Robert LaRose speaks with Emily Wagner about her extensive collection of written family history and photographs dating back to the mid-19th century, as well as how to preserve important family memories.
Voiceover 0:00
DC Public Library Podcast is made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and is a production of the Labs at DC Public Library.
Robert 0:24
You're listening to DC Public Library Podcast recorded from the Labs recording studio in the historic, modernized Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown Washington, DC. This is Memories on Tap, where we highlight the stories of people who use the Memory Lab, the library's DIY digital preservation space. I'm your host, Robert LaRose, and I'm a librarian in the Labs at DCPL. As part of the Labs department at MLK Library, we have a do-it-yourself workstation for digitizing video and audio recordings in a variety of formats, and for scanning photographs, 35 millimeter slides and negatives. This space is known as the Memory Lab. Since 2016, residents of the DC area have been using the lab to save the memories contained in their precious personal items. You can learn more by visiting dclibrary.org/labs/memorylab. So the purpose of this series is to feature the stories of people who have used the Memory Lab to preserve their precious personal collections. My guest today is Emily Wagner. So thank you, again for being here. And I guess to start off, can you just give a little bit of a background about yourself? And what initially brought you to the Memory Lab?
Emily 2:01
Sure, absolutely. My name is Emily Wagner. And I don't know if Robert, I mentioned this earlier, but it's kind of a cheat. I am a librarian also. So yes, so I got really into using the Memory Lab because in general, I was interested in the kind of the trend in libraries across the country really, and wanted to see what was happening in my hometown. And the reason why I got into it is because I you know, much like other people I inherited and became the keeper of all of my family's photos, and old videos on like the 35 millimeter, and just, you know, a massive amount of stuff actually just kind of a staggering amount of objects. So I was excited about figuring out a way to both manage it and share it across the across the family.
Robert 2:52
What does your library work entail? Do you work at a public library or academic library? Or what kind of?
Unknown Speaker 3:02
So such a good question, I'm actually not in the library world anymore. I took a short sabbatical, I used to work for the American Library Association, where I was really involved with advocacy communications here in DC, the DC office of ALA is the is the lobbying arm of the association. My joke was that I worked for big books. And I did that for about four years. I really enjoyed it. And I've always been in advocacy communications, I worked for a large research think tank before ALA and now I'm still in advocacy communications just to a different industry. I worked for the National Headstart Association, advocating for early childhood education and care for low income families.
Robert 3:46
Okay, very nice.
Emily 3:48
Yeah, it's good. It's it's a very interesting time to be in advocacy right now. So even even cooler than it usually is.
Robert 3:57
Yeah, I would imagine so. So... Sorry, go ahead.
Emily 4:02
Oh, I was gonna make an embedded library joke, which is essentially that I do consider myself wherever I go as a librarian, no matter what my role is really. Today, in fact, we were just chatting on on a work G-chat, and I found a new database that I wanted our government affairs team to start to use. And someone said, Are you librarian-ing us right now? And I said, Yes, in fact, I am. So I you know, I feel like I spend a lot of time getting really enthusiastic about resources, no matter where I sit.
Robert 4:32
Hmm. Well, yeah, I mean, once you catch the librarian bug, it's hard to lose that. That kind of urge or that interest.
Emily 4:42
Yeah, absolutely.
Robert 4:45
So what what kind of stuff did you have you brought to the lab?
Emily 4:50
So mostly photos? Yeah, actually, I think almost exclusively photos, many of which were really old. Somewhere. Over 100 years old, which was kind of cool, really delicate stuff. So that was definitely something that was a learning curve for me. I haven't I still have the 35 millimeter at my house. So that's the next thing I plan to tackle is trying to convert that into something we can actually watch. We have gosh, like 30 canisters of it, and no way of playing it. I know, I tried to buy a projector off of eBay, something that we could play it on. And I tried twice, actually, I couldn't get it to work. So I have to figure out how to convert it at this point. So it doesn't I forget what you call that when something is when you buy like the original media player to play that thing. There's a term for that, isn't there?
Robert 5:42
Well, yeah. I'm not exactly sure. But like, there are software emulators, but that's specifically in the software world. I don't know if that's what you're talking about, like emulation?
Emily 5:54
Yeah. Emulation or using, like,
Robert 5:57
Or retro...?
Emily 6:00
Yeah, like using a VHS to play a VHS player. Right, even though that's not something anyone's done since 1992. In real life.
Robert 6:09
Right. Cool. So you still have 35 millimeter slides to digitize?
Emily 6:15
Yeah, that's right.
Robert 6:16
You're still kind of in the middle of your, the larger project.
Emily 6:22
That's right. Yeah. So I started with photos because it felt more approachable. And it was it was actually just, you know, a little bit of a learning curve. But then once you kind of get the instruction from DCPL staff and you get into the groove of it, it becomes something that becomes sort of meditative, actually just this the sitting and the scanning and, you know, organizing them primarily. But I haven't yet crossed the bridge to other types of media yet.
Robert 6:50
Yeah, I've heard other people describe it the same way. That it's a meditative process.
Emily 6:55
Yeah, I imagine, you see lots of different folks coming in with lots of different projects.
Robert 7:02
Absolutely. Yeah. And all age ranges too, you know, a lot of the people that use the lab tend to be retired, you know, so they have more time they can come in, during the week, during the day. And they have stuff that belonged to maybe some family members that are no longer with them. And it's just kind of sitting there and they want to a lot of them want to clear out space, to declutter. So, which I always tell people, and you probably can relate to this as because we are focusing on it is personal archiving, we promote the idea of keeping the original. So you're not really digitizing stuff, with the goal of getting rid of the original, but it's just copying it, proliferating it to a different medium so that it's harder for it to get destroyed. But yeah, a lot of people want to declutter. But then of course, it's a lot of younger people as well, who are given stuff by their parents or grandparents, and they want it to be shared more easily with other family members.
Emily 8:18
Yeah, that's exactly my experience. And that idea of the originals getting destroyed was so front of mind for me, because we have a, for example, all of these newspaper articles, one of my great aunts was a professional dancer. So we have all of these clips of her and you know, her brochures from, or brochures or flyers, or playbills, from all the dances she did, and they're all, you know, crumbling at this point. So even even if it wasn't like a natural disaster related thing, just like a little bit of humidity or a strong breeze, and those would be the end of those pieces. So yeah, creating a backup copy was really critical, because otherwise it would be lost. And they're great photos.
Robert 8:59
Cool. So what were all of the photos that you had from 100 years ago? Or what did it kind of span multiple decades of the family history?
Emily 9:10
Yeah, it spans I think, we were lucky. My family was lucky on my dad said at least to have photography, like throughout all the generations. So I had photos of my great-great-grandparents all the way to my parents in there. My my dad and his sisters, when they were teens, so probably gosh, like the 1850s to the 1950s was the range. Yeah, really,
Robert 9:37
Really great timeframe to cover. 1850s, photography was of course around but I don't think it was really widely accessible at that point. So yeah, were those older family members I mean, family members from longer ago. Were they photographers by trade? Is that why you have photos? Or how did they...?
Emily 10:06
No, they were in the lumber industry, which is not close to photography at all. But they were portraits. So it was just pictures, you know, the bust up or the you know, those photos or they're sitting all as a family with, you know, the dark clothes and their Sunday best that that kind of so they were... Nobody's smiling. Exactly, exactly. So we had two or three of those, you know, different stages in the family and a couple of different iterations. That yeah, that have just been around for a long time.
Robert 10:39
I see. Well, that's really lucky that you, you can that you still have them around to save like 150, while at this point, 170 years old. That's...
Emily 10:52
Yeah, absolutely. And yet another reason to be grateful for publicly accessible digitization tools, because they've been, you know, they've lived in so many different houses and so many different environments over the years that I can't imagine they're going to be around for another 170. And it's, it's their photos that, you know, they've been kept and sort of carried through time by individuals across the family. But there are many folks who haven't seen them, you know, ever or more than a couple of times across our family. So it was cool to get the digital copies, and I dropped them in our family iCloud account, and now everybody has them on their phone to be able to look at or pull up or study. And yeah, it's just such a nice way to make them something that contributes to our family conversations versus something that just gets passed on, you know, by chance between between people and, you know, between the people who are most likely to be the the keepers, you know, it's not only the keepers, who should be the the users and the consumers.
Robert 11:55
Mm hmm. That's exactly right. Yeah. So you said you have family iCloud account? Is that the primary way that you share photos with family members?
Emily 12:09
Yeah, the family iCloud account's my main strategy we've talked a lot about, especially over the course of you know, being at home for so long. And these last 18 to 20 months, we've talked a lot about doing a family slideshow or some sort of family, you know, showing, I guess, reviewing of all of these digitized pieces, but we haven't quite gotten there yet. That's when I went down the rabbit hole of trying to buy a projector and trying to buy all this like legacy format vehicles. And really, yeah, really went down that eBay, rabbit hole. And honestly, it'll be what brings me back to DCPL eventually, because that's it is really the best way to, to convert that stuff and to be able to enjoy it. Because we Yeah, we'd really like to do as a family some kind of viewing and some kind of sort of storytelling session now that we have all of these great visuals. But for now we're just looking at them sort of individually on our own devices,
Robert 13:05
That would be great. And then when you do get together, you could record everybody kind of like an oral history thing. That'll be another thing to have to preserve.
Emily 13:15
Definitely. It's just a never ending cycle, isn't it? And you know, on my so the family photos and the the long history that's been visually documented was on my dad's side, on my mom's side, they were less less photographed over the years. But I do have a really beautiful written history that I inherited from my grandmother on that side, which was another piece actually now that I think about why digitized in the lab was another piece that I scanned, actually. So it's like a four page typewriter piece of family, you know, chronology, I suppose. So folks coming over from Ireland, moving to Prince Edward Island, and then getting into Springfield, Massachusetts, that was my mom's family's arc. And it was the four sisters of that family who got together one day and just decided, you know, if we don't write this down, it will get lost to the Sands of Time. And so I it's been in a manila envelope for probably longer than I've been alive, just you know, traveling between us. And I, gosh, I inherited it about 10 years ago, and it sat in a shoe box for you know, for a long time. And then I brought it to the lab and now we have the digital copy. So I was able to send it to all of the the sisters and cousins on that side as well. So there's just just more than one copy really, is the idea. Otherwise, we would completely and I actually, I'm also really into ancestry.com. So I was using that document to match against kind of the way that I was piecing together the family tree on that side. So a really nice way to support the other kind of research I was doing.
Robert 14:50
Very cool. Yeah. Something that I've noticed as a result of working with people in the memory lab is how different families are in terms of what they what kind of media they collect. So like you said, your father's side was more photographic. And then your mom's side was more, I guess we could say call them narrative focused, you know, they wanted to write things down and record memory that way, rather than through the visual. I mean, the, you know, pictographic element. Yeah. Like, for instance, my father's side tended to be more musical, so I have more reel to reel audio recordings from them. Whereas with my mom's side, it tends to be more photographic. In different people, you know, some people had video cameras. Some people tended to only do you know, it's amazing how different families prioritize what to keep.
Emily 16:06
And so interesting, I think how much is influenced by the culture of the family, right? Like, none of my family is musical on any level. So audio recordings would have never really been, it's just not a tool we had at our house. But it's so cool to think that you can listen back to the voices of the folks who have who have spoken to you throughout your entire life. Yeah, have you been? Have you been archiving that stuff?
Robert 16:31
I have, actually, when, last year when our when the library was actually closed completely. We didn't have any buildings, any of our locations open. I did spend a lot of time digitizing both the audio recordings and then some of the eight millimeter film, like movie film. One of my uncle's, and most of that stuff is from the 50s and 60s, both on the video, the film side and the audio side, but from two different sides of the family. And yeah, I mean, I have recordings of my father as a toddler, my grandfather, his father, reading a Dr. Seuss story to him as a kid and also of my grandfather singing. And my great-grandfather, who I never met singing as well. There was a lot of singing in the family.
Emily 17:35
How, first of all, how special is that? Just the the legacy of musicality between all of you. And just having a recording of two generations back on sound is is stunning, actually. It's very cool.
Robert 17:50
Yeah, I'm very glad. I feel very fortunate to have those. But yeah, it is. It's just so interesting to see, like you said that depending on a family's culture, they're going to save different things, or even also document different kinds of events. Like maybe some people travel a lot. So they only will take pictures or stuff when there's a family vacation or something. Whereas other people will record stuff just randomly happening around the house. All depends.
Emily 18:28
Yeah. And yeah, being able to see what folks value and what kind of, you know, tools they have, it's just a really beautiful look at both the stories we want to tell and the, you know, the ways we were able to tell those stories, yeah.
Robert 18:44
Over the course of digitizing those photos, did you find anything that was unexpected? Or maybe something from your childhood, or something that or something that you had heard about and maybe remembered differently, that you experienced and remembered differently than how it was represented in the photos?
Emily 19:09
That's a great question. I think, for me, especially because, so I've inherited all these photos, but I actually didn't spend a significant amount of time with a lot of these people. On my dad's side, many of them passed before I was through my toddlerhood. So it's, it's so interesting, the early early memories I have of you know, playing in the garden or their pets or, you know, the layout of their living room are vivid in my mind, and I'm, you know, able to recall them with others, even though you know, I was two or three or four in those times because I have all of these really beautiful fragments in this collection. So I think one thing that surprises me is just, yeah, in general, how well documented it all was. I don't know if it's because my, my dad and my grandfather were both sort of amateur photographers or if it was just, you know, they had the cameras and use them with gusto. But yeah, it really does. It it. I guess the thing that was a delight about it was the fact that even though I was so small, those relationships are really vivid to me. And it's really primarily because of the way they were so well documented.
Robert 20:21
Interesting. So yeah, I guess, documentation... Record keeping, I guess we could say, sort of runs in your family.
Emily 20:30
Yeah, you know. Exactly. You know, I never thought about it that way. But yeah, there are a lot of documentaries in the books that I grew up with most certainly, which I guess is what made it necessary for one of us to be an organizer.
Robert 20:45
So yeah, go ahead.
Emily 20:48
I was gonna say, I do think quite a lot. I just had a kid. About six months ago, I had a baby. And I, gosh, thank you. Yeah, I take a lot of photos of her. And they're all you know, on my phone. So I have been thinking quite a bit about what kind of inheritance she'll have in terms of the documentation. Because right now, it's all I mean, they're not digital surrogates. Right. They're, they're the photos, the originals. But there's digital. Yeah, born digital. And there's so many. So I do, I'll be so curious to see not that I'm, you know, really trying to manage the way I'm passing it along to her right now. I'm just sort of taking photos in the moment and trying to, you know, find the new balance. But I do really wonder what, what a difference it'll make to have that many photos of herself. And if they'll actually ever make it to her, you know, in what form they'll make it to her. I'm using. Have you ever heard of the One Second app?
Robert 21:44
No, I don't think I have.
Emily 21:46
It's a it's a cool little tool, you essentially take one second video every day over the course of a year. And so you see this really quick montage, essentially of progress over the course of a year. The guy who invented it was one of those sort of live in the moment, make every moment count sort of ethos, person, kind of people. And I've been doing it with her. So it's been interesting just to see just you know how fast babies change. You know how little she was up until now has been kind of cool to see on that one-second video organizer, but the sheer volume of photos and video that I've been taking every day is out of control.
Robert 22:26
Yeah, 'cause it's so much easier now... To capture things.
Emily 22:32
Yeah, it is. Easier, and maybe harder. I'd be so curious from your vantage point, like, what your forecast for the future is going to be, you know, given that we're going to have such the volume of photos, how will that change the lab 100 years from now? And what will people be coming in for?
Robert 22:49
Yeah, that is a good question. Sometimes it scares me to think about that. But just to I mean, seeing the the rapid rate of change and on such a massive scale, in my lifetime alone, to be able to forecast that far ahead is just I think it's beyond our, the scope of our brains. But yeah, the it's, I guess it's easier to capture stuff, but harder to organize it.
Emily 23:22
Yeah. Yeah, harder to organize it. And I imagine harder to do meaning making, right. Like these, these collections I've inherited, the written and the visual have all been attempts to make meaning I think out of things that have [...] and most, especially the written narrative, from my mom's side, like there's a real style to it, and a real sort of sensibility to the kind of story that they're telling in that documentation. And I think that's because it was, you know, they were developing a narrative. But if we have such a huge volume of materials now, whatever the materials format might be, it's going to be much harder to make and develop and pass on a narrative just due to sheer volume. And that's, I mean, even though 100 years, I agree with you that trying to answer a question about what will what will we be doing to organize files 100 years from now is beyond our, our scope to really forecast but we're still I think it's humans going to try to make meaning certainly, that's our nature. So it'll be interesting to see what kind of tools there are for meaning-making activities, you know, down the road, especially in public spaces.
Robert 24:33
Sure. Well, naturally as a librarian, you know, that one of those tools will be metadata for sure. Just making sure that everything is written you know, in the written documentation of things that don't have written component or even things that do have a written component like your your aunt's letter your you know, the written history of your family, having that extra documentation about those objects, helps people see or understand the meaning of it. And especially for your family members down the road.
Emily 25:16
For sure. Can I ask a meta question about this podcast? Do you think the audience, this audience or generally folks who aren't in the library space? Do you think that there's a good understanding of metadata?
Robert 25:30
Well, that's a great question. It's something that we, we definitely talk about when we give trainings here at the lab. I think if you don't, it's something that I think a lot of people most people can understand. But it's just not something that you think about, if you aren't dealing with, you know, looking at catalog records or looking stuff up for people every day. You don't think about it, even though people do create metadata all the time. I mean, you could argue that balancing your checkbook is, in a way, a form of metadata, because you're recording data about what you're doing with your money. So that's a good way, if you talk about it like that, people will say, Oh, yeah, that makes sense.
Emily 26:26
I create metadata all day long. Yeah,
Robert 26:28
I wrote, I wrote who is on who's in the picture on the back of the picture? Well, yeah, that makes sense. But what I think does get more confusing, is translating that to the digital form. You know, embedding metadata with files, then you start to get, you start to lose people.
Emily 26:53
You're really in the deep end. Yeah. How do people react when you introduce the idea?
Robert 26:59
I think well, the if you just say, metadata, it seems like kind of a weird, scary word. But if you talk about it, you know, this is if you show people look, you have a photo that has this stuff written on it, that's metadata, all we have to do is copy that on to the digital form so that it'll be tied to your file, just like that is? And I don't know, I think sometimes people react in a way that makes it seem like it's not they don't think it's that important to them. Like, they don't need to worry about it. But I usually say, well, don't you want your family members down the line, to know who you are in these photos? Because otherwise, you know, generally, if people have a bunch of photos or something that they're bringing in, if they can't recognize people in the photo, they won't bother saving it. Which, I mean, that makes sense, because maybe you can't save everything. So just framing it in a way that by taking the time to add this stuff, you're making it more meaningful for people down the road. And therefore, I guess making your own existence in all of these things more meaningful.
Emily 28:28
Yeah, that's very compelling. I think it's, I think you're right, that that idea of metadata is like, it can feel like you're just trying to brush something away in order to see the actual project that you thought you were coming to tackle versus trying to create this up, like other infrastructure for it. But I love the idea of you saying, you know, here's the name of the photo of the person on the back. That's, that's what we're trying to get here. And you want to tie those two things together. I think that's really approachable. I could kill for some metadata on some of the photos that I've been hearing, but I'll just never know what those folks are.
Robert 29:01
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's, I think it's hard... As soon as you get people over the initial hump of realizing that it is important, and that they need to do it. Then they're like, oh, yeah, that's easy. Oh, it makes sense. But it's hard to get people to realize that it's important, I guess.
Emily 29:35
Yeah. Yeah. It's a time a time commitment, I suppose. So there's, they're making this huge effort to spend time on on something that, you know, I mean, archiving or digitizing or changing the format of something is like an extra step right in the first place. So then on top of that step, there's yet another step that they might not have anticipated in the first place. So, yeah, it's, it's cool to hear how you navigate that conversation, because it's definitely one that I imagined some folks are surprised by.
Robert 30:08
Yeah. And I think maybe people who don't, who are surprised by it, I don't think maybe I don't think they realize the the actual purpose of coming into the lab, especially people who want to get rid of the originals, which is kind of like a cleaning house sort of thing to do, and decluttering tool. But when you frame it in a way that it's it's, you know, copying things, replicating them so that they will be harder to destroy, or harder to lose, then I think they realize the importance of metadata.
Emily 30:58
Yeah. Being able to access and yeah, access memory in particular.
Robert 31:04
Exactly. So do you have anybody else in your family that is interested in this sort of work? Who's interested in keeping things preserved for generations down the line?
Emily 31:18
Yes, and no, I think folks are generally really generous in their enthusiasm for the final product. They, they really like what happens and how to sort through it and to look through all of the, you know, tagged photos, I definitely tag everything and iCloud in a very specific way, should they want to see just one slice of one slice of the family or one slice of time. But very few folks, I think, are interested in tackling it at the same, you know, alongside me, I think they they've been carrying these boxes over the course of their, you know, many years, as stewards of it. But I've never really known what to do, it's intimidating to get, you know, eight boxes of whatever the format is, and then to think to yourself, oh, I'm all of a sudden, you know, responsible for these extremely sentimental objects. So I think a lot of folks are just like, big Godspeed. Good, good work. Thank you for doing it. But they've, yeah, they've there, there's more of a sense of relief, then there is a sense that they want to jump in to I hope that doesn't sound too negative.
Robert 32:30
Yeah, no, I don't think at all, it sounds very realistic to me. Yeah, because it is time intensive. And it takes a lot of work. And, but then also, you, well, you have a lot of power. If your family is trusting you with stuff, it's a big responsibility. [Yeah.] And I think a big barrier for a lot of people is just not knowing how to organize stuff, even if they're organized in other parts of their life. They don't know how to approach organization with this kind of stuff.
Emily 33:12
Especially when there are so many discrete pieces. I think that's definitely at least when I think about even though I'm sort of tackling the chapters of the things that I've been up to, it's, it's hundreds and hundreds of really small pieces of of memory and ephemera and storylines, I think any person would look at it and think to themselves, gosh, this is this mountain is too tall to climb, because of just how many pieces there are of it. And I think it's it's, um, I'm dwelling on your comment about how much power there is. And being a keeper of family history. I think there's power in it. But there's also opportunity. I think one of the joys of being the person who's taken on this family work is that I get to ask a lot of really great questions that I wouldn't have otherwise gotten to ask. And often the the questions dive into topics in the family that are below the surface. So it's not so much about, you know, what did you do during this holiday? Or what was so and so's favorite subject in school? You know, these really basic fact things? It's, you know, what was happening in this photo? And why does that person look like this? And who is this person who's not in any other photos? Like, we really do get to dive into stories that otherwise wouldn't have been told. And that's also why I got into doing amateur genealogy stuff, you know, I'm barely calling myself an amateur is is I think generous. You know, I've been doing it though, because otherwise the questions weren't being asked. So it's really a vehicle for us to say, Oh, right. These two people were married. That's where this family came from. There are three second cousins on that side, just the process of, you know, everybody comparing their memories while we have the opportunity is, is the idea here. And yeah, otherwise there wouldn't have been the chance to do it. So not so much. I mean power for sure that it's powering us to compare notes. But, but more so just the the pure space really to be able to have these conversations has been a part of it that's been so energizing.
Robert 35:26
I love when some photo or maybe it's a movie being taken of what seems like a run-of-the-mill standard event, or something. Or some kind of celebration, maybe a party or something. It seems very, like on the surface, and then you capture something that makes people go oh, wait a minute. Why do they look like this in this picture? What are they? What are they looking at that person like that for? That? I really do enjoy that? I'm glad you mentioned that.
Emily 36:09
Yeah, absolutely. There's a less volume of photos on my maternal side. But there are so many pictures where there are six children in my mom's one of six siblings, and some of them will be looking in a photo in one direction and others in another direction, and their facial expressions will be the opposite. You know, some people looking happy other people looking stern. And you're thinking to yourself, who's on the other side of the camera? And, you know, why does everybody look like that? And, yeah, there's just so many instances where you can really if you, you know, take the time to observe it and take the time to put it in a format where everybody has access and time. You can dig a little deeper into the dynamics and really start to unpack what, what actually was happening in the past. And how does that influence us today?
Robert 36:58
Yeah, that's a good point. I'm glad you mentioned or you talked about who is on the other side of the camera, because something that we don't talk a lot about is the effect of the person recording the event on what they're recording. So it's really important, although I feel like in a lot of the stuff that I see, it's, a lot of people don't necessarily know, who if you ask them, who's taking this photo, or who took this photo, who took the video, they think, Oh, well, it might have been, you know, they talk about it must have been somebody who wasn't in the shot. But who was probably there at the time, but they're not really sure who it was a lot of the time. But that's really important, another piece of metadata that's really important to know, too - who actually recorded this event. Because they're ultimately it was their decision, what got represented,
Emily 38:11
Absolutely, the power of the creator. And I guess in, in the real sense of, you know, intellectual property, if we wanted to look at it in that direction, they are the person who made the, the image in the first place, or the film or the audio file. So interesting. It actually never really occurred to me until just this moment. It's interesting that the creator and a lot of these sets of collections that you you see day in and day out of library is probably the the piece that the piece of metadata that's most often missing.
Robert 38:43
Yeah, for sure. I mean, most of the photos that I have, from family gatherings, whatever, do not have my mother in them, because she was the one taking the pictures because she didn't want to be in them, didn't want to be photographed.
Emily 39:04
Interesting.
Robert 39:06
So the people a lot of the time, it seems that the people who are most interested in recording things don't want to be recorded themselves.
Emily 39:14
That's so interesting, just on the topic of moms and photos in this. In this day and age, there's this whole movement right now of proof of mom instead of proof of life. So it's getting it's a movement to have other people take pictures of moms and their kids, or parents and their kids so that the parents actually get documented because so often they're the ones who are taking the photos, right. The caregivers don't often end up in the photo with the kiddo or the the person that they're taking care of because they're, you know, busy creating the world around them. So yeah, there's this big. There's this big movement in the sort of mom digital space about proof of taking proof of mom photos that show you you as a mom, you as a parent using caregivers exist. Just beaming a little new mom and feel your way.
Robert 40:07
Yeah, that's interesting. It's always interesting to see how well parenting in general is changing over the ages. That would be a whole other topic, [...] this podcast. Yeah. Well, I always like to finish by asking whoever I'm interviewing, what their earliest memory is, if you happen to know it, some people have a very clear image of what that is, other people are kind of reaching deep down into the bag, and then they pull up something that they think oh, yeah, this is probably it. But they're not sure. You know. Yeah.
Emily 40:52
I don't know if I, if I'm sure about what my very earliest memory is. So I think I'd be more of a reach into the bag. Answer, if that's fine, too. Yeah, um, I remember. So one of the photos actually, that I digitized at the library is one memory that I keep with me fairly often. I remember helping my grandmother in their house in the mid-Atlantic in Delaware, with her garden. And she had, she had all of these impatiens and all this dirt out by out on the patio that we were like, you know, taking in and taking out and I was wearing these red shoes that later on actually, when I was looking at that photo with my sister, she reminded me that those shoes were several sizes too small for me, but that I wouldn't take them off. They were my favorite shoes ever. And so when you there's two photos one of us and all the flowers and US repotted them, and one with me, but my zoom in on the shoes, which I took, but all the flowers around. So that is definitely an early memory of fine. For sure. It's it's nice to have a documented.
Robert 41:58
Interesting, yeah. Do you remember? Or do you know how old you were?
Emily 42:03
Gosh, probably three, three or four?
Robert 42:05
Okay. And, you know, that's the second time I think you've mentioned gardens or gardening during this conversation. Did did you? Was your family very into gardening?
Emily 42:20
A family of gardeners Most certainly. Yeah. On both sides. Lots of folks who are interested in, yeah, cultivating beautiful spaces.
Robert 42:32
So you really, you spent a lot of time around the garden? And was that a big part of your childhood? Or, I guess family gatherings in general?
Emily 42:45
Yeah, even to this day. I was actually just visiting my dad a couple of weeks ago. And the primary thing we talked about was his garden and his compost. It's really Yeah. Big topic. Our house.
Robert 42:59
Cool. Yeah. Well, thank you again, for this conversation and taking the time to talk about all of this stuff.
Emily 43:09
Thank you. This was fun.
Robert 43:11
You have just listened to an episode of memories on tap on DC Public Library Podcast recorded from the Labs recording studio in the historic modernized Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown Washington, DC. To see all the events we are currently offering at the labs visit bit.ly/labsclasses. To receive email updates about labs go to bit.ly/labs-email to learn about additional programs being offered by DCPL visit dclibrary.org/calendar. Thank you for listening and be sure to join us next time.
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