Megan Sniffin-Marinoff
I was, along with Barbara, co-director of the Harvard Library’s Open Collections Program, established by Sid, to open a new digital window onto Harvard’s vast collection of unique materials. Sid’s goal was for us to develop subject-based digital collections on topics of contemporary concern, with Harvard making these collections available to students and teachers everywhere. He was adamant throughout the course of the project that we remember the value of this work was not just for Harvard students, but also for students at less well-funded colleges across the country who deserved the same opportunity for online access to these unique sources.
I was in the room with Sid when we previewed the digitized collection on a topic he selected: Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930. Sid was very quiet, patiently listening to us extol the wonders of all manner of important works that had been digitized and our ideas of how the materials could be used by scholars. When we stopped, the first thing he asked was whether or not we had digitized any books about immigration to Brooklyn in the early 20th century. We had and we called up the list for him to review. He then asked to see a volume with fold-out maps of Brooklyn. We opened a digitized map with Sid asking to see increasingly more granular details on the map. He got up and pointed to the screen, noting with some passion, that it was ‘right there on this street’ that his family had a shop and that shop was why he was here today. He told us that he was convinced that this was one of the reasons people across the world were going to use this collection - they, too, would be looking for the details of their own immigration story. And that this was an important value of our work as well. We knew he was right.
