SLA Social Science Division Blog

A Red-Light Look at History: June 16, 2010

Summary by Marilyn Bromley, BNA Library

On Wednesday morning at the Williams Research Center, part of the Historic New Orleans Collection, SLA conference attendees were treated to a lively presentation by librarian Pamela Arceneaux on the history of prostitution in New Orleans.

She got our attention and made us laugh when she began her talk by saying that all her research was secondhand and entirely of academic interest! She continued with a brief history of the founding of New Orleans by explaining that the city was founded in 1718 by settlers from France. From the beginning New Orleans had a reputation as a wicked city.

After a few years under Spanish rule, the United States acquired New Orleans in 1803, as part of the Louisiana Purchase. According to Ms. Arceneaux, the U.S. wanted the city, and took the rest of the territory as a bonus. Yankees arrived, and as one might expect, prostitution did not decrease.

The red light district began on Basin Street, an area of cheap dance halls, brothels, gambling joints and flop houses. For a picayune (a coin), men could get whiskey, a bed and female attention. The women often made more money as pickpockets than at other endeavors. Later, the district moved to Gallatin Street near the French Market.

During the Union occupation of New Orleans during the Civil War, any local woman who insulted a Union soldier was declared a prostitute, under the orders of the commanding Union general General Butler. He was soon replaced!

After the war, “Smokey Row” along Burgundy and Dauphine Streets (near Canal) became the new district. After the police swept the area in1885, the public demanded a restricted red light district. So, in 1897 a district was created and named Storyville after politician who proposed it, Sidney Story. It was located at Basin and Iberville, and boasted many elegant mansions run by madams like Lulu White and Miss Willie V. Piazza. During this time, “blue books” were published, listing the establishments of the district and containing ads for houses of ill repute, legal services, piano tuners and other necessary services. The books were distributed widely, and as Ms. Arceneaux writes: [those] exploring …the playground of vice … knew the value of the adage: “you can’t tell the players without a program.” Her article “Guidebooks to Sin: The Blue Books of Storyville” is available on JSTOR .

Storyville was closed by city ordinance in 1917, with demolition of the district from 1939-1949. The ladies moved to the French Quarter and other areas of town. As New Orleans Mayor Martin Behrman once remarked: “You can make it illegal but you can’t make it unpopular.”

This program was sponsored by the following divisions: Social Science Geography & Map section; Museum, Arts and Humanities; Education

Inherent Knowledge Sharing by Mary Ellen Bates

Vannette Schwartz has written a summary of this program at the 2010 SLA conference:

A frequent speaker at SLA conferences, Mary Ellen Bates again presented a dynamic and thought provoking program in New Orleans. Inherent Knowledge Sharing covered the need for a workplace to move from passive forms of communication, such as e-mail, to using wikis, blogs, RSS, etc. as more dynamic avenues of sharing. Bates stressed the need for a shared vision to answer the "why" question. She provided examples of knowledge sharing from Giant Eagle grocery stores, Lockheed Martin aerospace company and the U.S. Department of State's Diplopedia. Bates urged her listeners to cultivate visible support from top executives, with a goal of being informative, rather than authoritative, and allowing play, but not prescribing uses. Her presentation slides are available on her website

PRESSING MATTERS: New books from UI Press

Growing Up Hispanic: Health and Development of Children of Immigrants

Hispanic children of immigrants are a diverse and fast-growing population in the United States. Growing Up Hispanic explores the challenging environment in which these children are raised—high poverty rates, low academic achievement, limited access to health and social services, negative sentiments about immigrant families, and uncertain political and legal support—and examines how neighborhood, family,school, and community affect their development and well-being. A bold policy agenda can improve these children's lives and help them thrive.

This volume is based on presentations and discussions from Penn State University's National Symposium on Family Issues, "Development of Hispanic Children in Immigrant Families: Challenges and Prospects." Diverse scholars examine the children's social ecologies, how families influence children's adaptation to new environments, the effects of education policies on children's school experiences, and the roles of health care policies and social services in children's well-being.

Growing Up Hispanic: Health and Development of Children of Immigrants>, edited by Nancy S. Landale, Susan McHale, and Alan Booth, is available from the Urban Institute Press (ISBN 978-0-87766-763-6, paperback, 368 pages, $32.50). 

submitted by Nancy Minter

Elaine Lasda Bergman elected to state library association post

DSOC Blog Coordinator Elaine Lasda Bergman was recently elected to serve as 2011 Vice President of the Academic and Special Libraries Section of the New York Library Association. Congratulations Elaine!

Envisioning the 2020 Census

Information from DSOC President Marilyn Bromley about a new book of interest to our members.

Envisioning the 2020 Census -- from the National Academies Press

Authors: Lawrence D. Brown, Michael L. Cohen, Daniel L. Cork, and Constance F. Citro, Editors; Panel on the Design of the 2010 Census Program of Evaluations and Experiments; National Research Council

Description: Planning for the 2020 census is already beginning. This book from the National Research Council examines several aspects of census planning, including questionnaire design, address updating, non-response follow-up, coverage follow-up, de-duplication of housing units and residents, editing and imputation procedures...

[and you think SLA's conference planning is stretched out !  Marilyn]

SLA Annual Conference, New Orleans, Summary of Closing Keynote Address

Closing Keynote Speaker, Nicolas Carr,Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Summary by Iris W. Anderson, Past-chair, Social Science Division

Nicolas Carr says that our brains are changing and that this is great cause for concern. He first attributed it in himself to a mid-life change.Then it got worse. What was it? Well, as he described it, he had been an avid reader of books, all sorts of books, for decades.Then one day he noticed that he couldn’t read books in the same way anymore.His attention span had shortened and he couldn’t remain engrossed in lengthy novels or other written works. Reading books took a lot more effort than previously and he wasn’t enjoying it anymore. So he took a retreat to analyze the problem, do some research and write his new book: The Shallows : What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. It is an in-depth follow-up to an earlier essay that he wrote for Atlantic Monthly entitled, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

Mostly he learned that multi-tasking online had taken over much of his time and his life: checking email constantly, keeping up with blogs, changing his Facebook status, keeping up with friends on social sites, texting, chatting online, reading newsfeeds, twittering, etc. While it took up most of his time, it also was done in short bursts of attention. The constant connectivity had, he believes, become an addiction. Does this sound familiar to you? Well, Mr. Carr learned that these addictions are actually changing the neurological pathways of our all too human brains, something that science is just beginning to measure. In the process, Mr. Carr believes, we are losing our ability for “deep” thinking, contemplation and analysis, not to mention patience with ourselves and others.

In a recent interview about the book for The New York Times, Mr. Carr summarized his thoughts this way:

When we’re online, we tend to perform the same physical and mental actions over and over again, at a high rate of speed and in a state of perpetual distractedness. The more we go through those motions, the more we train ourselves to be skimmers and scanners and surfers. But the Net provides no opportunity or encouragement for more placid, attentive thought. What we’re losing, through neglect, is our capacity for contemplation, introspection, reflection — all those ways of thinking that require attentiveness and deep concentration.

So what does Mr. Carr recommend we do about this troubling phenomenon that has pretty much taken over our lives? For starters, we can step back, unplug for a while, and think! All of this multitasking is not all bad, of course; we are much better informed, more productive, and technologically adept. Since the world moves only forward and we can’t stop it all we can do is become more aware. And, we can, with effort and practice, slow down.(This is my own conclusion to Mr. Carr’s message.) As a society, we don’t know what the actual brain changes will mean for our futures, but because the changes are measurable in the laboratory, scientists will certainly continue to provide us with facts and data. But that precisely may be Mr. Carr’s most important point, that more information does not necessarily bring true knowledge, that multitasking mostly just touches the surfaces of knowledge, and that wisdom takes time and contemplation and deep thinking.