New Books in Library Science

Serving as a vital supplement to the existing scholarship on AIDS activism of the 1980s and 1990s, Viral Cultures: Activist Archiving in the Age of AIDS (U Minnesota Press, 2022) is the first book to critically examine the archives that have helped preserve and create the legacy of those radical activities. Dr. Marika Cifor charts the efforts activists, archivists, and curators have made to document the work of AIDS activism in the United States and the infrastructure developed to maintain it, safeguarding the material for future generations to remember these social movements and to revitalize the epidemic’s past in order to remake the present and future of AIDS.Drawing on large institutional archives such as the New York Public Library, as well as those developed by small, community-based organizations, this work of archival ethnography details how contemporary activists, artists, and curators use these records to build on the cultural legacy of AIDS activism to challenge the conditions of injustice that continue to undergird current AIDS crises. Dr. Cifor analyzes the various power structures through which these archives are mediated, demonstrating how ideology shapes the nature of archival material and how it is accessed and used. Positioning vital nostalgia as both a critical faculty and a generative practice, this book explores the act of saving this activist past and reanimating it in the digital age.While many books, popular films, and major exhibitions have contributed to a necessary awareness of HIV and AIDS activism, Viral Cultures provides a crucial missing link by highlighting the powerful role of archives in making those cultural moments possible.Marika Cifor is Assistant Professor in the Information School and adjunct faculty member in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How can a library change the world? How can an art library change the art school or the gallery? Or even an art practice? In Shelf Documents: Art Library as Practice (Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, 2021), artists, writers, curators, teachers, and librarians reflect on how they can use the beloved library as a source of inspiration or a field of action.In thinking about diversity in collections, the publication proposes art libraries as sites of intersubjective communion. shelf documents is rooted in a collaborative book acquisition project, initiated by the artist Heide Hinrichs at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, in which her group integrated over 200 new titles in art libraries as a way to fill gaps, to amplify voices, and seek out the self-initiated or the overlooked.Heide Hinrichs, Elizabeth Haines, and Jo-ey Tang speak to Pierre d’Alancaisez about working with institutions, working slowly, and working together to interfere with the permanence of libraries.Heide Hinrichs is an artist who works with found and existing materials. For the first Kathmandu Triennale, she developed the project On Some of the Birds of Nepal. In 2018, she published Silent Sisters/Stille Schwestern, an unauthorised German translation of Theresa Hak Kyng Cha’s novel Dictee.Elizabeth Haines is a historian and Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Bristol. Her interdisciplinary interest in the materiality of knowledge productions draws on her education in fine arts.Jo-ey Tang is an artist, curator, and writer. He was previously the director of exhibitions at the Beeler Galery at Columbus College of Art & Design and is currently the director of Kadist, San Francisco.The list of books involved in the project is available at second-shelf.org.Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In The Faddan More Psalter: The Discovery and Conservation of a Medieval Treasure Dr. John Gillis explores the conservation, construction, and context of an early medieval psalter discovered by chance in a bog at Faddan More, Co. Tipperary in July 2006. The different facets of this find are discussed in-depth, along with the pre-existing and newly created methods, tools, and ideas from different disciplines used to reveal its secrets. Gillis shines a light on this incredibly significant manuscript – named one of the National Museum of Ireland’s top ten treasures - that represents the first insular manuscript to be discovered in the past 200 years and the first from a wetland environment. The Faddan More Psalter: The Discovery and Conservation of a Medieval Treasure was published by Wordwell and National Museum of Ireland in 2022.John Gillis is Chief Manuscript Conservator in the Library Preservation and Conservation Department in Trinity College Dublin. In 1988 he established and worked as Head of Conservation in the Delmas Conservation Bindery at Archbishop Marsh’s Library, Dublin. John has been teaching book conservation techniques and theory in Italy for over 20 years. His major achievement to date has been the conservation of the Fadden More Psalter at the National Museum of Ireland Conservation Department over a four-and-a-half year period, for which he won the Heritage Council of Ireland Conservation Award in 2010.Dr. Danica Ramsey-Brimberg is a multidisciplinary researcher, who recently graduated with her PhD in History from the University of Liverpool and is an editorial assistant for the Church Archaeology journal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 6: Confronting Modernity, 1750–1880 (Yale University Press, 2019), covers a period in which every aspect of Jewish life underwent the most profound changes to have occurred since antiquity. Organized by genre, this extensive yet accessible volume surveys Jewish cultural production and intellectual innovation during these dramatic years, particularly in literature, the visual and performing arts, and intellectual culture.Interviewees:Elisheva Carlebach is the editor of The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 6, and the Salo Wittmayer Baron Professor of Jewish History, Culture, and Society and director of the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University.Francesca Bregoli was a consultant for The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 6, and is Associate Professor at Queens College and is currently serving as director of the Center for Jewish Studies at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York.Mayer Juni was a consultant for The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 6, and is a Postdoctoral Associate at Cornell University in the Department of History, where he is also the incoming Slovin Assistant Professor of History and American Jewish Studies.Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can libraries be radical positive change agents in their communities?R. David Lenkes offers a guide for librarians who see their profession as a chance to make a positive difference in their communities —librarians who recognize that it is no longer enough to stand behind a desk waiting to serve.Lankes reminds libraries and librarians of their mission: to improve society by facilitating knowledge creation in their communities. In this book, he provides tools, arguments, resources, and ideas for fulfilling this mission. Librarians will be prepared to become radical positive change agents in their communities, and other readers will learn to understand libraries in a new way.The libraries of Ferguson, Missouri, famously became positive change agents in August 2014 when they opened their doors when schools were closed because of civil unrest after the shooting of an unarmed teen by police. Working with other local organizations, they provided children and their parents a space for learning, lunch, and peace. But other libraries serve other communities—students, faculty, scholars, law firms—in other ways. All libraries are about community.In The New Librarianship Field Guide (MIT Press, 2016), Lankes addresses the mission of libraries and explains what constitutes a library. He offers practical advice for librarian training; provides teaching notes for each chapter; and answers “Frequently Argued Questions” about the new librarianship.Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at reneeg@vanleer.org.il Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Famed across the known world, jealously guarded by private collectors, built up over centuries, destroyed in a single day, ornamented with gold leaf and frescoes, or filled with bean bags and children's drawings--the history of the library is rich, varied, and stuffed full of incident. In The Library: A Fragile History (Basic Books, 2021), historians Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen introduce us to the antiquarians and philanthropists who shaped the world's great collections, trace the rise and fall of literary tastes, and reveal the high crimes and misdemeanors committed in pursuit of rare manuscripts. In doing so, they reveal that while collections themselves are fragile, often falling into ruin within a few decades, the idea of the library has been remarkably resilient as each generation makes--and remakes--the institution anew.Beautifully written and deeply researched, The Library is essential reading for booklovers, collectors, and anyone who has ever gotten blissfully lost in the stacks.Ryan David Shelton (@ryoldfashioned) is a social historian of British and American Protestantism and a PhD researcher at Queen’s University Belfast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of William Germano, Professor of English at Cooper Union, New York, We talk about his new book On Revision: The Only Writing That Counts (U Chicago Press, 2021), about writers, and about readers and about text — everyone involved in the revision process.William Germano : "There an almost endless number of things one can say about revision because it is so crucial and yet so underdiscussed. In recent years, there have been a couple of events, or conversations, that have appeared, with other writers, and in particular writers who work on fiction, who have been addressing the enigma of revision. I'm so happy that revision is kind of (I hope) getting its due. Maybe this is revision's moment!"Watch Daniel Shea edit your science here. Write Daniel at writeyourresearch@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: Megan Fraser’s job collecting and curating a Punk Rock archive, her current work at the Research Institute for Contemporary Outlaws, the outreach necessary for inclusion, the ethics of acquisitions, the complexity of preservation concerns, and why not everything can be saved.Our guest is: Megan Hahn Fraser has worked as the Assistant Curator of Manuscripts at The New-York Historical Society, the Library Director at the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia, Co-Head of Collection Management at UCLA Library Special Collections in Los Angeles, and the Vice President and Marcus A. McCorison Librarian at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Mass. Currently, she and her husband, also an archivist, are working for the Research Institute for Contemporary Outlaws, a private collection of 20th century counter-culture materials based in Los Angeles. She received her Master of Information and Library Science (with a concentration in archives management) degree from Pratt Institute in 2000, and has an undergraduate degree in history from New York University. While at UCLA in 2014, Megan founded the Los Angeles Punk Rock Archive Collective, a group of archivists and others focused on acquiring collections from musicians, artists, and fans of the punk rock scene in Southern California. She has given presentations at the Society of American Archivists annual conference, the South by Southwest Festival, the L.A. as Subject Archives Bazaar, and the Legion of Steel Metalfest and Conference. She can be found on Twitter @mmhfraser, where she talks about archives, justice, and The Clash.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, co-producer of the Academic Life. She is a historian of women and gender, and can often be found in an archive reading 19th century New England farm women’s diaries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did it happen that, in the 13th century, Europe's largest library owned fewer than 2,000 volumes while Baghdad alone boasted of several libraries holding from 200,000 to 1,000,000 books each? In The Rise of the Arabic Book (Harvard UP, 2020), Beatrice Gruendler traces the story of the beginning of the revolution in book culture that happened in the first centuries of the Abbasid period in the Islamic lands of the Middle East. She does so by looking at the lives of people specializing and fulfilling different roles in a society that underwent a drastic technological revolution to accomodate them. Focusing on a range of social classes such as scholars and poets, craftsmen and traders, up to the large aristocratic book collectors, we read of the protagonists of this momentous revolution in knowledge, science, and book culture.Miguel Monteiro is a PhD student in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University. Twitter @anphph Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Book Industry Month continues with a memory-lane voyage back to a beloved early RtB episode. This conversation with Martin Puchner about the very origins of writing struck us as perfect companion to Mark McGurl's wonderful insights (in RtB 67, published earlier this month) about the publishing industry's in 2021, or as Mark tells it, the era of "adult diaper baby love."Aside from being a fabulous conversation about Martin's wonderful history of book production through the ages (The Written World) this episode brings back happy memories of Elizabeth and John piling their guests into a cozy sound booth at Brandeis, the kind of place that's utterly taboo in Pandemic America.So travel with us back to 2019 for a close encounter with the epic of Gilgamesh. The three friends discuss the different stages of world writing--from the time of the scribes to the time of great teachers like Confucius, Socrates and Jesus Christ, who had a very complicated relationship to writing.In Recallable Books, Martin recommends the fan fiction website Wattpad; Elizabeth recommends "No Reservations: Narnia," in which Anthony Bourdain goes through the wardrobe. John feints at recommending Dennis Tenen's book on the writing within coding before recommending the Brautigan Library.Come for the discussion of writing, stay for the impressions of Gollum!Discussed in this episode: The Written World: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History and Civilization, Martin Puchner Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse, David Ferry Wattpad "No Reservations: Narnia," Edonohana Plain Text: The Poetics of Computation, David Tenen The Brautigan Library Episode transcript available here: Episode 6 Puchner 3.28.19Elizabeth Ferry is Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University. Email: ferry@brandeis.edu. John Plotz is Barbara Mandel Professor of the Humanities at Brandeis University and co-founder of the Brandeis Educational Justice Initiative. Email: plotz@brandeis.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices