A disconnected Scottish son

The BBC recently interviewed Scottish author Ian Rankin about the commemorative fate of Scottish-born author Italy inhabitant Muriel Spark. He made some interesting observations about Scotland's literary heritage:

Rankin said aficionados loved Spark and during her life she was lauded by some of the greatest literary figures around. So why is she not better known and celebrated? ...Scotland has been bad in the past at recognising writers and artists who leave [emphasis the blogger's]. Many writers have had to leave to find themselves, to get a sense of themselves and to find their true vocation as a writer.

Gesualda Belmonte with her aunt
Gaetana (Nangano) Mastropaolo
and an unidentified relative
in White Plains, New York

How extraordinary then, to find a personal example of this Scotland trait in the same timeframe as the Rankin interview was recorded. It shrank the world to a state of companionship, and was a reminder of the ability of libraries to link their threads of knowledge to satisfy even the most unlikely queries.

Researching an Italian family in New York led to an unexpected discovery. In the early 1930s, the Gaetano Belmonte / Carolina Nangano household, with eldest daughter Gesualda, took in a boarder named Roderick Robb Black. 

Roderick, like the Belmonte family, was a migrant; a Scot who had arrived in New York on The Astoria in June 1906 as a five year old boy with his mother Margaret and siblings to join their husband and father, John Black.
[source: The National Archives, TNA_BT27_0486_00_0019_P_0004F]. 

John Black died in 1910, nine years after arrival in New York from Scotland. He had left his young family of seven children twice - spending five years on his own in a different country - and at the end of a difficult life. He was 57 years old. 

1920 US Census Image from Find My Past

By the time Roderick and Jessie (Gesualda) met, her parents were known as Thomas and Carlotta Belmont, and those of her siblings who were also Italian-born had anglicised their names.

1930 US Census Image from Find My Past

1933 Marriage Certificate of 
Jessie Belmont and
Roderick Robb Black
New York City Municipal Archives

After his brief first-time marriage, Jessie became Roderick's second wife. Jessie's sister Mary and Roderick's brother John junior were witnesses.

Both John Black senior and John Black junior were poets. The younger John was also the literary editor of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle and after several years of effort, he was eventually able to publish his father's Collected Poems. 

The National Library of Scotland did not know of his work, but almost 100 years after its publication, it was possible to find this poetry using a link provided by the National Library of Australia in Trove. The Library of Congress had made it available to the Open Library initiative for digitisation. 

This member of John Black's extended family gratefully used the virtual interconnections between libraries globally to track it down. 

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL6622035M/Collected_poems

John Black senior did not see his poetry published - other occupations were necessary during his lifetime to keep his family safe. He may be remembered more for his ownership of the Palace Hotel in his home town of Inverness during the 1890s, but the literary legacy of this disconnected Scottish son lives on in  virtual imprint. 

It's not all GLAMorous

In September, the Australian Centre for Broadband Innovation, CSIRO and the Smart Services Co-operative Research Centre investigated innovation in Australia's GLAM sector - Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums. The resulting paper is welcome and useful for providing avenues of strategic thinking to all of Australia's heritage collecting institutions.

But some entities are ignored. Despite acknowledging the importance of volunteers, historical societies, which are a source of volunteers for local museums and have a significant stake in the outcomes proposed by the discussion paper, are overlooked.

Historical societies operate in the interstices between the large cultural heritage institutions, and they often supply the workforce necessary to keep small museums and other cultural agencies operating. They engage with our history, and encourage their local communities to do so, on a weekly basis.

I would argue that they are a critical part of the GLAM sector, for two key reasons. Firstly, historical societies collate local knowledge out of the distributed resources held by libraries, archives and museums, while waiting for those larger services to aggregate content into generous services like Trove. Volunteers contribute personal resources, mainly time but also skills previously attained in the workforce, to form local collections of knowledge useful to current and previous residents, shire councils, students and historians. On this scale, the Societies are achieving what the CSIRO paper recommends - they are already "central to community wellbeing."

Secondly, historical societies care for the record of the built environment. They are 'on the ground', able to witness, advocate against and document our disappearing heritage as it is dismantled - brick, iron, stone, soil, timber, glass and even concrete. 

Recently dismantled historic crane at Dry Dock, South Tweed Heads, TH10-20

Homes, businesses, government offices, and industries are often unique, especially for places not in the metropoli, and therefore have a critical need to be curated and disclosed. A local museum is a useful vehicle for this purpose, but they are under threat themselves. This evidentiary knowledge of heritage is really the core strength and offering of historical societies, as well-managed local studies collections do not seem to be the norm.

The paper excludes university libraries although they do curate research which has public appeal. Trove steps into the breach here - its liberal inclusion guidelines mean that Trove is an excellent starting point for finding elusive special collections, no matter which campus they are tucked away on. Libraries such that at the University of Melbourne are helping to relieve the major digitisation effort still to be completed: there is a ".. need to prioritise digitisation initiatives according to end-user needs and preservation urgency as the task is massive... some organisations have digitised many things but there are many that will not be in the near future, things that should be digitised and are not being addressed..." [p.16]

Similarly Trove made a strategic choice to include links to the out-of-copyright Australian monographs digitised by Open Library and the HathiTrust - global partnerships which make content more accessible, no matter its country of origin. The wealth of material is extraordinarily beneficial for use as part of Australia's "intellectual infrastructure" [Schwirtlich, p.22]

http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044082368820

Trove only goes so far. It does not provide digital access to many town newspapers which are bread-and-butter content for local history. Historical societies help to fill the gap, they too are part of the intellectual infrastructure of Australia - it's not just the GLAMs. But most lack digital infrastructure. To proceed to digital innovation, there is an ineluctable need for recognition.