October: A Month for Preserving History

“…if you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.” Michael Crichton

My coauthor and I started out this month by drawing readers’ attention to the fact that this October marked the tenth annual celebration of  Family History Month (introduced by Senator Orrin Hatch in a Congressional resolution dated September 12, 2001).

October is also American Archives Month , a fact I discovered just a few days ago when, with Family History Month still on my mind, I followed the link to a post tweeted by  @achivesinfo and retweeted it. It turns out @archivesinfo had never heard of Family History Month, and was delighted to learn about it. We had a friendly little Twitter-chat, agreed that these two concurrent month-long celebrations have a lot in common, and wondered if maybe next year the two might share some of their celebrations or work together somehow.

Whether or not that happens, I think  it’s great that both family history and the important work of archivists are being given the kind of attention they deserve.

It’s important, and good, to know we’re part of a tree.

JH