LHRT (Library History Round Table)

Reports for the ALA Library History Round Table Mid-Winter Meeting, January 25, 2012

Chair’s report:

Preparations for the Annual Conference in Anaheim are well under way. Our speaker for the Holley Lecture this year will be Abigail Van Slyck, author of Free to All: Carnegie Libraries & American Culture, 1890-1920. Van Slyck’s talk will explore libraries as sites for the public performance of literacy. The theme for our Invited Speakers Panel will be libraries and civil rights in the United States. Our speakers will be Steven Harris, Cheryl Knott, and Karen Cook and the respondent will be Renate Chancellor. The Holley Lecture is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, June 23, 4:00-5:30 pm and the Invited Speakers Panel for Sunday, 10:30 am-noon.

As promised at the Executive Committee meeting last June, I have brushed up the descriptions of the roundtable’s awards. You can view the updated descriptions at:

http://ala.org/lhrt/popularresources/awards/awards

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Another issue that came up at our meeting in New Orleans was the transfer of our records that are in electronic format to the ALA Archives. I contacted Melissa Salrin at the University of Illinois and she sent the new Records Transfer Form. It includes a section for transferring electronic records. The Officer’s Handbook section on the responsibilities of the LHRT secretary will be updated to include this information and a link to the form.

We are still soliciting proposals from institutions interested in hosting the Library History Seminar XIII in 2015. This has always been a fun and engaging conference and I encourage you to consider submitting a proposal. You can view the CFP at:

http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=177618.

Julia Skinner (juliacskinner@gmail.com) is our new webmaster. Please get in touch with her (and copy me or the current chair) if you have any suggestions regarding LHRTs presence on the web, including LHRT and social networking. On a closely related issue, the Membership and Outreach Committee, under the leadership of Secretary-Treasurer Elect, Dominique Daniel (daniel@oakland.edu) is very interested in exploring new ways to connect with our members and to attract new members. Please get in touch with Dominique if you have any ideas for the committee. My sincere thanks to Julia, Dominique and the MOC for their hard work thus far this year.

Our new liaison to the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) is Raphaele Mouren (raphaele.mouren@enssib.fr) from the École nationale supérieure des sciences de l'information et des bibliothèques. IFLA has a library history SIG: http://www.ifla.org/en/library-history

Finally, the annual meeting of the Executive Committee in Anaheim is tentatively scheduled for Sunday, June 24, 8:00-10:00 am, location TBA. As always, this meeting is open to all LHRT members and I encourage everyone to attend.

Please get in touch if you have any questions or concerns regarding the work of your round table: glynn@rci.ruters.edu

Tom Glynn

Vice Chair’s Report:

The theme for this year’s LHRT Research Forum is Intellectual Freedom and Libraries in America and Abroad: Historical Perspectives.  We received many excellent proposals.  Four have been selected.  The presentations are:

Eric Novotny, “From Inferno to Freedom: Expanding Access in the Chicago Public Library, 1910-1936” 

Doug Campbell, “Re-examining the Origins of the Adoption of ALA’s Bill of Rights” 

Lim Peng Han, “The Japanese occupation of Singapore and the forgotten libraries at the civilian gaols at Changi and Sime Road Camp, 1942-1945” 

Joyce Latham, “Heat, Humility, and Hubris: the Conundrum of the Fiske Report” 

The Forum is tentatively scheduled for Sunday, June 24^th, 1:30 – 3:30 p.m.  Please make plans to attend.

New members were recruited for the Winsor and Dain Committees.  The committee members are:

 Phyllis Dain Dissertation Award Committee (2011-2013):
Jim Carmichael, Chairperson
Barry Seaver
Sterling Coleman

Justin Winsor Essay Prize Committee (2011-12):
Michael Gorman, Chair
Fred Stielow
Tanya Finchum

Mark McCallon

Webmaster’s Report:

1. Drupal Training
   1. Completed (hooray!): 12/22/11
   2. Received authorization to do the following: create new pages, edit content on existing pages (there may be some exceptions to this), deactivate pages (but I don’t think I can reactivate them, so this may not be a good idea), add metadata to pages/update URLS/SEO/other maintenance things. Note: For those things I am not authorized to do or that would impact the site structure, I will want/need to consult with Norman to have him work with me. Even in instances when I am unsure, I would feel more comfortable erring on the side of caution and asking his advice anyways.
   3. The interface seems pretty easy to use, so doing quick additions and changes should not take me much time. However, if the EC wants to implement widespread changes (i.e. building 10 new pages; adding metadata to every page) it might take a bit more time, so bear that in mind if there is a deadline that needs to be put in place for creating the content.
   4. We do have a bit of room to play around with design (I’m still learning how much), although we do have to remain consistent with ALA’s site as a whole (i.e. hierarchy of headings must be the same). I’ll worry about that (and ask Norman when I’m not sure!) and let you all know if a proposed site change is inconsistent with ALA guidelines.
2. Changes to LHRT pages
   1. Homepage: We have several tabs, including one for Twitter. Would like to add one that either links to or pulls updates from our FB page too, if possible (otherwise can add it to contact page: see below).
   2. Adding a Contact page: Add to the sidebar. Include any contact info EC members see fit to share along with LHRT e-mail address and social media links. This could be the parent page for other pages (i.e. separate out ‘social media’, ‘executive committee’, etc.) or could just have all the information under different headings on one page.
   3. Add a ‘Get Involved’ page: This would give people who wanted to volunteer or to contact someone with questions a place to go, and give us a place to highlight needs for assistance as they arise.
   4. About LHRT: I would remove the description of ‘popular resources’ since they have their own place on the sidebar.
   5. Governance: We’re supposed to start including summaries on each page, so I’d like to include one here that describes the documents.
   6. Oversight groups and meeting schedules: I feel like this page needs to be reworded and cut into two tabs on the sidebar (one for our EC and officers, one for conference info). Would be easier to navigate this way.
   7. Popular resources: I would add a summary here too. Also, do we want to make ‘popular resources’ something that includes links to library history-related websites (such as Larry Nix’s blog) that are outside LHRT?
   8. Add metadata to pages for SEO (search engine optimization).
   9. You can add 3^rd party media too (i.e. YouTube videos, Flickr slideshows)—this may be something useful for showcasing conference photos or recordings of presentations.
   10. Suggestions?
3. Social media
   1. Twitter account: As of this writing, we are following 157 people and followed by 116 people. I average several original tweets a week, and try to re-tweet relevant content about once a day. More people are retweeting our content too (before it was mostly just me retweeting via my personal account) so that is also good. One goal here is to be more aggressive about following people who may be interested in LHRT. I also want to encourage members to ‘mention’ LHRT when sharing relevant content.
   2. Facebook: As of this writing, 103 people ‘like’ us. Right now I post about 1-2 times a week based on content from the LHRT listserv and Twitter. We are starting to get more feedback on these posts (i.e. ‘likes’ and ‘reshares’ of certain posts). My goal here is to encourage myself and other LHRT members to continue sharing the link to the LHRT page so we can get more ‘likes.’ I also want to continue encouraging members to share content on the wall.

I'm going to start adding 'favorites' to our Facebook page. They show up as
'likes' in the left hand margin, and give us a chance to connect LHRT with
other orgs on Twitter. I'm adding ALA-related stuff now. Could you update
my report to include mention of this and a request that members contact me
with ideas for other Facebook pages they would like LHRT to be connected to?

1. Google+: This account has been problematic, so has been deactivated for the time being. There was some misunderstanding wherein they thought it was an individual (rather than organizational) account, so suspended it per their ‘real names’ policy. Repeated attempts to contact them, change the name, etc. have been unsuccessful. I will keep trying to sort it out, but since most of our success has been with the other two accounts (and since the Google+ account was only active for a relatively short time), it is not a significant loss if it is not resolved.
2. Where I could use help/guidance from EC:
   1. Content and wording of site: approval (or not) of proposed new pages, and suggestions for what I should put on those pages (the more specific, the better).
   2. Continued suggestions for items to share via social media. I want to encourage people to share items on the LHRT Facebook page wall and to ‘mention’ the LHRT account on Twitter when sharing relevant links/information—this way it shows that there are multiple people interacting with the account and gives me (and you) a way to draw on a larger pool of resources in real time.

Julia Skinner

Chair’s Report, Membership and Outreach Committee:

Goals for 2011-2012:

• Make LHRT more well-known by developing its web and social media presence
• Increase membership

Membership numbers

As of November 2011, LHRT had 466 members – a 6.61% drop from 2010. This seems due primarily to a decline in the number of students joining for the first time (a 38% decline).

Activities accomplished since September 2011:

• Members of MOC have been sending information about LHRT on various list serv: RBMS, ALISE, SHARP, JESSE, LIS-LIBHIST@jiscmail.ac.uk, CLA Digest (Newsletter of the Canadian Library Association)
• As a result the Chair was contacted by Raphaele Mouren, professor at the French ENSIB and chair of the Manuscripts and Rare Books Section of IFLA, who accepted to become LHRT’s liaison for IFLA.
• Midwinter ALA meeting: Mailed 25 brochures to the NMRT Orientation Committee Chair to be made available at the Orientation Program.

Plans for future activities:

• Collaborating with Julia Skinner, LHRT’s webmaster, to provide news items for LHRT’s social media account and to help update the website once the transition is made.
• Planning for ALA annual meeting:
  • participate in the NMRT’s Orientation Program, present LHRT at the NMRT Reception
  • do a presentation at the Membership Pavilion
  • if there are volunteers to help organize it, LHRT could organize an outing to a nearby library.

Dominique Daniel, Secretary-Treasurer Elect

Chair’s Report, Winsor Prize Committee:

The members of the committee are Tanya Finchum, Oklahoma Oral History Program, Oklahoma State; Michael Gorman (chair), University Librarian Emeritus, CSU Fresno; and Fred Stielow, Dean of Libraries, American Public University System.  The call for papers was drafted in September 2011 and, after three rounds of revisions due to the chair’s incompetence and confusion about the new journal Information & Society, was posted on the ALA site and in a number of places of interest to library historians.  To date, no submissions have been received though the deadline (January 31^st 2012) is perilously close.

Michael Gorman

Report from the Editor of Information & Culture: A Journal of History

The journal changed its name from Libraries & the Cultural Record to Information & Culture: A Journal of History, effective 1 January 2012. The journal's new URL is  www.infoculturejournal.org and the main contact email address for the journal is info@infoculturejournal.org.

The journal continues to publish in the area of library history, but it has expanded its scope to include all of information history, with information  broadly defined in a manner consistent with the scope of the schools of information that have grown up in the United States and internationally over the past decade. Please see the tables of content for the first several issues of Information & Culture.

An ad hoc subcommittee of the board, charged with looking at our offerings in library history, came up with the following recommendations, and these recommendations have been accepted by the editor:  

The subcommittee emphasized the continued publication of high quality historical scholarship covering a wide range of countries, time periods, and subtopics, by both established scholars and new scholarly entrants to the field.  The expectation is that the journal will continue to publish works in library history of the highest quality, as we have in the past.  They suggested that library history include the following sub-topics: institutions, collections, professionalization, biography, and impact of technology. They further suggested some special topics, including libraries in central and eastern Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain; intersections among librarians, museums, and archives; the documentation movement of the early twentieth century; the history of information science and scientific information needs; and national libraries, information, and culture.

The journal will be publishing two special issues, which were arranged during the term of the former editor, David Gracy: one on state libraries, to appear in 2013, another a festschrift to David Gracy - mainly on archival history - to appear in either late 2013 or early 2014.  There is currently a moratorium on additional special issues devoted to a single topic, as we maximize the space to explore the wide range of topics that fall under the broadened definition of information history. The journal is not averse to publishing a series of papers on a single topic, but they would appear in a series of issues, not in a single issue.

We very much look forward to receiving high-quality manuscripts from the ALA community on library history.

Bill Aspray