GODORT Connection

Alabama Library Association Government Documents Roundtable April 2019 Volume 2, Issue 2

GODORT Connection Moderator’s Corner Welcome to another issue of the GODORT Connection, the online newsletter of the Government Documents Round Table of the Alabama Library Association! Thanks to Kelly Wilson (Troy University) and Liza Weisbrod (Auburn University), this issue contains articles with a historical perspective. 2019 is the year for observing the 100 th anniversary of the Treaty of Versailles (following World War I) and of the approval of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (women’s right to vote). The Foreign Relations of the United States is a very important ongoing publication of the U.S. Department of State often used by researchers in history, political science, and beyond.

I am happy to report that, despite the small number of members, this round table is actively involved in things such as webinars and convention programs. On January 16th, Moderator Tim Dodge presented the following webinar: “Reliable Factual Country Information: The W orld Factbook and State Department Travel Advisories”. If you missed it, this webinar is freely available online here. I am very happy to announce that GODORT hosted a program at the recent ALLA annual convention in Point Clear. We had an amazing attendance at the “Entrepreneurship for the People: Using Government Documents to Conduct Business Research” which featured Tyler Martindale, Business and Economics Librarian (Auburn University), as speaker.

The annual convention was also the time when new ALLA officers are installed. Continuing in office will be Tim Dodge (Auburn University) as Moderator. Currently, The Moderator-Elect and Secretary Positions are open. We look forward to furthering GODORT’s mission for 2019-2020.

Inside this issue ALLA GODORT Steering Committee….….…….2 100th Anniversary of the Treaty of Versailles...…3 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment....…...4 Foreign Relations of the United States…….……..5

Tim Dodge ALLA Moderator

Questions for the Community…………………….6

Officers

Tim Dodge, GODORT Moderator 2019 - 2020 He has been employed at Auburn University Libraries since 1992, starting out as a government documents reference librarian. Since 2000, he has been serving as History and since 2008 as Political Science Subject Specialist in the Reference Department at Auburn. Tim held previous positions as a special collections librarian and archivist, serials librarian, and reference librarian at the University of New Hampshire (twice) and at Barry University (Miami, Fla.). Tim has held numerous offices in the Alabama Library Association including President (2004-2005) and Moderator-

Elect and Moderator of GODORT in 1994-1996. He has also held numerous offices in the Alabama Association of College and Research Libraries including President (20002001 and 2008-2009), and is currently President of the Southeastern Library Association. Under the name Dr. Hepcat, Tim Dodge has hosted the Golden Oldies radio show on WEGL – Auburn FM 91.1 since May 1998.

His radio career extends back to 1975, and Tim is the author of The School of Arizona Dranes: Gospel Music Pioneer (Lexington Books, 2013).

OPEN POSITION: GODORT Moderator-Elect, 20192020 We are currently looking for someone to volunteer for the Alabama Library Association’s GODORT Moderator-Elect position. According to the GODORT Bylaws, the official role of the Moderator-Elect is as follows: “The Moderator-elect shall perform the duties of the Moderator in the absence of the Moderator; shall be a member of the Steering Committee; shall be responsible for the program at

the annual meeting; shall serve as Membership Chairperson; and shall serve as an aide to the Moderator.”

Furthermore, the Moderator-Elect takes part in the Steering Committee which provides leadership for the round table, which includes meeting regularly.

For more information, please contact Tim Dodge at dodgeti@auburn.edu.

OPEN POSITION: GODORT Secretary 2019 - 2020 We are currently looking for someone to volunteer for the Alabama Library Association’s GODORT Secretary position.

According to the GODORT Bylaws, the official role of the secretary is as follows: “The Secretary-Treasurer shall handle correspondence, keep minutes of general and Steering Committee meetings, be empowered to receive and authorize the disbursement of funds as approved

2

by the Association treasurer, and keep necessary and proper records.”

Furthermore, the Secretary takes part in the Steering Committee which provides leadership for the round table, which includes meeting regularly.

For more information, please contact Tim Dodge at dodgeti@auburn.edu.

100th Anniversary of the Treaty of Versailles By: Kelly Wilson, Troy University

On January 18, 1919, the Paris Peace Conference began in an effort to discuss reparations and the aftermath of World War One. Several months later, on June 28, 1919, the Allies and Germany officially ended the first world war by signing the Treaty of Versailles. Unfortunately, the United States of America found many issues with this treaty and refused to sign it. According to the US Senate’s web site, this was the first time that “the Senate rejected a peace treaty”. Later, in 1921, the U.S. made its own agreement with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian government.

Under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was subjected to “strict punitive measures” and the new government in Germany was required “to surrender approximately 10 percent of its prewar territory in Europe and all of its overseas possessions” (U.S. Office of the Historian). The total cost for Germany reached 132 billion gold Reichmarks (or 32 billion U.S. dollars). Some Holocaust historians, such as Timothy Snyder in his book On Tyranny, argue that these harsh penalties, and the debt they incurred on the German people, were part of the reason why Adolf Hitler was able to gain such drastic control over the Germans.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the United States legislators were greatly divided on whether to sign the Treaty. One of the primary issues that many legislators had with the Treaty was that it created the League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations. Many argued that under the League, the U.S. would lose control and would be subjecting itself to the whims of other nations. This argument was shared by Henry Cabot Lodge who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. More information on his reservations can be found online at the Office of the Historian’s site, on the site for the National Archives, and on the site for the United States Senate.

President Woodrow Wilson pushed hard for the U.S. to sign this Treaty as “he believed it would prevent future wars” (Office of the Historian).

Unfortunately, the majority of U.S. legislators did not share his view point. The final vote for the U.S. took place on March 19, 1920, and the Treaty fell short of passing by only 7 votes. A year later, on

August 25, 1921, the U.S. signed its own treaty with Germany which essentially covered all points of the Treaty of Versailles with the exception of leaving out all mention of the League of Nations.

For more information on the Treaty of Versailles, there are many fascinating primary documents that can be found at the Library of Congress. Some of the information included covers newspapers, speech recordings, exhibitions, photographs, prints, and a selected bibliography of government documents and secondary sources.

Image retrieved from https://www.loc.gov/resource/ collgdc.gc000037/?sp=498&r=0.801,0,2.601,1.451,0

3

100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

By Kelly Wilson, Troy University

Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony. Image retrieved from the NPS.

Carrie Chapman Catt. Clara Barton.

Susan B. Anthony. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Alice Stone Blackwell. Mary A. Livermore. Julia Ward Howe. These women and countless more fought for over 70 years for women to gain the right to vote. Through numerous lectures, public protests, marches, and even civil disobedience, women finally gained the right to vote when the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed by the House of Representatives on May 21, 1919, and then by the Senate two weeks later (U.S. National Archives & Records Administration). It would take another full year (August 18, 1920) for this bill to be ratified, a full 42 years after it was introduced into Congress in 1878.

Sadly, though the nation ratified the 19th Amendment in 1920, which made it legal across the entire country, Alabama did not ratify the 19th Amendment until September 8, 1953. In fact, according to a report found on the National Park Service (NPS) site, Alabama actually rejected the amendment on September 22, 1919.

According to the NPS, one of the possible reasons behind this rejection was that there were many women in Alabama (such as the Women’s Anti-Ratification League) who did not support suffrage and felt that women, instead of being involved in politics, “should be more concerned about raising families” (National Park Service).

There are many government sites where you can find more information about the 19th Amendment and the key players who made this amendment possible. The Library of Congress provides access to numerous documents concerning the 19th Amendment including papers from many of the key suffragists and

reformers, a collection of documents from the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Records from the National Women’s Party, and even sheet music from the women’s suffrage era (specifically, 1838-1923). The site for the House of Representatives provides a short synopsis of the 19th Amendment which includes a few quotes from those both for and against the amendment as well as Susan B. Anthony’s Petition to the 43rd Congress and information on Victoria Woodhull who, in 1871, became the first woman to address the House committee.

Finally, the U.S. Senate’s site provides information on the 19th Amendment which includes a brief history of how this amendment came to be. To quote one of the suffragists, Maud Younger, throughout the lobbying process it was discovered that “[m]others continue to have a strong influence over their sons...[s]ome married men listen to their mothers more than their wives”. Because of this, many lobbyists turned their attention to the mothers of legislators in order to change votes.

Today, complete gender equality across all spectrums of life is still a dream; however, we are far closer to seeing that dream fulfilled than we have ever been before. The Women’s Right to Vote movement, the case of Roe v. W ade (1973), and, more recently, the Me Too Movement are all examples of how voting, marching, and speaking out can bring changes in communities and nations.

Image retrieved from California State Archives.

4 Image retrieved from the NPS.

The Foreign Relations of the United States

By Liza Weisbrod, Auburn University

References

The Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series documents the foreign policy of the United States. Begun during the administration of Abraham Lincoln, the series now comprises more than 450 volumes. The volumes include documents from the State and Defense Departments, National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, and other agencies as well as the private papers of individuals involved with formulating foreign policy. They increasingly include declassified materials.1 The statute authorizing the publication of FRUS, the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, requires that the series be a “thorough, accurate, and reliable documentary record of major United States foreign policy decisions and significant United States diplomatic activity.” (22 U.S.C. 4351, et seq.) Choosing the documents for each volume requires the editors to balance security with transparency. Too much openness can damage national security, but too little transparency can damage the legitimacy of the FRUS series. The statute requires that the “published record shall omit no facts which were of major importance in reaching a decision, and nothing shall be omitted for the purpose of concealing a defect of policy.”

For the first 45 years of publication, FRUS volumes were nearly contemporaneous with the events they described. Beginning in the early 20 century, however, the gap between publication date and the documented events began to widen. As the number of agencies and bureaus involved with foreign policy multiplied (along with the official documentation) the time spent gathering, researching, and reviewing material increased. The latest volume, published in December 2018, focused on the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan between 1977 and 1980, a gap of over 40 years.

Although the volumes are by necessity selective, many significant events of the 19th and 20th century appear in the pages of FRUS. The first volume, published in 1861, documented the United States government’s foreign policy at the beginning of the Civil War, especially its attempts to prevent recognition of the Confederacy by foreign nations. Events such as the Russian Revolution2, Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia3, and the Bay of Pigs Invasion4 appear in later volumes.

For your users who are researching foreign policy or major diplomatic incidents of the 19 and 20 century, FRUS is an excellent starting place. Many libraries have paper copies, but web versions and downloadable ebooks are also available: th

th

th



Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State (https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments)  Full text-searchable web versions and downloadable ebooks.



University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries Digital Collections (https:// uwdc.library.wisc.edu/collections/FRUS/)  375 volumes covering events from 1861-1958/1960.

1. For a detailed history of FRUS, see McAllister, William B., Joshua Botts, Peter Cozzens, and Aaron W. Marrs. Toward “Thorough, Accurate, and Reliable”: A History of the Foreign Relations of the United States Series. Washington, D.C.: Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, 2015. http://purl.fdlp.gov/GPO/ gpo66202.

2. Joseph V. Fuller, ed., Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1918.

Russia, v.

1–3 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1931-1932), https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/wilson.

3. Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic papers, 1935: Volume 1.

General: The Near East and Africa (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1953), https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/ frus1935v01.

4. Louis J. Smith, ed., Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Volume X, Cuba, January 1961-September 1962 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1997), https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus196163v10.

5

Questions for the Government Documents Community!

Alabama Library Association GODORT Provides a forum for librarians working with government documents. Objectives also include the promotion of availability, use and bibliographic control of documents; and the promotion of communication between documents librarians and other librarians. GODORT is an affiliate of the American Library Association. Membership is open to any member of the Association who subscribes to the objectives of the roundtable.

Submit Your Work

Unfortunately, for the Fall 2018 Issue (October), we received no responses to the posed questions. Sorry! For this issue, I have added one new question and kept the two unanswered questions from the last issue.

Please feel free to answer one, two, or all of the questions!

Questions Posed for this issue: 1. What topics would you like to read about in upcoming issues of the GODORT Connection?

2. Is anyone maintaining a STATE (Alabama) government documents collection aside from the Alabama Department of Archives and History?

3. Are you aware of any Alabama K-12 schools using government documents collections as a part of the teaching/ learning process? If so, would you please explain? If not, what would you recommend as a starting point to building a lesson plan around a government documents collection?

4. What question(s) would you like to pose to the Alabama government documents community? (These will appear in the Summer 2019 issue around July.)

Access the Google Form through this link.

Do you have an interesting experience with local, state or federal government information? Write up an article and share it with us!

You can send it to: Tim Dodge: dodgeti@auburn.edu

Kelly Wilson: kelly.m.wilson2011@gmail.com

What’s Happening?

New Publication! Our own Tim Dodge (Auburn University) has published a new book entitled Rhythm & Blues Goes Calypso through Lexington Books.  We are currently seeking volunteers for both the Moderator-Elect and Secretary positions for ALLA GODORT. Please contact Tim Dodge (dodgeti@auburn.edu) for more information. 