Goodbye from the Editors

Jack Kerouac is an author I don’t want to identify with, but I kind of do. Both times I read On the Road—once in college, and once when I was in my late thirties or early forties—I was turned off by the chaos, substance abuse, and womanizing I perceived in the book. Yet, Kerouac was born into a French Canadian family, as I was. He grew up in a rusty Massachusetts city, as I did. He traveled throughout the United States and racked up funny, sordid, and revelatory stories along the way—also like me. Kerouac and I have written nonfiction, novels, and poetry, though his literary works are published and mine are not. Even if our prolific Catholic families aren’t related by blood, Kerouac and I share some of the same cultural DNA. So perhaps it should be no surprise that I landed on one of his quotes after I spent an hour in the PN6000s, looking for a way to start saying goodbye to LCHS.For subscribers who do not already know, this is my last issue. Volume 8, number 2, and subsequent issues are in the hands of Carol Leibiger, Nicole Cooke, and their team. After nine years as a founding coeditor—I count the two years Eric and I worked on establishing LCHS before the first number was published—making an exit is not as emotionally difficult as I thought it would be. COVID-19 increased the challenges for everyone and made producing each issue more time-consuming and ultimately exhausting. But more positively, and more to Kerouac’s point, I have a huge world of contributors to thank and I am looking forward to whatever is next. Overall, I am leaving on an upbeat note, as I believe LCHS’s current contents offer a fitting culmination of my editorial career and various reasons to celebrate.This issue starts with a thought-provoking essay by James Donovan. He responds to the current historical moment of record-setting book bans across the United States by probing the differences between censorship, in which ideas are attacked, and libricide, in which far more—including the relationship between a library and its community, and the library’s documentation of that community’s memories—is assaulted. Drawing on his expertise in law and library management, as well as some historical examples, Donovan’s work will help other scholars discuss threats to intellectual freedom with greater clarity and precision. Understanding the legal definitions and ideological roots of such horrendous acts may also help practitioners combat them more effectively.Next is an original research article by Andrew S. Keener, detailing the origins of a collection of published plays that originated within the family of King George III—specifically Queen Charlotte and Princess Augusta Sophia—and ultimately found its way to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Besides presenting an interesting description of the eighteenth-century materials included in Charlotte and Augusta Sophia’s library, the subsequent disposition and acquisition of the collection conveys something important about how women’s troves and activities are sometimes underappreciated. As someone whose personal archive of diaries, writings, photographs, and other material has been turned down by repositories near and far, this is a story that speaks to me. Efforts to identify all the works owned by Charlotte and Augusta Sophia are ongoing, so compare the markings described in Keener’s article with older items in your collection. Your library might contain something that was once owned by a member of the British royal family!Third, Hiroko Matsuzaki delves into the scholarly writings of ALA leader and LIS educator Jesse Shera, continuing a conversation about social epistemology, a topic that concerns library/information science, philosophy, sociology, and other disciplines. While LHRT members may recognize Shera as one of the primary instigators in establishing our round table, Matsuzaki demonstrates his much broader influence. Also, for those of us who do not feel fully confident when reading French cultural theorists, her work is valuable for its clear explications of prior scholarship, the connections between Shera’s thoughts and various contemporaneous ideas, and the implications for library activities such as cataloging.Finally, by shedding light on the nascent library education program at the University of California, Los Angeles, during the 1950s and 1960s, jaime ding’s article shows how LIS students were acculturated through syllabi and course readings to understand their roles as a form of service, operating with a certain set of attitudes and behavioral norms heavily influenced by whiteness. As someone who began to work in libraries in the early 1990s largely because I wished to help others, and who graduated with a degree in library service from Rutgers, it was thought-provoking to consider my own career motivations and my perceptions about libraries, rethink some of the “lies” (to use ding’s word) that were told to me, and ask what falsities I might be perpetuating myself. As I read her manuscript, I also appreciated her inclusion of Black scholars, some of whom I was unfamiliar with and plan to read in the near future.Following the research articles, the present issue contains book reviews apprising us of recent scholarship relating to the publishing industry in Germany during the Reformation and about libraries in occupied Japan during the 1940s and 1950s. There are evaluations of new books about US public libraries in New England and college libraries on American campuses as well. I see a couple of titles I am eager to read after I speed into the sunset as LCHS’s former editor.Besides the fascinating material in the present issue, I am encouraged to see that historians and practitioners are getting back into archives and finding more energy to write and revise. Over the past three years, Eric and I considered ourselves lucky if we received four or five submissions per semester; of these, only two or three ultimately made it to the finish line. This fall, however, I had nine research manuscripts under consideration—the most Eric and I had ever had in our pipeline—plus several queries that may yield published articles in the future. Thus I am hopeful the new editorial team will not experience all the challenges that Eric and I did in generating content for a brand-new journal and leading it through a pandemic. I am also glad that at least two of our article authors and five of our manuscript reviewers live outside the United States or come from demographic groups that have often been minoritized in the United States. Although LCHS has a long way to go in terms of implementing the journal’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Action Plan, the efforts I made to include both local and global scholars when evaluating manuscripts are something I am proud of. Cultivating Black, Indigenous, Latina/o/x, and LGBTQ+ authors has continued to be a challenge, and there are significant areas of librarianship for which we never received as many incoming items as I had wished. Nonetheless, I am sure that the new editors, with their different professional experiences and contacts, will be better able to address some of these concerns.Even though I took the wheel in terms of editing this issue, Eric relieved me by handling the proofing and production process. I also consulted with him in writing this, our last “Welcome from the Editors.” Together we thank everyone in ALA’s Library History Round Table—both officers and rank-and-file members. Moral backing and kind words from colleagues lifted our spirits many times over the years. Also, LHRT’s ongoing financial support, which comes from member dues and has included occasional additional funding for special issues, transformed LCHS from a nebulous idea to an actual reality. We also thank everyone at Penn State University Press. We are ever grateful that they took a chance on starting a new journal despite a difficult financial climate. We appreciate the expert, timely support the press’s staff provided in terms of copyediting, layout, and distribution of our publication. Thank you, too, to the members of LCHS’s editorial board, especially those who have been with us from day one and who provided abundant, useful advice as we encountered situations that were new to us. We also thank board members who contributed content and helped us review submissions. Thank you to Brett Spencer, our book review editor and LHRT’s blog editor, who has engaged and mentored dozens of new writers and has pushed LCHS announcements to global audiences. We appreciate everyone else who has shared their knowledge and time, especially manuscript reviewers who choose to provide feedback despite a socioeconomic climate in which many others have been unwilling or unable to provide free help. Last, but not least, we commend all our authors. We deeply appreciate the effort they put into research, writing, and revision; their risk-taking in opening themselves up to critiquing; their trust in us and our reviewers; and the insights and encouragement their works provide for the broad library history community.I can’t say what my next “crazy venture” will be, but please know you all mean a lot more to me than specks dispersing on the plain. Please keep in touch!

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