[Libs-Or] NJ Librarian and Food Historian

[Maureen Battistella]

Beautiful article today in Eater on Lynne Olver, 25 years as reference
librarian and later director at Morris County Public Library in Whippany,
New Jersey. She started the Food Timeline 2 years before Wikipedia and spent
hours researching food history questions and posting to the site. She was a
winner of the New York Times Librarian Award in 2002 (wah?) Olver died in
2015

 

"A year after Olver's death, her family began to discuss what would happen
to the Food Timeline and who could take it over. "What we know is that we
couldn't do it justice ourselves," Sarah said. To anyone willing and able to
maintain Olver's vision of an ad-free, simply designed, easy-to-access
resource on food history, the family members say that the website and her
library are theirs, for free. A couple of people have put forward their
names, but the family felt that their hearts weren't in the right place.
"One woman had shown us what she had done with her website and it was just
full of banner advertisements," Gordon said. "It has to uphold her vision,"
Sarah added.  Olver's book collection - if a price were to be put on it -
would be worth tens of thousands of dollars, Gordon estimates. So far, there
have been no takers for either the books or the task of keeping the site
going."

 

Here's a nice quote: "Libraries are where you'd find that stuff. It's not
the same as using a Wikipedia page at all."

 

Enjoy!  https://www.eater.com/2020/7/8/21271246/food-timeline-lynne-olver

 

Maureen Flanagan Battistella

Southern Oregon University Sociology and Anthropology

Ashland, Oregon

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