This profile is part of a series of interviews chronicling the experiences of researchers who use The New York Public Library's collections for the development of their work. 

George M. Alvarez-Bouse is a retired junior high school and high school English teacher from Detroit. He spends most of his time at the Library collecting and noting material for an essay on early childhood education. His essay's main thesis is that Australian women writers in all genres contributed to the establishment of education and culture generally in Australia.

When did you first get the idea for your research project?

Basically in 2010, but it developed out of lifelong experiences. I have had an interest in Black and African Studies that dates back to high school. I eventually formally studied English and taught that subject for a decade and a half. Concurrent to formal study and teaching and other occupations, I got involved with African art and the associated ethnography and anthropology which is essential to understanding it. For about three decades I worked with a curator at the Brooklyn Museum whose specialty was the art of Africa and the Pacific Islands, which includes Australian aboriginal art. By that time I was already aware of how important Australia was to history and anthropology. In 2010 I visited a friend from childhood who had retired and settled in Western Australia with his wife, who is of Australian ancestry. In their personal library were several books by Australian women authors that I knew almost nothing about.

What brought you to the Library?

I have used libraries a lot since early childhood, so naturally as a resident here I would gravitate to The New York Public Library, which I always regarded as a world standard. Because of experiences dating to high school, or even earlier, around Black Studies while employed in teaching, I used the Schomburg Collection a great deal. It was there that I first experienced the World Wide Web and U.S. census reports.

What research tools could you not live without?

The ever-advancing cataloguing system at The New York Public Library; the Web; Britannica; most Microsoft products; selected Adobe products; Clarivate Analytics EndNote; Kofax OmniPage Ultimate; Nuance Dragon Naturally Speaking; YouTube; Spotify; the newer photocopiers with 'save to thumb drive’ and 'send via' email features; cameras with chip and Wi-Fi file transfer features; Skype, Zoom, and other online collaboration applications; Alexa, the ever-advancing artificial intelligence aid;  and more. Yes, it is accurate to say that I can’t "live without" them.

What’s the most unexpected item you encountered in your research?

The three-volume rhetoric and poetic work—interpreted from representative works—by Charles Sears Baldwin.

What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?

The works of U.S. educator, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, and German-born Bertha von Marenholtz-Buelow, writing on ‘kindergarten’, which ably analyze, both theoretically and practically, Froebel’s development of this essential learning stage and places it in a U.S. context, at the same time making a fundamental contribution of their own to its world development.

Describe a moment when your research took an unexpected turn.

When in 2010 I discovered in Western Australia, in the home library of a friend from childhood and his wife, about a dozen Australian female writers, of whom only one, Miles Franklin, I recognized.

How do you maintain your research momentum?

By means of a social and political commitment that maintains that working people will find a way forward for all of us and that I can contribute to it.

After a day of working/researching, what do you do to unwind?

Besides eating and sleeping, I turn to some of the same recreational norms as everyone does except possibly that I analyze those works and performances more critically than to just sit back and enjoy them. But then, in their own chosen way, probably everyone else does the same.

What tabs do you currently have open on your computer?

Alexa, Outlook, Word, Edge—page on Froebel, EndNote

Is there anything you'd like to tell someone looking to get started?

Adopt an effort to develop a principled social and political stand on world affairs, review thoroughly, continue to develop, and thoroughly analyze what your general education teachers attempted to teach you about reading, listening, writing, and speaking; natural and physical sciences, notably mathematics and electricity; develop your fine art and mechanical drawing, painting, and modeling skills, and musicality and performance of any kind. Learn thoroughly what you can find about female equality and women’s contribution to our sentiments, institutions, and our industries, agricultural and manufacturing. And share it equally with others.

Have I left anything out that you’d like to tell other researchers?

Yes, what does the butterfly effect mean to you? Most of us have not experienced a world economic and social crisis on the scale we are enduring now, aggravated by a pandemic of increasing scale. Anything we do separately, and even more what we do in groups, to address this will have an immeasurable impact on all of our futures.