This is the second edition of JTPL Stories: a series of interviews with library patrons, staff, and partners. Continue below to meet the faces of JTPL with our Marketing Coordinator, Aliya!
At JTPL, Diane is known for her smile, her stories, and her incredible historical knowledge. As the family and local history librarian, she always has a new tale to tell about Jeffersonville or Clark County.
I learned a dozen new things as I interviewed her this last week. Diane is meticulous about getting the right details from reliable sources in every story she tells, whether it’s a story about Aaron Burr’s time in Jeffersonville or the local African American heroes display she created in February.
Finding those sources is what she wanted to talk about when I asked if she would be featured in our blog.
“If you go around asking people for stories, you’ll get stories,” she told me. “But as a local historian you need to know where to get good information.”
“As a local historian, you need to know where to get good information”
Getting good information has been at the heart of all of Diane’s careers: from a brief stint as a journalist, to her former career as a professor, to her current work as a librarian. And it’s hard work; Diane told me that only about 10% of written material has been digitized. The rest is hidden somewhere in a library and has to be dug up my hand, something her Indiana Room is great for.
Even when information is on the internet, it’s cluttered with sites posting unverified stories to accounts on social media. Even things appearing to be local news may not be what they seem. “You follow some of these accounts back,” Diane said, “and none of them are from our zip codes… I’ve had a good record of reporting these kinds of accounts and getting them banned.”
Last month, Diane put together a local African American heroes display to help patrons get to know real local history that is often overlooked. She featured Obediah Buckner, Mary Bateman Clark, George and Molly Denning, and more. Local Black history can be hard to find and even harder to verify, but she believes it’s important work.
Investigating misinformation and determining the real facts has gotten even more difficult and important over the last decade, and Diane is concerned that it’s a skill increasingly relevant to her patrons’ daily lives. She cited the rise of anti-vaccination movements as one of the biggest impacts of this crisis of information.
Her patrons have been concerned as well, which is why Diane’s job has shifted toward helping them with misinformation.
“The main question I get [from patrons],” she told me, “is: ‘My family believes fake news; how can I stop them?’”
I asked Diane if she has any tips she tends to tell people.
“Go to some reliable information sources and professionals,” she said, “and evaluate where the articles you read are coming from.” Diane tells patrons to follow the money. If someone is benefiting off of a controversial claim or paying for you to read it, there is good reason to suspect that the claim isn’t true.
But it can be hard to convince someone to second guess everything they read, especially if they don’t trust established sources and experts. “It’s devastating because nobody has a really good answer,” she told me. “The only good answer anybody has gotten is to turn off social media. When people do that, they suddenly change their opinions… But you can’t convince somebody to do that on their own.”
Diane encourages more people to go back to print and take pride in doing their own research. She continues to invite people to the Indiana Room and to the library, and she enjoys helping them find the facts for their own stories.
And for people who want to still want to wade through social media? She suggests this article as a beginner’s course on spotting misinformation: https://library.csi.cuny.edu/misinformation/spotfakenews
Want to meet Diane or research local history and genealogy? Come to our Indiana Room in Jeffersonville or try out the databases we have access to online here.
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