I am writing this newsletter at Pavement Coffeehouse near Northeastern University where I am shortly going to start day one of a two-day forum as part of Design for Diversity, a grant-funded initiative to work with cultural heritage folks seeking to address questions such as:
How is naming and representation in our cataloging or data modeling influenced by power? What ethical decisions should be made before exposing digital collections to automated harvesting, analysis, and broad re-use on the internet? When tools and interfaces guide interactions with documents and items, are those interfaces responsive to community needs, or do they force a diversity of ideas into ill-fitting and harmful boxes?
It's nice to have a fresh professional project like this to ease me back into my daily worklife after a nine-day vacation. This year, Hanna and I set out to take a week-long break from our respective jobs once every quarter as a sort of "reset" button for our lives. Our attempts so far have been only partial successes -- in March we used the time for our whirlwind move, and in July and again last week we both had some small work-related commitments that ate up some time -- but we are looking forward to improving on the concept in future so as to remind ourselves on a regular basis that we are more than our jobs.
What did I do on my vacation week? Lots of stitching! My church auction quilt is due to the purchaser by the end of the month and just last night I finished the binding and stitched on my maker's mark (above). It's the largest project I've taken on to-date and I'm very pleased with how it all came together.
Another project Hanna and I have helped launch in the past month is the online magazine Dósis: medical humanities + social justice, an outgrowth of the website MedHum | Daily Dose run by scholar Brandy Schillace, with whom we've been working as site editors for the past eighteen months or so. We've decided to relaunch the site in an online magazine format and refocus it on social justice issues within the field of medical humanities (a big umbrella term for people whose humanities work has a medical bent, like historians who look at medical or public health topics, or poets whose work explores illness). Our inaugural issue is on the theme of "Sickness and Health in the Era of Trump" and we are accepting pitches for essays, commentary, and book reviews, through October 31st if you (or anyone you know) has something to say on this subject. Don't be shy!
Of course, what vacation week would be complete without many cat naps? Teazle and Christopher helped in that regard, always making sure that we were taking our sleep obligations seriously.
Christopher has been with us for six months and continues to learn how to be a cat under Teazle's tutelage; chase-and-grab-tail has become a more mutual game than it was at first -- when Teazle would chase and Christopher would hide. On a regular basis, Hanna and I have to remind them both that we believe in consent in this household -- even for kitties! But they are learning to play and to groom one another, and Christopher seems less wary of sharing the couch or the bed with us humans. Progress!
On the heels of our fifth wedding anniversary came another milestone for me; on Thursday, October 12th, I celebrated the tenth anniversary of my first day as a library assistant at the Massachusetts Historical Society! I continue to be grateful for researchers who bring me new questions and colleagues who make most of my work days a pleasure. When I began my graduate studies in history and library science ten years ago, I had only the vague goal of working as a reference librarian and it has been a pleasure to make that my daily work in the company of my coworkers past and present.
And with that, the forum is about to start so I need to finish my latte and pack up my laptop before I am late for the welcome breakfast. I hope all of you are finding ways to care for yourselves, for one another, and for the world this autumn. I always love to hear from you in whatever medium and at whatever length you have the energy for.
In friendship,
Anna