Archival Values: Essays in Honor of Mark A. Greene. Christine Weideman and Mary A. Caldera, eds. Chicago, IL: American Library Association, 2019. 300p. Paper, $55.99 (ISBN 978-0838946503).

Abstract

How might a book review—or a book itself for that matter—change in scope or meaning if its readers are under quarantine? For those of us living in an altered state due to the COVID-19 public health crisis, nothing is as it was. So why should reading and reviewing a book like Archival Values: Essays in Honor of Mark A. Greene be any different? When libraries, archives, historical societies, and college classrooms closed to the public to slow the spread of a deadly disease, many archivists and librarians went into exile. Our reading rooms and our researchers, our collections and our facilities, were off limits. For some of us, our very livelihoods are at risk (or worse, were laid waste) by these closures. What would Mark Greene have said? What would he have done? And for those who don’t yet know who Mark Greene was, why do his archival values matter? And why now?