Oct 27 reading

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

I was very interested in this book, and really enjoyed it. After I finished it I was trying to decide what to write about. I could go on and on about the ethics and importance of HeLa cells. A summary of the book didn’t seem like it would relate the book to the themes of our class.  I went to the author’s website to gather some more information, and I ran across this article that she wrote.  

The author talks about how she discovered some of the historical information in her book. Surprise, surprise she consulted librarians! She talks about asking questions about things that would not normally be considered “important” information. Things like what color the walls were painted, or what kind of shoes a person wore.  If I were in charge of saving documents, those are the details that I would consider unimportant, things I might not keep.  Skloot points out “They're [the details] the ones that make narrative nonfiction possible.” That just goes to show how much I have to learn about librarianship!  It is not our job to decide what information is important, but to provide the information patrons want.