In her review of the above mentioned study, historian Heather Ann Thompson not only describes the horrible history on an ongoing infamous and deploring practice to catch women and to lock them away in prisons or special hospitals, often on invented reasons, just to execute male might and power in the ruling of an ordered, clean society, (originall to bring under control venereal disease) but mentions, very interestingly, how the autor as student became aware of this history and began to investigate.

"... a new book by the law student Scott Stern, a shocking number of American girls and women were also locked up beginning in the 1910s as part of the now completely forgotten “American Plan,” a governmental effort to combat venereal disease. Stern happened upon this unnerving piece of history largely by accident when he was an undergraduate poking around the stacks of the Yale libraries. His curiosity piqued, he spent almost a decade digging into archival collections, visiting decaying rural towns, and interviewing people in their living rooms, trying to understand what this program was and what its human cost might have been."

I find the point not trivial. Obviously, if he would have been satisfied with the online sources, he never would have encountered what became the base and core of his study. Archives and libraries which hold archived collections and materials are something else as the filtered databases of companies.

Just for the reminder.

Montag, 18. Juni 2018

Kinder in der Bibliothek

Sketchbook

Left to Their Own (Literary) Devices

By Grant Snider, NYT June 15, 2018

An illustrated reminder of what happens when kids are left to roam the stacks of a library.

Dienstag, 31. Oktober 2017

Against the universal library

New Left Review 107, September-October 2017

rebecca lossin

AGAINST THE UNIVERSAL LIBRARY

In 2004, I decided to become a librarian. I did so because I love reading and I needed to make a living in a fashion that would not, or so I hoped, leave me feeling alienated and depressed. In particular, I love reading books. Often long and dedicated to a single idea, argument or story, books are also incredibly durable. They can survive coffee spills, the interior of my over-stuffed handbag, and if my niece pulls them off the table, I am not faced with a small financial crisis. The best thing about a printed book, however, is what it does not do. I cannot use it to watch television or check my email. My mother will never call me on it. My boss will never use it to interrupt me. In an age of constant media distractions, having a single object dedicated to a single activity—reading—is increasingly important. If nothing else, books that cannot be searched by keyword remind us that good ideas are not always efficiently come by—that learning takes time.