Archives shedding light on slavery

I just finished Adam Hochschild's excellent book Bury the Chains yesterday. It is the story of how abolitionists built the movement that ended the slave trade in Great Britain and eventually brought slavery to an end within the empire. In many ways it is a great print culture story about how the systematic collection and distribution of information was able to convince the British people to pressure their government to end the abuses of slavery. This was at a time when common people where every poorly represented as well, yet hundreds of thousands contributed their signatures to some of the largest petition drives the empire ever saw.

What made this book all the more interesting was a story I came across in the Financial Times yesterday while waiting in the Frankfurt Airport. "Rothschild and Freshfields Founders Linked to Slavery," was about how archival documents have begun to uncover how pervasive slavery was within the British economy. Nathan Mayer Rothschild was, until now, perceived as a total opponent of slavery who was an important figure in making the abolition of slavery happen by assisting the British government in buying out slaveholders. It turns out that one of the people who received bailout money was Rothschild himself. He received title to slaves that were used as collateral in one of his bank dealings.

Social TLAM

A lot that has happened since my last post (hello new president!). The LAMP, AOF, and international students at SLIS had an end of the year potluck social. We had way too much food since we were the recipients of food that was left over from a retirement party for Dian Bobb just before our event. Too much food is way better than too little, isn't it though? Some other things that are underway as well include planning for the 2009 LAMP Summer Institute and discussions about a Webpage redesign.

Potluck Social Participants

Trying out the different dishes.

The single largest diversity project that I have been involved in lately, however, is an independent study with nine other students (it is ony an "independent study" on paper, since there are ten students, one professor, and two librarians working on this) where we are creating a Tribal Libraries, Archives, and Museums (TLAM) class. Our hope is that this will lay the groundwork for a class that could be offered next year as a regular topics course.Our focus has been on service learning, and one of our achievements already has been applying for a receiving a Kauffmann grant to help pay for trips and activities related to our study. One facet of our class has been to build on work that was done last year by three SLIS students (often referred to as the three Cs: Christina and Cat-- both of whom are in the current class as well-- and Chelsea). They conducted an assesment of the Red Cliff Reservation Community to determine whether it would be feasible to reopen their public library. Hopefully we will be able to help them take those first steps towards getting the doors open again, and eventually help lay a foundation that will lead to an entirely new library, since the existing facilities are inadequate. Other activities for this class have included numerous speakers visiting our class and getting ready to visit the TLAM at Oneida next Friday.

For more about our class experience please check out our class blog. I'll write more here in future as well. If you have any ideas or feedback, we'd love to hear from you.