The Joint Archives Quarterly, Volume 32.03: Fall 2022

Table of Contents Hope College and the Great Depression, Grace Baty From the Collections Archivist, Sarah Lundy Holland Area Historical Society Updat

The Founding Fathers and the New York Society Library

The Founding Fathers have long been considered in the public imagination as the creators of the modern democratic system. Like their educated, political-minded European contemporaries, these men supplemented their formal education with outside reading borrowed from libraries such as the New York Society Library, the oldest library in New York City (founded in 1754). Thousands of entries in its ledgers dating to the eighteenth-century track the lending histories of books read before, during, and after the American Revolution. Through examination of these recently digitized ledger pages available at the New York Society Library from 1789 to 1805, the books that these Founding Fathers chose to read shed light on who these men were, both politically and personally, in relation to the world around them. By visualizing data and analyzing the relationships present between these men and literature that they read, this project explores how the Founding Fathers were influenced by their continual education and presents the results on a Wordpress website. As the ledgers show, the Founding Fathers were more than the American political icons that they have come to embody

Digital Holland

Founded in 2014, Digital Holland is a publicly accessible website that hosts research about the communities that include and surround Hope College. The website, digitalholland.org, was developed by students in the college’s Mellon Scholars Program, a three-year curriculum of digitally-enabled collaborative research and experiential education funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The website features engaging galleries and pages covering a wide variety of topics, highlighting the diversity and historical importance of the Holland community. The site also hosts relevant artifacts including images, audio, and video files shared with permission by the Joint Archives of Holland and the Holland Museum. The project continues to grow as Hope College students, Mellon Scholars, and community members contribute to the site. In the 2016-2017 academic year, Digital Holland underwent both an aesthetic and conceptual shift, redefining our audience and user experience. The new Digital Holland actively promotes community engagement through local partnerships, a joint venture in digital public history. In addition, the site features research projects completed by Hope College students from a variety of disciplines, providing a platform to disseminate exemplary scholarship. Our poster highlights both the process and product of the Digital Holland redesign: our work product as a team and the engaging, community-oriented repository of research. We will feature examples of student research exhibits as well as crowd-sourced articles. Digital Holland can serve as an example for other communities and institutions committed to partnering on digital public scholarship

Session C, 2015 First Place: Polyphemus pediculus Survivorship in Insect Repellent Treated Water

At Cranberry Lake, one of the most commonly used topical products is insect repellant. Insect repellents are manufactured with varying percentages of DEET, or no DEET at all. DEET is a synthetic chemical consisting of organic compounds originally intended for jungle warfare. Trace amounts of DEET are found in local waterways throughout the summer, when swimming is a popular activity. This study focuses on Polyphemus pediculus, a zooplankton at the bottom of the aquatic food chain. Polyphemus pediculus is abundant in Cranberry Lake and is an indicator for health and functionality of the lake ecosystem. Three insect repellents containing varying percentages of DEET and two DEET-free repellents were tested on Polyphemus pediculus at high (6µL), medium (4µL), and low (2µL) amounts. The survivorship of zooplankton was observed over 30 minutes. It was found that insect repellants containing higher percentages of DEET killed Polyphemus faster than those containing lower percentages of DEET. It was also found that one DEET-free insect repellant killed the zooplankton at an equal rate, while the other killed them at a slower rate. Larger amounts of insect repellent in the water also killed Polyphemus faster. All insect repellents used in the experiment had adverse effects on survivorship on zooplankton, which should be taken into consideration before entering waterways. It can be concluded that insect repellant, even in trace amounts, can be detrimental to aquatic systems

Approaches and tools for inclusive value chain development: lessons from Uganda for improved impact

Value chain development (VCD) with smallholders forms a central element of the poverty reduction strategies of governments and NGOs in developing countries. Nevertheless, too little is known about how VCD interventions are designed and implemented, the approaches and tools used, and the challenges faced in the process. This paper helps to fill this gap with evidence from six cases in Uganda. For each case, data was collected from interviews with NGOs, government organizations, buyers, and smallholder business organizations. Results indicate that use of available VCD guides and tools facilitated productive partnerships among chain actors, engagement with support organizations, and feedback mechanisms on intervention processes. Results also challenge NGOs, government agencies, and researchers to better understand the circumstances of resource-poor chain actors, the implications of VCD on gender relations, and the cultural and business context when designing and implementing VCD. This calls for stakeholders to employ a broader approach to VCD, using a combination of available and new tools, and to seek out deeper collaboration with key actors within and outside the value chain

Range expansion in an invasive small mammal: influence of life-history and habitat quality

Invasive species pose a major threat to biodiversity but provide an opportunity to describe the processes that lead to changes in a species' range. The bank vole (Myodes glareolus) is an invasive rodent that was introduced to Ireland in the early twentieth century. Given its continuing range expansion, the substantial empirical data on its spread thus far, and the absence of any eradication program, the bank vole in Ireland represents a unique model system for studying the mechanisms influencing the rate of range expansion in invasive small mammals. We described the invasion using a reaction-diffusion model informed by empirical data on life history traits and demographic parameters. We subsequently modelled the processes involved in its range expansion using a rule-based spatially explicit simulation. Habitat suitability interacted with density-dependent parameters to influence dispersal, most notably the density at which local populations started to donate emigrating individuals, the number of dispersing individuals and the direction of dispersal. Whilst local habitat variability influenced the rate of spread, on a larger scale the invasion resembled a simple reaction-diffusion process. Our results suggest a Type 1 range expansion where the rate of expansion is generally constant over time, but with some evidence for a lag period following introduction. We demonstrate that a two-parameter empirical model and a rule-based spatially explicit simulation are sufficient to accurately describe the invasion history of a species that exhibits a complex, density-dependent pattern of dispersa

Water sensitive urban design in the city of the future

With timeframes for addressing the issues of the City of the Future (CotF) rapidly approaching (e.g. 2020, 2025, 2050), this paper integrates international research knowledge and expertise from four continents. It critically evaluates the role of water sensitive urban design (WSUD) in the CotF in terms of overlapping theory and practice. The aspirations of water sensitive cities are reviewed and multiple drivers for applying WSUD are described from developing and developed country perspectives In addition, the potential for WSUD to support cities in ‘leap-frogging’ towards their visions are explored. The role of WSUD within the wider context of achieving sustainable living objectives (e.g. greater resilience, low carbon living, sustainable transportation, local food supply and social stability) is debated and the concept of the ‘multi-objective city’ introduced. Conclusions are drawn regarding opportunities for the WSUD process to provide a framework within which professionals from many disciplines can support landscape architects and urban planners in achieving multiobjective liveable cities are identified