librarian grumble

[bunnyjadwiga]

*mumble mumble mumble*
just 'cos you can't find anything out on the open internet on it doesn't mean it's been erased from history.
That's what we *have* specialized resources for.
Just sayin'.

Comments

[marag.livejournal.com]

D'you know, I was kind of thinking that. My FIL is a research volunteer for the Holocaust Museum and I sort of wanted to sic him on the question and see what he could find.

However, the point that history is personal is a good one, so I didn't want to argue with her.

(I'm assuming we've both just read the same post...)

Siccing researchers on it

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, I'm forwarding the link for *that* story to our lives-in-the-library holocaust researcher/history adjunct. (Sloane Drayson-Knigge; she's done a lot of recording of Holocaust survivor's stories-- her mentor was a survivor, one of the "Secretaries of Death", and Sloane has a special interest in the Terezin camp.)

Re: Siccing researchers on it

[marag.livejournal.com]

My FIL is doing a project for the museum. I'm blanking on the exact details, but I believe it involves looking at primary source materials written in Hebrew (which he reads fluently) and *maybe* Yiddish and getting the information into a database.

IIRC, it has to do with tracking who survived from what small towns and where they went, but I could be wrong about that. I remember a whole explanation about the difficulty of figuring out Polish towns when they'd been transliterated into Hebrew. Whew.

As I said, the problem is that I don't want to argue that history isn't personal, because it *is* and I've been trying to tell people that for years :D But...as you say, just because you can't find it on the Internet doesn't mean the information isn't out there.

[deborah]

I wasn't even thinking about research volunteer for the Holocaust Museum, I was thinking about, I don't know, looking through the Holocaust books that are here in our collection. Then I saw how many comments there were and decided that somebody had probably done the same.

[marag.livejournal.com]

::laughs:: Well, sure, if I had access to a collection, I'd do that too. But I haven't got a library, I've got a FIL with a rabbinical degree and a PhD in history :D