Opening Remarks to a Website Talk on American Memory

by Gwen Williams
July 2006

Welcome to Hollywood Library’s first Website Talk. I believe this is the

first time any Broward County Library has presented a Website Talk. I
am Gwen Williams, a Reference Librarian here, at Hollywood Library.
I thank you for supporting our Adult Programs at Hollywood by
attending this Website Talk tonight. I hope you enjoy our time together.
And after you leave here tonight, I hope you will be excited to explore
the website I will talk about this evening, American Memory, a digital
library free and on the web, built by The Library of Congress. For
American Memory is a truly extraordinary website.
Please allow me to briefly introduce myself and my credentials to
speak on websites. As I said, I am a Reference Librarian. I have worked
for Broward County Library for one year. I am proud to say I received
my master’s degree in library and information science from the
prestigious library program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign. During my time at Illinois, I not only worked at the
wonderful library at Illinois, I also studied digital libraries and
technologies extensively, and built a fully-functional digital library with
a team partner for a course on digital libraries. If digital libraries seems
an odd phrase for all of us to hear, I would predict that five or ten years
from now, we will all have become rather accustomed to it. After all,
as you will see, the website I will talk about tonight is, in fact, a digital
library. I say that with great confidence because I also received a rather
classical schooling in traditional bricks-and-mortar librarianship at
Illinois. In essence I see my librarianship training at Illinois as
straddling two centuries—the 20th and the 21st, which, truth be told, are
really not so different.
My traditional bricks-and-mortar librarian training leads me to
conclude that my job as a Reference Librarian is essentially to be an
authority on finding the authority. For when a patron has a reference or
research question, he or she is seeking a relevant answer from an
authoritative source. Which is why it is vital that librarians know how
to find the proper authority that can lead to relevant answers. Librarians
consult encyclopedias as authorities on some subjects; dictionaries as
authorities on some subjects; directories as authorities on some
subjects; and government publications as authorities on subjects
concerning government. Encyclopedias, dictionaries, directories, and
government publications are all published in book format—so we have
lots of big reference books. But, of course, as we know, encyclopedias,
dictionaries, directories, and government publications are all also
published in electronic format and can be found via the Internet. So
the Reference Librarian today, as an authority on finding the authority,
needs to go wherever that authority is to be found: whether it is on the
bookshelves, or posted on the Web, or available by an Internet
subscription.
Have you heard of the term “e-government”? Well, e-government
is in fact occurring all around us, at the federal, state, and local levels.
In order to find the authority on numerous government subjects, a
person can oftentimes consult a government website. For example, the
IRS—prodigious producer of paper—has a nicely organized website,
which includes all of the appropriate forms in electronic format. Of
course, in many instances, we have to print them on paper ourselves,
but nevertheless the actions we take to find the authoritative IRS forms
are to browse and search the IRS website. Pretty soon, we shall
probably be forced to browse and search the IRS website, as I imagine
the federal government will soon discontinue printing tons and tons of
paper.
It may seem like that was a long diversion from my Website Talk
on American Memory, but I thought I should begin tonight by offering
some kind of explanation why I planned this website talk at a library in
the first place. It is primarily because more and more of the services
librarians provide to patrons involve networked machines, the Web,
and websites. And I think that many patrons may not be aware that
librarians as a professional group—especially early-career librarians
such as myself—are fairly skilled at finding the authority that is posted
on the Web. I believe an important part of my work is to communicate
to my patrons the whole range of services I can provide. This range of
services includes assistance in exploring the Web, be it for formal or
informal learning, or for pleasure.
Public libraries in the United States have long offered Book Talks,
or Book Discussions, for their patrons. So I thought, why not offer
programs called Website Talks? A Website Talk would be like a Book
Talk, only different. Rather than talking about interesting and
memorable books, the librarian giving a Website Talk would talk about
interesting and memorable websites.
Websites, like books, have persons or organizations responsible
for creating them, something like an author. Websites, like books,
generally have a title-of-a-sort that appears prominently on the
homepages. We should note that the earliest books and manuscripts
frequently had somewhat ambiguous and lengthy titles, too—books
such as this one written by a Mr. Isaac James and printed in 1800
Bristol:
Providence displayed: or, The remarkable adventures of
Alexander Selkirk, of Largo, in Scotland; who lived four
years and four months by himself, on the island of Juan
Fernandez; from whence he returned with Capt. Woodes
Rogers, of Bristol, and on whose adventures was founded
the celebrated novel of Robinson Crusoe. With a description
of the island, and an account of several other persons left
there, particularly William, a Mosquito Indian, and Capt.
Davis’s men, including brief memoirs of the famous Capt.
Wm. Dampier. To which is added a Supplement containing
the history of Peter Serrano, Ephraim How, and others, left in
similar situations.
Websites, like books, generally have targeted audiences and purposes.
Our library orders our book collection by audience, thus we separate
the children’s books from the adults: and of course, we try to provide
books on a wide range of topics, from various perspectives, so as to
satisfy many different audiences and their interests. And perhaps most
important of all, some websites, like books, can be wonderful resources
for exploring, learning, and enriching our lives. Not all websites make
for great intellectual encounters—neither do all books, sad to say—but
those kinds of websites serve their purpose: we are able to bank online,
shop online, apply for jobs online, blog, and retrieve important tax
forms for filing our income tax! But there are some websites that are
rich with possibility, and worth spreading the word about: I believe
these are the types of websites that make ideal candidates for Website
Talks at libraries.
I plan to offer more Website Talks in the near future, or other
kinds of programs that bring patrons and librarians together to talk
about the at-times-confusing world of networked computers—so watch
Broward County Library’s monthly Bookings for details. And if you
have suggestions for future program topics related to networked
computers that you would like to see offered at the library, please feel
free to let me know about them.
Briefly, I would like to plug a companion program on American
Memory that will be held next Tuesday at Hollywood Library. Our
speaker for that night is an historian, whose doctoral research involved
researching and writing about the history of the American Memory
Project. So I would say that if you are intrigued by American Memory,
you might be very interested in attending his lecture on the story
behind the making of it. It is a fascinating story, involving the
development of the Internet, the graphical user interface, and K-12
public education in this country. [Handout fliers.]
Okay, without further delay, onto American Memory.
Screenshots from website talk’s companion PowerPoint. The two-slide PowerPoint
was composed as a thematic backdrop for the website talk.