealogy Information Community. Which is all well and good but — there are also ethical considerations for genealogists to practice when one’s distant relatives are not as open or interested in sharing their ancestral information, or their DNA, as the researchers themselves.

Genetic genealogy, which relies on DNA testing, is a potent information-gathering tool. It can provide many missing pieces to the ancestral puzzle, and has become a popular addition to this information community, shaping new research habits from 2005 to present. Consider this ad from FamilyTreeDNA’s web site in 2017 “We have the most comprehensive Y chromosone, autosomnal, and mitochondrial ancestry DNA database for genetic genealogists!” it continues “Our DNA tests can help you find family, break through brick walls, and trace your lineage through time.”

As the price of DNA testing has decreased, making it more affordable and accessible, and the technology surrounding DNA testing has become more precise, making it a more effective research tool, the nature of genetic genealogy research has become more extreme. Stories of hungry and excited genetic genealogists, foregoing sensitivity to others in lieu of their own successful research results, are common.

To this end, I found a New York Times article entitled “Stalking strangers’ DNA.” In this 2007 article, Times journalist Amy Harmon writes about the questionable information-collecting habits of genetic genealogists; a group she also refers to as ‘DNA Stalkers’ “They swab the cheeks of strangers and pluck hairs from corpses. They travel hundreds of miles to entice their suspects with an old photograph, or sometimes a free drink. Cooperation is preferred, but not necessarily required to achieve their ends. If the amateur genealogists of the DNA-era bear a certain resemblance to members of a ‘CSI’ team, they make no apologies. Prompted by the advent of inexpensive genetic testing, they are tracing their family trees with a vengeance heretofore unknown” Harmon (2007). 

Boundaries, sensitivity, and respect were enough of a concern for the Genealogy Information Community between 2000-2014 that I found the publication of not one but two official, and complementary, codes of behavior. They called to mind Martin L. Garnar’s discussion of Information Ethics or ‘a field of applied ethics that addresses the use and abuses of information, information technology, and information systems for personal, professional, and public decision making.” Garnar (2015). 

A professional genealogist, blogger, and a teacher of genealogy with a law degree, Judy G. Russell of The Legal Genealogist shared her ethical concerns with Thomas W. Jones and Melina Lutze Berne, co-editors of The National Genealogical Quarterly, who she quoted in her article “DNA ethics: speak up!” “When genealogists began to apply DNA test results to family history, they had the opportunity and responsibility to set standards — not for laboratory procedures, but for acceptable linkages to individuals: documentation, ethics, and interpretation. It was an opportunity missed.” Russell (2014).

Russell then discusses the necessity and establishment of what later became the “Genetic genealogy standards.” Publicly posted on Google docs by one Blaine Bettinger on May 12, 2014 (who requests that the document not be shared, quoted, or reproduced in part) the “Genetic genealogy standards and ethics” are specifically geared towards creating ethical behavior in the collection and use of DNA in genealogical research.

The second standard of ethics I found, “Genealogical standards: Standards of sharing information with others” was written fourteen years earlier, in 2000, but also covers good conduct for any genealogist. In addition, the document  is recommended by the National Genealogical Society. Good boundaries and sensitivity regarding the practice of information collecting and sharing are emphasized. Two examples of the Genealogical Standards are:

1. Be sensitive to the hurt that revelations of criminal, immoral, bizarre, or irresponsible behavior may bring to family members.

2. Respect the authorship rights of senders of letters, electronic mail and data files, forwarding and disseminating them further only with the sender’s permission.

Again, these standards called to mind Garnar’s discussion, particularly echoing what he defines as The Ethics of Care. It can also be noted that, in all four instances on Garnar’s Table of Shared Principles, confidentiality and privacy are acknowledged ethical tenets for the ALA, the SAA, the AIIP, and the IFLA across the board, all of which are often connected in some way to the Genealogy Information Community (Garnar, 2015). 

In closing, Legal Genealogist blogger Judy G. Russell states, regarding surreptitious DNA collecting and the various laws that exist concerning this issue, that ethical behavior in genetic genealogy must prevail. She writes that, though it is not technically illegal to sneak a suspected cousin’s coffee cup from a McDonald’s trash bin, this still doesn’t make it acceptable behavior. “It may not be illegal where I live” writes Russell “but it’s ethically wrong. The National Genealogical Society says we should “respect the restrictions on sharing information that arise from the rights of another… as a living private person.” Russell continues “It may not be easy to get that cousin’s permission. It may not always be possible to get permission. But getting that consent is the only ethical way to go.” Russell (2012).

References

Garnar, M. L. (2015). “Information Ethics” in S. Hirsh, (ed.) Information services today. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.

Harmon, A. (2007, April 2). Stalking strangers DNA to fill in the family tree. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/us/02dna.html

Russell, J. G. (2012). The ethics of DNA testing. The Legal Genealogist. Retrieved from http://www.legalgenealogist.com/2012/11/18/the-ethics-of-dna-testing/

Russell, J. G. (2014). DNA ethics speak up! The Legal Genealogist. Retrieved from http://www.legalgenealogist.com/2014/05/13/dna-ethics-speak-up/

Image

“Human DNA” courtesy of www.publicdomainpictures.net.

Old tattered album. Respect the tatteredness. The tatteredness is the secret: portrait of their family memory. Album, memory, cemetery, abandoned. One goes forward, sowing the stones of grief behind oneself.

–Helene Cixous, Rootprints: Memory and Life Writing

In the LIS article “Seeking information, seeking connections, seeking meaning: genealogists and family historians” Elizabeth Yakel, a professor of Information at the University of Michigan specializing in archives and digital curation,  writes that genealogy-

is the process of connecting—connecting the past with the present and connecting within the present to family and the genealogical community—that has an orienting function for genealogists. It is also this aspect of the process that begins to address their underlying information needs. At its most abstract level, family history is a form of seeking meaning about one’s ancestor’s lives, one’s own life, and the potential connections among people—all essential elements in finding meaning and coherence. As such, genealogy is a means of working towards a mastery of life. Yakel (2004).

One of the reasons I chose genealogy as my information topic was my interest in a concept, similar to Yakel’s, that I came across in an essay by historian Edward Linehan. In the book Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American History Linehan wrote of an elderly African American man who was researching some old photographs:

Before we left, Frank Catroppa, superintendent of the site, told some of us that not long before, a ranger asked him to come and talk with someone outside…where the exhibition was located. Catroppa saw an elderly black gentleman who, the ranger told him, had been standing there for a long time. In talking with him, Caltroppa discovered that as a young boy this gentleman had seen his father lynched. He had come to the exhibition to see if it contained a photograph of his father. ‘Nothing is ever escaped,’ James Baldwin cautions us, and the presence of people, such as this gentleman, make these acts of historical excavation profound acts of moral remembrance.

Linehan went on to describe the essence of this gentleman’s research, and of others like him, as ‘historically transcendent.’ Linenthal (2006).

And about thirteen years ago, Helene Cixous’s book Rootprints, about Memory and the process of writing her own family history, also left an impression upon me. I have since witnessed several researcher’s own moments of ‘historical transcendence’ when I assisted them in my job at an archive, and I found it to be very powerful and meaningful.

Elizabeth Yakel, as we saw in the quote above, also addresses the essence and importance of ‘historical transcendence’ in her paper and it is this potential goal or outcome of genealogical research which fascinates me most. Yakel writes that “the search for factual information often led to one for orienting information. Finding ancestors in the past was also a means of finding one’s own identity in the present.” (Yakel, 2004). She explores the concept of ‘orienting information’ which fascinated me, as does the concept of ‘family navigator.’ Yakel references Reijo Savolainen when she writes:

Savolainen (1995) refers to the difference between seeking practical information and seeking orienting information. The transformation from family historian to genealogist means moving from the former to the latter dimension. Genealogists search out discrete facts and dates in census records, vital records in county clerks’ offices, and obituaries on microfilm in public libraries. For family historians, the search for this information is over-shadowed by larger information needs concerning connecting and seeking identity. (Yakel, 2004).

In “Seeking information, seeking connections, seeking meaning: genealogists and family historians” Yakel also discusses genealogy’s information community in terms of the typical relationship many researchers have with each other, and the common dynamics that genealogy forges between family historians and archivists/librarians. Then she describes how these dynamics coalesce, all working towards their collective goals.

For her methodology, Yakel drew her scholarship from twenty-nine carefully-created interviews with 29 genealogists or family historians. The questions she used in these interviews are available to read in the Appendix section of her paper. I confess that, in reading about her interview participants, I wondered why she did not pursue a more diverse interview pool than the twenty-nine white/European descent genealogists and family historians in Michigan, ranging in age from thirty-one to eighty-five years old. The gender pool was eighteen women and eleven men, varying in ranges from the absolute beginner to the lifelong genealogist/family historian. Regarding the specifics of her research, Yakel writes:

All of the interviews were audio taped. The tapes were transcribed and entered into a qualitative data analysis application, Atlas.ti, for coding and analysis (Barry 1998)…  It was through these narratives that I began asking whether someone introduced them to genealogy and whether they has [sic] thought about identifying another family member to take on the family history mantle. Thus, passing information on was coded. Codes also emerged concerning how participants viewed family history at different points in this pursuit. It was from these that the conception of family history as a process encompassing different levels of information needs and the idea of seeking meaning emerged. (Yakel, 2004).

Elizabeth Yakel reinforces the scholarship of both Helene Cixous and Edward Linehan when she concludes “Family history should be viewed as an ongoing process of seeking meaning. The ultimate need is not a fact of date, but to create a larger narrative, connect with others in the past and in the present, and to find coherence in one’s own life” (Yakel, 2004).

References

Cixous, H. & Calle-Gruber, M. (1994). Rootprints: Memory and life writing. New York City, NY: Routledge.

Linenthal, E.T. (2006). “Epilogue: Reflections” In  J.O. & L.E. Horton, (eds.) Slavery and public history: The tough stuff of American history. New York City, NY: The New Press.

Rosenzweig, R. and Thelen, D. (1998). The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life. New York City, NY: Columbia University Press.

Yakel, E. (2004) “Seeking information, seeking connections, seeking meaning: genealogists and family historians” Information Research, 10 (1) paper 205 [Available at http://InformationR.net/ir/10-1/paper205.html]

It has been a pretty emotional week with such sudden, powerful, and devastating conflagrations happening in two of my former hometowns, simultaneously; Nevada County, where I lived for over four years, and Sonoma County, where I lived for almost a year. I still have friends in both of these places, too, and it was an emotional week as one by one I made sure all of my loved ones were safe, and still had homes, and jobs. (I don’t think I have ever checked my phone so many times a day as I did that week!)

On Wednesday, one of my co-workers at the history museum/archives handed me a flyer. It was a list of supplies that were needed for those who lost everything, along with directions for participating in a donation and delivery run to Sonoma County. The organization was created by an old friend of my co-worker; she is also involved with the California history/museum/archives world.

I took a photograph of the flyer with my phone, and texted it to my friends and neighbors, many who also happen to be in the library/museum world. It was a really wonderful feeling, to be taken out of myself, and to instead have something to DO that could actually be productive. On Thursday, I went through my storage unit for clothing, went grocery shopping, and sorted through my books…

Then, Friday afternoon, when my friend got off work, she came over and we loaded my car with the supplies that we had gathered. I headed over to the museum with my Miata packed to the gills and, as I gave the items to my co-worker, he loaded them into the museum’s truck which he had borrowed for the delivery to Sonoma and Santa Rosa. (His car wasn’t big enough.)

I peeked into the back of the truck and it was a very impressive sight to see – well and fully packed as it was from floor to ceiling with all of the things listed on their flyer. Cat and dog food, dry goods, clothing, flashlights, medical supplies, anything and everything people starting anew would need. The administrative assistant told me, as we stood there, that people had been coming by all day with their donations, non-stop. Then another car pulled up to us, and a woman held out bags of dried cat and dog food…

And I realized that I had just participated in a temporary, but highly successful, information-community. It felt great!

Two of the articles from Module Three, Fulton’s “An ordinary life in the round: Elfreda Annmary Chatman” and Savolainen’s “Everyday life information seeking,” recalled an interesting book I read in a graduate seminar last year — The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life by Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen. The concepts of an ‘ordinary life in the round’ and of ‘everyday life information seeking’ specifically brought this book to mind, as did the inclusive nature of the theories at hand.

The premise of the book is akin to the studies mentioned in “Everyday life information seeking” by Brenda Dervin, a communications scholar in the 1970’s. Using similar methodology to the surveys by Rosenzweig and Thelen, she focused on information-seeking among different demographic groups in Baltimore MD. Savolainen (2009). Similarly, The Presence of the Past concerns a collective of professional historians who conducted carefully-constructed surveys to explore how everyday (or non-historian or, to use Savolainen’s name, ELIS’s) people engage in history-making activities (such as genealogy/family research.) Like Dervin, the authors of The Presence of the Past were also concerned with perceived barriers that sometimes exist between professional historians and the ELIS’s or wider non-professional populace, and how to broach them. The book is about Rosenzweig & Thelen’s discoveries, and concerns the ways that non-historians, ELIS’s or, who the authors here refer to as ‘everyday history-makers,’ engage with history on a regular basis.

I focused primarily on Chapter One, mainly because of its title “Presence of the past: patterns of popular history-making” and found this quote.

A remarkable thirty percent of our respondents worked on a hobby or collection related to the past. Other respondents, particularly genealogists, told us they spend years searching through courthouses, cemeteries, microfilms, old newspapers, birth and death records, wills, and Civil War pension files. One third of Americans we interviewed were involved in tracing their family’s history – which suggests that more historical research is done on families in this country than on any other subject. Rosenzweig (1998).

In “Everyday information seeking” Savolainen references Marcia Bates “By ‘life information’ is meant information needed for successful living.” Thus defined, the concept includes “vast amounts of information on how to do many different things in one’s culture that will be acceptable and lead to one’s survival and emotional satisfaction.” (Savolainen, 2009). Rosenzweig and Thelen explain, particularly in chapters two and three of their book that, for many family researchers and history-makers, genealogical research is also part of a reflective and inward process; a discovery of origins; a definition of their self-identity. (Rosenzweig, 1998.) These certainly seem to be the components of ‘successful living’ to me. And in the LIS article “Seeking information, seeking connections, seeking meaning: genealogists and family historians” Elizabeth Yakel writes that genealogy-

is the process of connecting—connecting the past with the present and connecting within the present to family and the genealogical community—that has an orienting function for genealogists. It is also this aspect of the process that begins to address their underlying information needs. At its most abstract level, family history is a form of seeking meaning about one’s ancestor’s lives, one’s own life, and the potential connections among people—all essential elements in finding meaning and coherence. As such, genealogy is a means of working towards a mastery of life. Yakel (2004).

I recently spoke to a professional archivist who interacts, regularly, with the ELIS’s and genealogy community, and I asked if they could describe some of the more obvious patterns and information needs of this community in very general terms. The archivist explained to me how some new arrivals to the archives needed to learn how to use an archive before beginning their research. Often, they quickly developed a fascination with archives and the absolute wealth of resources at their disposal. The archivist said it wasn’t uncommon, even if the archive didn’t meet their genealogical needs for their project, for the history-maker to return for a second or third visit out of simple curiosity and/or a sense of enjoyment.

The archivist said that, sometimes, new visitors got overwhelmed very quickly. In some cases, their initial excitement at starting a new genealogical venture faded just as quickly as it started. The archivist said that, often, the highly impatient folks who called to request urgent same-day appointments were the ones who became no-shows, usually because they didn’t anticipate the amount of work and patience actually required for a genealogy project.

The archivist then described the behavior of the professional genealogists, in contrast, who generally knew exactly what they needed and where to get it, and who usually zipped in, and zipped out again, with direct efficiency.

Then the archivist described to me how the genealogy volunteers worked, slowly and consistently, over long periods of time. They do it for their own enjoyment, but also for the benefit and ease of other researchers, whether professional genealogists, or Rosenzweig’s and Thelen’s everyday-history-makers. With regard to the concept of genealogy as an information community, Crystal Fulton writes “Information sharing is an important feature of this hobby, with individuals networking with others to supplement information they have found when searching sources. Because of the nature of the hobby, reciprocal sharing behavior may be significant in this process” Fulton (2009).

The larger genealogy information community that can be found online is very similar. I found a podcast intended to helping budding genealogy students hone their careers. And The Internet Archives maintains a substantial digital genealogy library and forum so others can do free research and ask for assistance. (I’ve included links below to the podcast, the Internet Archives, and to the Root Cellar website for further exploration of their social and information structures.) I also discovered, via the Root Cellar blog, that they live-stream from certain genealogy-related events to provide access for people who can’t make the events in person.

Recalling our lecture from Module 1, the genealogy information community and its many functions recalls the Durrance & Fisher quote that Michael gave in his video lecture: It benefits both individuals and groups, increases access and use of information resources, and enhances dialogue, communication, and public perception.

References

Durrance, J. & Fisher, K. (2003). Information communities. K. Christensen, & D. Levinson (Eds.), Encyclopedia of community: From the village to the virtual world. (pp 658-661). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

doi: http://dx.doi.org.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/10.4135/9781412952583.n248

Fulton, C. (2010). An ordinary life in the round: Elfreda Annmary Chatman. Libraries & the Cultural Record, 45(2), 238-259.

Fulton, C. (2004). Networking for leisure: Community and information seeking in genealogy. Retrieved October 5, 2017.

[Available at https://muse-jhu-edu.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/article/269290]

Rosenzweig, R. and Thelen, D. (1998). The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life. New York City, NY: Columbia University Press.

Savolainen, R. (2009). Everyday life information seeking. Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences.

doi: https://doi-org.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/10.1081/E-ELIS3-120043920

Yakel, E. (2004) “Seeking information, seeking connections, seeking meaning: genealogists and family historians ” Information Research, 10 (1) paper 205 [Available at http://InformationR.net/ir/10-1/paper205.html]

Links
I discovered that “The Internet Archive” has a great deal of information available for genealogists, family-researchers, and history-makers, including an online discussion forum which provides an in-depth glimpse of this information community at work. https://archive.org/details/genealogy&tab=forum

The Internet Archive’s Genealogy Collection https://archive.org/details/genealogy&tab=collection

And the page “About Internet Archive’s Genealogy Collection” features two info-graphics on the lower right area of the screen that show the popularity/use of the genealogy collection since it was made available in 2011. https://archive.org/details/genealogy&tab=about

The Root Cellar: Sacramento Genealogical Society’s website shows how this information community functions, in part, because of its volunteers.  https://rootcellar.org/cpage.php?pt=46

Here is the podcast about Genealogy called “The Genealogy Professional Podcast with Marian Pierre-Louis” geared towards the aspiring professional genealogist. I think this is another example of how this Information Community supports, nurtures, and even perpetuates itself, by mentoring aspiring genealogy professionals. http://www.thegenealogyprofessional.com/tag/michael-leclerc/