Archives and the Australian Great War centenary: retrospect and prospect

ABSTRACT

Based on a keynote address to the 2018 International Society for First World War Studies conference, the author’s survey of a centenary of archival endeavour comprises four time periods and two themes. It highlights the unique role of the Australian War Memorial and its initial documentation priorities favouring Dr C.E.W. Bean’s official war history, the battlefront and the war dead. A post-centenary open-ended aftermath is also discussed covering processing backlogs, the prospective idea of ‘digital breakthrough’ and the archival implications of ever-widening understandings of the war and its endless aftermaths. The paper ends with an appeal for new voices in researching the documentation of Australia’s Great War experience.     

Hospital libraries in perspective

The proliferation of hospital libraries since World War II has created a generation of librarians who take for granted the existence of libraries in hospitals. A literature review for the first half of the twentieth century presents a picture of uncertainty and struggle for identity for the hospital library. Then as now, hospital libraries reflect the institutions within which they operate. A brief history of the development of the American hospital provides a context for describing the various roles that the hospital library has played within its parent institution during the twentieth century. Some personal reflections on working in a hospital library are also presented.     

From Surgeon General's bookshelf to National Library of Medicine: a brief history.

The National Library of Medicine originated as a few books in the office of the army''s surgeon general, Joseph Lovell, between 1818 and 1836. It became the nation''s largest medical library after the Civil War under the direction of John Shaw Billings and began publishing the Index-Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon General''s Office and preparing the Index Medicus. After Billings retired in 1895, the library marked time as army medical officers were rotated through as directors until modernization began under Harold Wellington Jones during World War II. during the directorship of Frank B. Rogers (1949-1963), who introduced MEDLARS, guided the move to a new building in Bethesda, and revitalized other operations, the institution received statutory authority as the National Library of Medicine within the Public Health Service (1956). By 1965, which was marked by the passage of the Medical Library Assistance Act, the library had again regained a position of world leadership.     

News Coverage of U.S. Mothers of Soldiers During the Vietnam War

The press of World Wars I and II depicted patriotic mothers as Spartan-like in their support of the nation's war effort. During the Vietnam War, another maternal image emerged to share cultural space with the Spartan mother, that of the goddess Thetis who objected to her son's participation in the Trojan War. This alternative maternal symbol more closely resembles the archetypal image of the peacetime good mother, who cares for her children and resists sending them into harm's way. This study documents coverage of maternal opposition to the Vietnam War against the backdrop of coverage of US mothers of soldiers in the earlier world wars. The comparison suggests that the Great Father's failure to control the press and promote the war to US citizens provided an opportunity for Thetis' rising.     

Book Review—Robert L. Hilliard and Michael C. Keith,Dirty Discourse: Sex and Indecency in American Radio

For most of the 20th century, international broadcasting was characterized by state-run broadcasts carried over shortwave radio. Such broadcasting was at the core of the Cold War and World War II, as well as the decade leading up to World War II. After the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the geopolitical context that had structured international broadcasting for so long dissolved, allowing for the possibility of significant changes in international broadcasting. One of these changes since the end of the Cold War is the development of Web radio. The year 1995 marks the point when broadcasting over the Web began in earnest. Included in this movement were a number of the primary broadcasters who had been, and still were, active in international shortwave broadcasting. Then, in 2001, after gradually reducing shortwave output to North America, Australia, and New Zealand, the BBC World Service terminated official shortwave broadcasts to these areas. In place of shortwave, listeners were directed to receive BBC World Service programming primarily through Web broadcasts and secondarily through local AM/FM rebroadcasts. The announcement of the termination of these shortwave broadcasts provoked a large and vocal opposition to the cuts from shortwave listeners, professionals in international broadcasting, and even the British Parliament. This article documents the BBC World Service's announcement as well as the reaction it generated.     

Censorship and Scarcity

This article presents a case study on how goods scarcity, both natural and artificially created, was used along with censorship to control the Portuguese public's access to information during the 1930s and 1940s. Even though the dictatorship that ruled Portugal from 1933 relied on a censorship apparatus that prevented the publication and broadcast of many pieces of national and international news, the research presented in this article demonstrates how the regime took advantage of the Spanish Civil War and World War II to increase restrictions on the circulation of information, justifying this through the artificially created scarcity of paper and radio frequencies. Furthermore, this article also describes how a third type of scarcity—that of electricity—also restricted listeners' access to radio broadcasts, which led many Portuguese to make sacrifices in order to listen to updated news.     

World War Z,The Zombie Apocalypse,and the Israeli state’s monstering of Palestinian “others”

ABSTRACT

The authors deploy a critical cultural critique that extends the work of monstrosity scholars and other researchers who are interested in the application of zombie apocalypse analyses to critiques of contemporary nationalistic and social controversies. World War Z sets in motion a series of cinematic dynamics that invite audiences to consider how Israeli securitization of Jerusalem might serve as the world's best hope for containing the zombie apocalypse. By decoding the “monstering” features World War Z, the authors note the heuristic value of understanding how the rhetoric of autoimmunity influences mediated perceptions of Israeli and Palestinian conflicts.     

沈阳二战盟军战俘营医院旧址考析

本文通过盟军战俘的日记、回忆录、历史图片、美国档案馆解密的官方文件等一手史料,对沈阳二战盟军战俘营医院的设立、管理制度、医疗条件等内容进行了历史考证,力求还原历史的本来面目,探究沈阳二战盟军战俘营医院旧址的历史价值和现实意义,为沈阳二战盟军战俘营医院旧址的保护、利用和宣传提供必要的理论支撑。     

Epideictic Rhetoric in the Service of War: George W. Bush on Iraq and the 60th Anniversary of the Victory over Japan

This essay explores the relationship between epideictic discourse and war through the analysis of George W. Bush's August 20, 2005, address at the Naval Air Station near San Diego, ostensibly to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory over Japan. The case also serves as an exemplar for how Bush routinely interwove epideictic appeals with collective memories of World War II in order to promote the Iraq war and deflect criticism of his policies there. Bush praised the greatest generation and linked it to the current generation; blamed and dehumanized enemies of the past and present; advocated for war based on “lessons” from the past; and reinforced a shared identity to instill both obligation and confidence.     

From Belgium to The Hague via Berlin and Moscow: documenting war crimes and the quest for international justice, 1919-2019

ABSTRACT

Exploring new sources on the Great War a hundred years after it ended is a unique and exciting experience for any First World War historian. The very nature of the documents that we are dealing with in the present case makes it even more thrilling: hundreds of investigation and prosecution files documenting the invasion and occupation of Belgium, produced by both military and civil jurisdictions in an effort to prosecute war criminals. These fascinating records – repatriated to Belgium from Moscow in 2002 – offer new material on issues such as the German atrocities and everyday life under the occupation, but they also provide highly valuable insights into the history of international criminal law. This exploratory article will trace the unexpected trajectory of these archives, contextualise their creation and highlight some of the treasures they contain. In doing so, this article will attempt to discuss the thorny issue of archive repatriation and the questions this raises from an archival and historical perspective. It also seeks to show that the establishment of an International Criminal Court, despite the fact that it is now being called into question more than ever before, rests on solid and far-reaching historical foundations.     

Archives and trails from the First World War: repurposing imperial records of North African and Indian soldiers in Palestine and Syria, 1917-1923

ABSTRACT

First World War scholars more or less agree on the limitations imposed by archival sources on the study of North African and Indian troops. Conventional methods to find ‘the voice’ of the soldier do not apply in this case and the scarcity of records partly explains why so little is written. So, what opportunities are there in such an endeavour? This article argues for the need to decolonise military archives from the Great War era. That is to say, to use information that was originally gathered to serve narrow military interests as a means to understand the war experiences of the colonial soldiers. These sources, largely official records, bearing stamps of the past regimes, cannot be separated from the context or intent of their production. Nonetheless, they must not be overlooked as new historiographical demands make it necessary to read colonial archives for evidence of their context. Failing to draw from, and reflect upon, colonial era records on the Great War, despite their shortcomings, is tantamount to condemning valuable aspects of global history to oblivion. In turn, acknowledging these shortcomings, paradoxically, lends greater value to such sources as the colonial context in which they were produced becomes observable.     

The Tolstoy Foundation: Library and Archives

SUMMARY

This article describes valuable and largely unknown aspects of the library and archival holdings of The Tolstoy Foundation, Inc., located in Valley Cottage, New York, about fifty miles north of Manhattan, across the Hudson River in Rockland County. The core of the library is the Lembich collection, consisting of approximately 10,000 volumes of a Shanghai Russian-language lending library, donated by the widow of its founder, the prominent émigré publisher Mechislav Lembich. The archives contain materials relating both to the Tolstoy family (including Leo Tolstoy, whose daughter, Alexandra, established the foundation), and to the activities of the foundation in assisting Russian émigrés and refugees from the U.S.S.R. during and after the Second World War.     

From Surgeon General's bookshelf to National Library of Medicine: a brief history

The National Library of Medicine originated as a few books in the office of the army's surgeon general, Joseph Lovell, between 1818 and 1836. It became the nation's largest medical library after the Civil War under the direction of John Shaw Billings and began publishing the Index-Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon General's Office and preparing the Index Medicus. After Billings retired in 1895, the library marked time as army medical officers were rotated through as directors until modernization began under Harold Wellington Jones during World War II. during the directorship of Frank B. Rogers (1949-1963), who introduced MEDLARS, guided the move to a new building in Bethesda, and revitalized other operations, the institution received statutory authority as the National Library of Medicine within the Public Health Service (1956). By 1965, which was marked by the passage of the Medical Library Assistance Act, the library had again regained a position of world leadership.     

Books of the Month

Maurice Horn (ed.) The World Encyclopedia of Comics (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1976—$30.00 for trade edition; $42.50 for augmented library edition

Anthony Rhodes Propaganda: The Art of Persuasion, World War II (New York: Chelsea House, 1976— $30.00     

无线射频识别技术对现代图书馆服务及管理的影响

起源于二战时期的无线射频识别技术,依托于当前快速发展的电子信息技术和集成电路技术的发展,在各行各业得到了广泛应用。文章旨在分析无线射频识别技术在图书馆领域的应用,从应用角度分析了该技术对现代图书馆服务及管理的积极影响。     

Locating Refugees

War, political persecution, and human rights abuses all drive millions from their homes. Some qualify for asylum as refugees, often after spending years in camps and intermediary locations before attaining asylum. The United States has been criticized for taking in relatively few refugees as well as for playing a role in the conditions that lead people to seek asylum. Once in the United States, though, how are refugees constructed in community discourses? Is an international or local frame more prominent? The United Nations established World Refugee Day to bring attention to the problems refugees face. This study tracks US coverage of World Refugee Day, analyzing it both quantitatively and qualitatively, to determine how refugees as people and as a political issue are constructed in the US press. Discursive features and measures of framing are discussed as indicators of journalistic practices of newsmaking and localization.     

Tabloid Journalist as P.O.W.

In 1941 Australian tabloid journalist Dorothy Gordon Jenner was caught up in the Japanese siege of Hong Kong and was incarcerated in the Stanley Internment Camp. During her internment Jenner kept a clandestine record of daily life written in pencil on Bronco brand toilet paper and kept hidden in the heels of her shoes. To date her fragmented diary and notes have defied analysis. This paper provides a reading of Jenner's personal wartime testimonio through the frame of tabloid journalism to expose how the tabloid genre—Jenner's stock-in-trade as a journalist before the war—became the framework for her personal testimony during World War II. By interpreting Jenner's private diary and notes as testimonio journalism this paper exposes the flow of the tabloid vernacular style of journalism between private and public discourses.     

“What is Less or More than a Touch?” Multimedia Classics and Hypermedia Hermeneutics

Hypermedia is so diverse that it is in need of documentation, analysis, and methodology. For more than 20 years, online and offline applications of hypermedia technology have combined text, image, video, animation, and sound into a total work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk). This essay provides an insight into my research project, Multimedia Classics and Hypermedia Hermeneutics, focusing on why it is so difficult to describe and analyze hypermedia applications on cultural topics. It suggests how the functions, contents, and forms of hypermedia could be analyzed; to do so, it looks at Notzimmer, an interactive website story about a knockdown furniture construction kit designed by Jewish refugee Mauritius Ehrlich during World War II.     

Character sketches: The curious propaganda careers of Mary,Jane, and Willie

This article draws on the concepts of narrative interactivity and closure to investigate three World War II-era print media characters. The analysis details how Al Parker’s Mary & Jane and Norman Rockwell’s Willie Gillis developed a perceived authenticity that invited fans to envision the propaganda drawings as having lives beyond their artistic origins. The essay concludes that the narrative arcs of these characters prefigured the imagined relationships that subsequent generations developed with televised characters.     

Lessons of a Decade

Summary

In 1987, a new two-semester freshmen-level course in World Civilizations was piloted at Washington State University. Included within the course was a library component offering the question analysis that seemed appropriate to a richly historical, interdisciplinary course. The authors involved with the course from the very beginning, discuss their decade of work on the World Civ project in terms of the project's successes and unrealized hopes, its collegial component, and its growth and adaptation over the years (including examples of library assignments). As a university-wide project, World Civilizations was a forerunner of other projects nationwide and an outstanding example of librarians collaborating with teaching faculty to promote instruction.