On making mistakes

January 25th, 2013 by Cathleen Miller

Over the past few weeks, I have been taking the opportunity of a quiet campus to clean up a little bit, follow up on things left hanging and things put off.  It has been productive and a good opportunity for self-reflection on just how I’m doing here after over two years on the job.

I noticed that I have started to settle in, to find my own rhythm and path here, and rather than simply trying to figure things out each day, I finally have what feels like a grasp on the scope of the collection and what needs to be done.  So we have begun to implement systems and workflows, and even started to have staff meetings!  And in this process, I am finding ways that I have failed to see what needed to be done, and so now have to backpedal.  Or, I saw what needed to be done and half-heartedly tried to make it happen but didn’t follow through with enough perseverance.  All of this is fine–it’s learning.  No one has died from my mistakes, nor has anyone suffered really, but it’s certainly time to go forward with more of a plan.

So now, with a workflow in place, there is less guess work about what needs to be done with a particular collection.  No more saving up the photocopying until there is nothing better to do because there will always be something better to do.  Now, when we process a collection, it will also get a catalog record because everyone knows what is being funneled through the processing pipeline.  Part of the trepidation that accompanied putting processes in place was, perhaps, a bit of uncertainty about my own expertise and knowledge.  What if I created a plan that didn’t make sense and then we’d have to do it all over again?  As I’ve grown into this role a bit, I see that what is key is making definitive decisions even if they are wrong, and building professional networks so that when I have questions about the best way to do something, I have people to ask out in the broader field.  Each place works differently, of course, and our little collection has plenty of quirks, but the more examples you have to compare, the better.  In this third year of my work here, my plan is to move outward, to build more networks and alliances.

Along with networking, another part of my plan this year is to gain more leadership skills.  I have always bristled at these two words–maybe because of my working-class background and the corporate ring that “leadership skills” holds for me–but, after two+ years of managing this collection, I’ve got to acknowledge that leadership skills are something I actually need to have.  I never set out to be anyone’s boss but my own, but here I am, and while I do the best I can, I know there are places (perhaps many!) that I have made mistakes.   So, when the Maine State Library District Consultants sent out an email about a webinar on how to “Be a Great Boss,” I signed up.  It starts next week, and I have started reading the first chapter on Attitude.  This one (so far) feels pretty easy to me, but I know that there are going to be places where this course pushes my comfort zone.  Luckily, according to the author of the book we’re reading,* “…no mistake is final.”

Hakala-Ausperk, Catherine.  Be a Great Boss: One Year to Success.  Chicago: American Library Association, 2011.

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Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat: Author, Patron, Reformer

November 29th, 2012 by Cathleen Miller

Over the last few weeks, prompted by a visit by a researcher, I have worked on rehousing the Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat collection.  Periodically, this kind of work allows me to get to know a collection, and gives me the opportunity to assess the condition of materials.  In this case, I knew that many of the volumes had leather covers that were deteriorating.  What I found was that a large portion of these covers were splitting because of the age of the leather.  Since this collection has received a good deal of attention over the last few years, I am going to have some of the volumes conserved.  It seems, too, that this collection is an excellent candidate for digitization.

The travel diaries in this collection chronicle Sweat’s journeys across many continents; some, like the journal from Mexico above, contain fading photographs of the locales that she visits.   In one of the early entries to the Mexico journal on March 7, she describes the scene in towns through which her party travels.

“The group of  shop umbrellas shone white in the sunshine at one of the way stations + the slender stock of wares did its best to attract our attention.  At every pause in our journey there is something picturesque, beautiful or grotesque + novel.  The foliage is unlike our own, the sunlight is more vivid, the towns more huddled.”

She goes on to make all sorts of judgements about the people in the towns, writing, “Children + dogs + hens give a lively effect to these otherwise forlorn shelters.  I fancy no native ever invents anything or develops any improvements in his surroundings no matter how devoid of comfort they may be.  They all seem to accept privation + filth as necessary + inevitable human conditions.  The mortality among them is frightful, chiefly from lung diseases__”

While these entries offer little to admire in her attitudes toward the villagers in the towns through which she travels, the diaries chronicle a way of seeing the world that was characteristic of her class and time.  They help us understand a certain way of being in the nineteenth century,  and, when contrasted with other diaries in our collection by women of ordinary means in Maine, we can begin to see the fuller picture of life in that time.

 

The Maine Women Writers Collection acquired the Sweat collection in 1964 and 1965–the first acquisition is listed in the administrative files of the Collection as a purchase, the second is listed as a gift from the Portland Society of Art.

These two newspaper articles describe the collection as “a most valuable acquisition” and “a valuable addition to its collection of manuscripts.”  This is true because the collection so richly documents Sweat’s life and her varied activities, including the founding of the Cobweb Club, which later became the Washington Club, “a woman’s literary club of much prestige.”  The Sweat collection continues to garner interest from researchers both in Portland and across the country.

Sweat’s novel Ethel’s Love Life, published in 1859, is a piece of interest because of its outspoken depiction of love between women.  As I’ve met more people researching Sweat, this is one of the points of conversation that inevitably arises.  For more on this, see Cliff Gallant’s recent article in the Portland Daily Sun: http://www.portlanddailysun.me/index.php/opinion/columns/8143-margaret-jane-mussey-sweat.

She is an intriguing figure, and one who seems to be getting more and more attention.  We will be working to make her papers even more accessible to researchers outside of Maine, and I will certainly post updates as that process gets underway.

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Politics, Civil Rights, and Current Affairs

November 5th, 2012 by Cathleen Miller

This week, I have spent a lot of time reviewing documents that we scanned from the Donna M. Loring papers, in preparation for our just-launched website with access to digital samples from the collection.  In the process of creating these images, Catherine has scanned and labeled each image with metadata to help us reference the document in the physical collection.  What appears in the file names is a kind of shorthand for the content in folders, many of which simply say something like “LD 2239″.  Not much there for description, especially given that the LD numbers actually are used in multiple legislative sessions.

Anyway, I was revising text for the website and wanted to have an accurate picture of what our sample of images represented in terms of content, so I started perusing the file names to check against my text.  One group of documents had the tag “gay rights,” which stopped me in my tracks because I didn’t remember processing material on “gay rights.”  So I pulled the file on LD 2239 (2000) to check it out.  What I found is interesting, especially given the current state of politics and the pending vote on Question 1 regarding legalizing same-sex marriage in Maine.

 

In Maine’s 119th Legislature, An Act to Ensure Civil Rights and Prevent Discrimination was reviewed. This bill sought to  include sexual orientation as a protected status under the existing civil rights act.  It was not the first hearing this bill had seen, and the authors outlined very specifically how it had been amended since its last introduction, including the notation in the bill “Nothing in this chapter confers legislative approval of, or special rights to, any person or group of persons.”

 

The one folder on LD 2239 in Donna Loring’s legislative files contains the testimony of Senator Joel Abromson who had originally introduced the bill in the 118th legislative session.  Abromson’s testimony gives the background on the bill’s history; its defeat by a Peoples veto; and his discussions and negotiations with interested groups, including the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland.  Near the end of his testimony, Abromson appeals, “…I ask the committee … to remember that we have a significant proportion of our fellow citizens who do not enjoy all the civil rights many of us…be we Jewish, Christian or Muslim; healthy or disabled; native born or immigrant, married or single; male or female enjoy. We must join the other five New England states in correcting this inequity.  That is why I am here…again.”

We have scanned documents with arguments for and against the bill, including testimony of the Maine Lesbian Gay Political Alliance (MLGPA), letters and testimony from citizens, the City of Portland Public Health Division, the Family Planning Association of Maine, the Christian Coalition of Maine, and the Calvary Bible Church, among others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        

 

This snapshot of the intensity of debate in the legislature is just one of many issues represented in the Donna Loring papers.  No matter your political affiliation or outlook, these materials give great insight into the legislative process in Maine.  And tomorrow, we vote, which will offer another view of the political process in Maine and across the U.S.

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Autonomy, marriage and reproduction

September 25th, 2012 by Cathleen Miller

This week, in preparation for a class visit to Jennifer Denbow’s political science class Autonomy and Reproductive Politics, I have been gathering materials that reflect some of the historical perspectives on women’s autonomy (both general and reproductive).  In the above Ladies’ Medical Guide, Samuel Pancoast provides counsel on “When and Whom to Marry,” which covers age spans in healthy unions, the health of a potential spouse, and temperament.

“The choice of a husband requires the coolest judgement and most vigilant sagacity,” Pancoast advises. (p. 241)

Later in The Ladies’ Medical Guide, Pancoast writes, “When we speak of ‘Woman’s Rights’ and ‘Woman’s Sphere of Action,’ we do not wish to be placed in the category of those Modern Pseudo-Reformers who would have Women unsex themselves by running into those wild vagaries and excesses of a Political and Social nature which have of late years brought odium on the glorious cause of Woman’s perfect emancipation from the condition of the Servant and Mistress of Man.  We go for her advancement in every attribute consistent with her normal organism, and the attainment of every exaltation that will render her fully the equal of man in all the moral and social relations of general society.” (p. 335)

As I was browsing the shelves in the HQs in our reference section, I found a small pamphlet that I had not seen before, entitled Judge Ben B. Lindsey on Companionate Marriage.


This crumbling pamphlet describes Judge Ben B. Lindsey’s support of the idea of companionate marriage as a precursor to (or not) a family marriage, in which the couple specifically decides to have children.  “A companionate marriage, to put it succinctly, would be a legal marriage entered into by two people with the deliberate intention of having no children for an indefinite period and in which neither would assume any financial responsibility for the other.” (p. 5)

The author goes on explicating on this idea, “A high school boy and girl of sixteen, let us say, have a desperate case on each other.  They feel that their love is a very real one.  With all the beautiful sincerity of youth, they wish to belong to each other–openly.  Therefore, instead of having secret sexual relations at school and in automobiles they tell their parents frankly that they wish to marry and discuss the matter with them.” (p. 7)  Haldeman-Julius describes the ensuing marriage and the birth control counseling that a couple could receive (though he cannot talk about that in the text “because of the laws of this puritanical country”).

  

A few of the other titles I am going to be taking to Biddeford on Thursday include The Married Woman’s Private Medical Companion by Dr. A.M. Mauriceau (1853), The Awakening of Woman: Suggestions from the Psychic Side of Feminism by Florence Guertin Tuttle (1915), Modern Woman and Sex by Dr. Rachelle S. Yarros (1933), A Marriage Manual: A Practical Guide-book to Sex and Marriage by Hannah and Abraham Stone (1937), and The Diary of an Expectant Mother (1917).  These are just a handful of the relevant works in our collection, but I think they will help students to understand the ways that women’s roles have been perceived in the past and how those perceptions still influence current policy decisions.

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Health care in the 19th century

September 14th, 2012 by Cathleen Miller

In a ritual I have participated in every Fall semester since I arrived at UNE, I searched our stacks for books that might spark some interest in our incoming pharmacy students.  One morning last week, I spoke to 60 students on their obligatory tour through the library.  With their busy schedules and pragmatic interests, a pleasure trip to the Maine Women Writers Collection to look at old materia medica or artists’ books is a bit of a hard sell.  Still, we try hard to make the interdisciplinary connections that this campus prides itself upon.

I pulled a few texts from the 1830s and 40s to show them, along with a few artist’s books by Martha Hall.  I always focus on Hall’s books because they speak so directly to the pharmacist-patient dynamic.  One page from Prescriptions straightforwardly says, “The pharmacist always asks if I have questions and I always say no.”  In these show and tell sessions, I highlight the importance of the patient’s experience in achieving good health outcomes, and entreat them to use these books as a resource.  A few stop and look, maybe even reading a few pages.  This simple pause gives me hope that perhaps an opening has taken place.  It is a rare thing to have a special collection so easily accessible, and I want students to take advantage of it, but I know that it is difficult for them to find the time, even if they have the interest.


So, as I pull books off the shelves to prepare for this yearly event, I flip through the pages of A Guide to Health or New England Popular Medicine or The Physician’s Assistant.  I get great joy from looking at the engravings, reading about the old uses of herbs.  You see, when I am not working in the library, one of the things that I do is cultivate and use medicinal herbs.  I read about them; make teas, tinctures, and cordials; and have recently begun teaching workshops on using plants.  So it is a beautiful thing when I can spend a few moments at work looking at books that overlap with this other love that I have on the side.

Calendula that I picked on my lunch break in the UNE community garden

One of the pages that I turned to this year was in A Guide to Health, being an exposition of the principles of the Thomsonian system of practice, and their mode of application in the cure of every form of disease… by Benjamin Colby (Milford, NH: John Burns, 1846).  It detailed a recipe for “The Mother’s Cordial,” which used partridge-berry vine, cramp bark, unicorn root, and blue cohosh along with sugar, water, and brandy “to shorten and diminish the sufferings of child-birth, and thus place both mother and child in a state of safety.”  Colby advises its use “daily for two weeks immediately preceding confinement” at a dosage of “from half to a wine-glassful two or three times a day, and one at bed-time, in a little hot water.”

While we use these herbs in different formulas and preparations these days, all of these plants are still used for women’s health (with many more warnings about how herbs affect women during pregnancy, of course, and a lot less brandy!).  It is fascinating to me to see how, despite medical advancements, many traditional ways of using plant remedies remain because, over centuries, people studied and observed the effects of plants on the body.

Dr. Brooks’ The Physician’s Assistant… (1833) is another example of an old materia medica in our collection.  Its information is much more focused on disease states, but these pages describe some common field weeds that are useful as medicine.


Finally, here is a bit from George Capron’s New England Popular Medicine (1848), which describes “Monthly Sickness” (or Menses, Menstruation).  This entry is a good illustration of how women’s health was treated for centuries, pathologizing normal conditions like menstruation and childbirth.  The entry begins, “Every healthy woman, from the age of about fourteen to forty-five, is subject to an effusion of blood from the womb once every month.  It is a secretion like the bile or the milk, and appears to be essential to the reproduction of the human species.” (p. 389)  I found it curious that the entry is called “Monthly Sickness” but begins with the notion of a healthy woman.  You be the judge.


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