The Wild Scramble for Documents

2019 ◽  
pp. 68-92
Author(s):  
Kathy Peiss
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Public Research ◽  
Strategic Information ◽  
Military Operation ◽  
Intelligence Gathering ◽  
Us Army ◽  
Research Libraries

Intelligence gathering and assessment took on increased importance after D-Day. OSS librarians and information specialists were now part of a military operation as members of US Army documents teams called T-Forces. They scoured targets for operational or strategic information, records documenting German war crimes, and scientific reports. Books and other publications were often swept up in these collecting efforts. POW interrogations provided information about the removal of endangered German collections, many of which were found by Allied troops in caves and mines. The army teams and OSS agents engaged in mass confiscations and removals, even of materials with few intelligence-related uses. Americans distinguished their behavior from Nazi pillaging and Soviet trophy loot, respecting university and public research libraries and rescuing European cultural heritage. Despite ethical questions, the logic of collecting extended to books, periodicals, and even whole libraries.

Back to basics

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 188-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon Lucky ◽  
Craig Harkema
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Academic Libraries ◽  
Community Organizations ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Research Libraries ◽  
Community Needs ◽  
Strategic Goals ◽  
Active Research ◽  
Allocation Decisions ◽  
Heritage Collections

Purpose To describe how academic libraries can support digital humanities (DH) research by leveraging established library values and strengths to provide support for preservation and access and physical and digital spaces for researchers and communities, specifically focused on cultural heritage collections. Design/methodology/approach The experiences of the authors in collaborating with DH scholars and community organizations is discussed with references to the literature. The paper suggests how research libraries can use existing expertise and infrastructure to support the development of digital cultural heritage collections and DH research. Findings Developing working collaborations with DH researchers and community organizations is a productive way to engage in impactful cultural heritage digital projects. It can aid resource allocation decisions to support active research, strategic goals, community needs and the development and preservation of unique, locally relevant collections. Libraries do not need to radically transform themselves to do this work, they have established strengths that can be effective in meeting the challenges of DH research. Practical implications Academic libraries should strategically direct the work they already excel at to support DH research and work with scholars and communities to build collections and infrastructure to support these initiatives. Originality/value The paper recommends practical approaches, supported by literature and local examples, that could be taken when building DH and community-engaged cultural heritage projects.

Making Killers: Hate Training and the US Army’s War in Europe, 1942-5

2020 ◽  
pp. 002200942091108
Author(s):  
Benjamin M. Schneider
Keyword(s):  
War Crimes ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Us Army ◽  
Military Justice ◽  
German Army ◽  
War Criminals ◽  
The Us ◽  
Marginal Effectiveness ◽  
Second World

During the Second World War, the US Army was faced with the problem of turning average civilians into soldiers capable of destroying the German army. To ease their adjustment to their new duties and overcome what US officers saw as the unsuitability of Americans for soldiering, the Army Ground Forces adopted a training regimen designed to produce an ‘induced urge to hate the enemy’. This training would make soldiers into enthusiastic killers by portraying the enemy as brutal and ruthless and warfare as a fundamentally lawless activity. As the war went on, hate training increasingly emphasized German atrocities, breaking down the distinctions between soldier and civilian and painting all Germans as potential threats. This antinomian approach achieved only marginal effectiveness in getting US troops to kill, but had dire results for military justice. Blurring the lines between lawful killing and murder, the army’s hate training program crippled its ability to police its soldiers. As violence against German civilians and POWs mounted, many officers felt these war crimes were the natural and inevitable result of the army’s training regimen. Unwilling to hold soldiers responsible, confessed war criminals were only lightly punished, explicitly because the Army believed they had only acted on their training.

scholarly journals Off-Site Storage and Special Collections: A Study in Use and Impact in ARL Libraries in the United States

2015 ◽  
Vol 76 (5) ◽  
pp. 652-670 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Priddle ◽  
Laura McCann
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Libraries ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Research Resources ◽  
Storage Facilities

Special collections libraries collect and preserve materials of intellectual and cultural heritage, providing access to unique research resources. As their holdings continue to expand, special collections in research libraries confront increased space pressures. Off-site storage facilities, used frequently by research libraries for general circulating collections, offer a solution to these pressures. Using data from a survey of special collections directors from ARL member libraries, this article examines both the current use of off-site storage facilities and its impact on core special collections activities. This study provides a foundation for what has been an underexplored area and identifies areas for further research.

The Nature of Strategic Intelligence

2009 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Xu ◽  
Roland Kaye
Keyword(s):  
Technology Development ◽  
External Environment ◽  
Radar System ◽  
Competitive Intelligence ◽  
Strategic Information ◽  
Intelligence Gathering ◽  
Scanning Process ◽  
Strategic Intelligence

This chapter discusses the nature of strategic intelligence and the challenges of systematically scanning and processing strategic information. It reveals that strategic intelligence practice concentrates on competitive intelligence gathering, non-competitive related intelligence have not yet been systematically scanned and processed. Much of the intelligence is collected through informal and manual based systems. Turning data into analyzed, meaningful intelligence for action is limited to a few industry leaders. The chapter proposed a corporate intelligence solution, which comprises of three key intelligence functions, namely organizational-wide intelligence scanning, knowledge enriched intelligent refining, and specialist support. A corporate radar system (CRS) for external environment scanning, which is a part of the organizational-wide intelligence scanning process is explored in light of latest technology development. Implementation issues are discussed. The chapter develops insight of strategic intelligence, and the solution could significantly enhance a manager’s and a company’s sensibility and capability in dealing with external opportunities and threats.

Acquisitions on a Grand Scale

2019 ◽  
pp. 93-121
Author(s):  
Kathy Peiss
Keyword(s):  
National Interest ◽  
Industrial Scale ◽  
Military Government ◽  
Library Of Congress ◽  
American Military ◽  
Us Army ◽  
Research Libraries ◽  
War Department ◽  
Research Institutes ◽  
American Research

After the war, the new Librarian of Congress Luther Evans worked with State and War Department officials on a plan to send library agents to Europe. The agents would acquire every book published in Germany and occupied countries and distribute them to American research libraries. The Library of Congress Mission to Europe was a unique collecting effort that acquired 1.5 million books, periodicals, and other materials. Initially a book-purchasing plan, it evolved into an industrial-scale acquisitions program under the American military government in Germany. It seized works from research institutes, specialized libraries, and Nazi collections, helped US Army document centers screen confiscated works, and acquired materials deemed to have no intelligence value. In its short existence, the mission embodied a new commitment among American research libraries, that large international collections were necessary to serve the national interest.

scholarly journals Unusual Suspects: The Case of Insider Theft in Research Libraries and Special Collections

2012 ◽  
Vol 73 (6) ◽  
pp. 556-568 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd Samuelson ◽  
Laura Sare ◽  
Catherine Coker
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Research Libraries ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Potential Loss

The widespread theft of collection materials, including rare and unique items, continues to be an issue of great concern to libraries of all types. The potential loss of such items threatens not only an institution’s operations but, in many cases, global cultural heritage. Despite an increasingly open attitude among institutions regarding sharing information about lost items and suspected perpetrators, little scholarship has examined such thefts quantitatively in an effort to draw conclusions about how such incidents occur and how best to prevent them. This paper describes a project that examines data from over twenty years of reported library theft cases in libraries and special collections to determine how frequently such losses are perpetrated by library insiders.

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