Confessions of a Curator 2: Selecting Posterity
A discussion of how the selection of archives affects the historical record.
I had originally intended to title this post “The Politics of Posterity.” As I wrote and revised, however, I realized that it was going in a different direction, and the word “politics” was a bit too loaded for the point I’d like to make here (especially during an election). And so, we have a different post than planned, but hopefully one that is just as useful.
The selection of what will be included in our cultural record has far-reaching implications. Archivists and curators are shaping the future: their collective selections now determine how future scholars experience our cultural era, effectively creating the canon. While archivists and curators are now trained to incorporate this idea into our daily work, that has not always been the case. In the nineteenth century, there wasn’t as much impetus among libraries to document popular culture or everyday life, particularly for groups that were not part of the dominant culture.
My experiences researching dime novels illustrate the disconnect between 19th century choices about the cultural record, and what is studied today. Dime novels, first issued in the 1860s, were cheap, ubiquitous popular novels in pamphlet form, sold at railway stations, drugstores, general stores, and through the mail—but not in bookstores. Original westerns, seafaring stories, detective stories, true crime , romances, and the precursors to steampunk literature all appeared in dime novel format. Dime novels provide insight into major changes in marketing, distribution, publishing, and reading practices in the United States from 1860-1920. Individual dime novel titles by popular and prolific authors such as Edward L. Wheeler could sell up to 100,000 copies, easily outselling anything published by Herman Melville or Nathaniel Hawthorne during the same period by a factor of 10.
With the exception of the Library of Congress, which received dime novels through copyright deposit, contemporary 19th century libraries did not collect dime novels. As popular entertainment, they were not “important” enough to collect, even though far more people followed the exploits of Wheeler’s Deadwood Dick than Captain Ahab or Hester Prynne. Wheeler’s works only exist in research libraries because individual collectors donated or sold their dime novel collections to libraries in the mid-to-late 20th century, fifty years after they were last produced. While there are three major repositories of published dime novels in the United States, and an additional dozen or so libraries with smaller collections, the archives of most dime novel authors like Edward Wheeler didn’t survive. Popular literature did not warrant selection by nineteenth-century standards. Much of what little documentation remains only survived because shoving those paper-based materials into a dark closet of a family home, or a corner of the local historical society or university library and ignoring them was sufficient to keep them around until they were re-discovered half a century later.
SF works in similar ways to dime novels. Dime novels gave us our ideas of cowboys in the American Frontier; SF literature often treats the frontiers of new worlds, new technologies, and new ideas. Early western films were based on dime novels; many of the most influential and widely-seen films in the 20th century were based on SF source materials.
I’ve discussed my general departmental process for purchasing items on my other blog. For the SF collection, I try to remember my frustrations with dime novel research, so as not to create them in another collection. I work towards a balanced, diverse, inclusive, representative sample of the field in relation to my selected collecting areas, by consulting awards lists, reading widely across the literature, spending time at conventions in my region listening to panels, and reading SF blogs. When new books come in through the SFWA Circulating Book Program, I try to keep track of broken series and the like, to fill in gaps. Every curator works just a little bit differently when acquiring archives. My personal method for acquiring archives was inspired by the late Howard Gotlieb, the founding Curator of Boston University’s department of Special Collections. He built an astounding collection of popular culture materials just by asking famous people in popular culture for their papers, by writing letters and building relationships with them. The NIU SF archives acquired our first SF archive, Jack McDevitt’s papers, in 2005; since then we’ve added 12 more authors to the collections. Discussions continue with quite a few more.
My personal methods are similar, but adjusted for the times we live in. I build personal relationships with donors, but some of the development of those relationships happens online after the initial personal contact, not only through email, but through blogs and social networking sites. For the most part, I identify and approach the donor, but in some cases, the donor approaches me, or is introduced to me through a third party, either on person or online.
I’m not the only one who does the bulk of my work on computers. Contemporary SF writers create their works primarily on computers, rather than on paper. Collectors and libraries gathering scattered snippets of paper can no longer document a whole genre. Born-digital materials, like online SF fiction magazines, online fanzines, original electronic manuscript files, blogs, discussion lists, electronic fora and email correspondence will degenerate quickly over time. We must begin making an effort to preserve these electronic materials now before they disappear.
When archivists, donors, and authors take an active role in shaping the historical record for modern SF, the determination of what is “worth saving” can be made by, for, and with the SF community.
Simple steps, such as storing current archival materials properly can make a huge difference in how the historical record is shaped. Keep paper materials in a cool, dark, dry space, preferably in a section of your home that has climate control (like an office or a closet). Label your materials. Will you really remember 20 years from now what the original version of that short story was called, to which novel that map belongs, or which novel required that folder full of research?
Original electronic files should be saved often, periodically refreshed, and backed up. Name your electronic files logically, and organize them so that similar files or different versions of the same file live together. Tell your spouse, a friend, or a literary executor the locations and passwords for your files, so that they are not lost.
Look at the different repositories that are available, and talk to the curators to see how your materials may fit with their collecting goals (we don’t all collect exactly the same things). You may not need to archive everything all at once, as long as you work piecemeal towards consistent archiving in a single location. Try to keep large groups of materials together; it will be difficult for future scholars to study the career of Andre Norton, for instance, because her papers were not kept together after she passed away.
Although it can sometimes be a long process, selecting electronic materials for inclusion in archival collections seems easy in comparison to the actual process of keeping them for posterity, which I’ll discuss in my next post, “Digitization and Its Discontents.”
LYNNE M. THOMAS is the Head of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL. She is responsible for a collection of over 110,000 volumes, with a focus on popular culture materials, such as children’s books, dime novels, comic books, and SF literature. This includes an SF collection that archives the papers of Jack McDevitt, Tamora Pierce, E.E. Knight, Kage Baker, Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette, Tobias Buckell, Kelly McCullough, Caroline Stevermer, and Donald J. Bingle, along with promises from over 30 more SF authors, which will become “official” upon delivery of materials. Blogging both personally and professionally, she is also currently co-authoring a book about web 2.0 technologies and special collections in libraries. Lynne has also published scholarly articles about cross-dressing women in dime novels. The title of this series of posts are a variation on her professional blog, Confessions of a Curator, where she discusses the joys, challenges, trials, and tribulations of curatorship.
4 comments so far.
Hi Lynne,
Very useful blog post, really!
After it helped me with my research I suggest the thing to all of my colleagues and friends.
Thanks and’
waiting for new perls 
Jason
Hi,
I’m the one of those to whom James suggested your post.
Just wanted to bring my appreciation for your work.
Thanks
Dale
I’m glad to be of service! I’m hoping to start working on “Digitization and its Discontents” sometime after I return from ALA Midwinter.
1. Sheila Finch on 20th October 2008 at 9:07 pm
Good advice for writers there, Lynne. I frequently am guilty of just working endlessly on the same file from rough draft to finished product. So no “Previous versions” exist in any form. I’ve tried to mend my ways lately—saving different drafts under different numbers or dates or what-have-you, but it’s difficult to break the habits of the last twenty-five years (since I got my first computer).