andrew @andrewjbtw@digipres.club

I guess my other takeaway is that the whole conversation was a reminder of how many things that my mom experienced early on in life (war, occupation, TB outbreaks) fall into the "unprecedented" category for me, and what a privileged position that is.

Anyway, I don't really have a point in this thread, except maybe that even though there's a universality to medicine, applying as it does to all humans, local experience still makes a difference. Even health care systems considered best-in-class can struggle with problems they've never seen.

My mom felt like there was a change in the later 70s, when doctors started to seem more confident in their interpretation of the results of the TB skin test. She attributes this in part to the arrival of refugees from the Vietnam War, as doctors began to see more patients who had TB exposure earlier in life. Plus there was an increase in doctors who were actually from countries with higher prevalence of TB.

Because of their previous exposures, my mom and some of her siblings got TB test results that doctors weren't sure how to interpret. My youngest aunt was made to isolate herself for over a year even though she wasn't infectious. She had come to the US to be a teacher, but since it wasn't clear she'd ever be allowed to do that, she went to library school and spent her career in public and community college libraries instead.

I was talking to my mom recently about TB and testing and learned that it caused problems for her family when they came to the US in the 1960s and 1970s. Basically, American doctors had not had much experience with the disease, as it was no longer as common in the US as it once was, and certainly not as common as it was in Taiwan.

My mom grew up in Taiwan during and after WWII. Tuberculosis was fairly common there, and two of her older siblings got bad cases, one of whom died young. The other, my oldest aunt, lived into her 80s but had lasting lung problems.

On the one hand, I'm wondering if anyone would complain if I scanned printouts I made from microfilm of 17th century documents in 1998, given there are restrictions on scans made from the same microfilm and put in a subscription database.

On the other hand, a large organization with scanned stuff is not worrying about such things. I guess a difference is they own physical, published copies.

A collection of plague literature

https://blog.suppliedtitle.org/2020/03/30/a-collection-of-plague-literature.html

When this is all over, you just know that someone out there will try to donate a roll of toilet paper to a museum or archives.

Just went all out to destroy .DS_Store files with

find . -type f -name ".DS_Store" -delete -print

and it briefly restored a feeling of normalcy to my world.

Meanwhile my dad joked about remote meaning you can work all the time and it was TOO REAL (but not something I'm actually expected to do).

I am happy to report that the university issued a statement that they are committed to maintaining staff pay, albeit without saying what it means for those on contracts, as some co-workers are.

I feel fortunate to be able to do most of my core work remotely, but also feel exhausted. I've been at my parents' for almost two weeks and probably would be told I couldn't visit if I weren't already here. At some point I'll go home and we have to prepare for that.

thus ends another normal week of normal work hours under conditions of normalcy

Starting to look like there will be an uptick in digital repository usage (and a need to watch more closely for issues) as people who had depositing data/cleaning metadata/finishing up data migrations started years ago/etc. find those lower priority items rising in their to do lists.

Financial support is definitely a start but could we also get a holiday? It's not like weeks and weekends have been normal and we all should act like they have been.

Save money during the winter intersession: libraries close, despite demonstrated need from people who do year-round research.

Save people from pandemic: libraries are among the last to close, despite being deserted and avoided by people avoiding public spaces.

WFH is way more stressful when the world is shutting down all around you.

There's a small amount of email I wrote in my last job that I wish I'd saved, such as my attempt to evaluate the idea of acquiring and preserving a copy of the bitcoin blockchain as a museum artifact.

Officially remote for at least two weeks.

Maybe don't use the phrase "there will be opportunities for breakout sessions" in your coronavirus hackathon announcement? Or not hold an in-person gathering?