Animation, archives, libraries, blogging, history, LGBTQ themes, and more
In this "too long for email" newsletter, I'll be sharing with you the latest news about archives, libraries, genealogy, history, and beyond
Hello everyone! I hope you are all having a good week. On Tuesday, I published a post about the church library in Ascendance of a Bookworm, which has a second season coming out in some time in April of this year! And on Thursday my article about indie animation was published in Pop Culture Maniacs, providing an update on the indie animated series I covered during my article in August of last year. I hope, and expect, that this year may be an even bigger year for indie animation than 2021. I’ve gotten a great response to it so far, with one animator, even thanking me for talking about “all the fun indie animations being made” and another saying my notation about their film was “very kind.” Others said they appreciated the recognition (also see here, here, here, and here), provided updates on their series, called the article “awesome,” were glad they were featured prominently in the article and the shout out, the small mention, being name dropped, see indie animation flourish, see “cool projects,” neat to be mentioned, a “huge honor” to be mentioned (also see here), called the article “very awesome,” and thanking me for covering the “rising indie animation scene.” There are so many other responses that I can’t even list them all here. With that, let me move onto the rest of my newsletter.
That brings me to archives. Sam Cross pointed out that archivists should also be on the front lines of stopping book banning efforts. Jackie Shieh, the Descriptive Data Management Librarian, wrote about using linked open data to connect Smithsonian information, which is used by the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. On Monday, there is a post about a new member of the SAA’s Issues & Advocacy Steering Committee, Andrea Blair, who I’m glad to work alongside. Otherwise, the SAA put out a statement saying they support Portland, Oregon community archivists, an my colleague at NSA Lauren Harper wrote about how growing FOIA backlogs should prompt more automatic declassification and proactive disclosure, FOIA requests, Obama Presidential Records now subject to FOIA, lawmakers skeptical of CIA’s Havana Syndrome report. She also provided a summary of my article about Pentagon demands for military exemptions during the 1997 Kyoto climate negotiations.
Washington Post wrote about video game preservation, NPR wrote about hearing the first ad for a soda, while Steven D. Booth, an archivist, researcher, and member of The Blackivists, explained how he does history, and Bridget Malley talked about Documenting Disability History in Western Pennsylvania. At the same time, Nancy Loe noted archival supplies for genealogy, History Factory discussed corporate archival budgeting, wile /r/Archivists had posts on marking a spot of the microfilm roll, storage boxes, early mid-20th century newspapers, scanners, and saving webpages. There was also an interesting NY Times article about the Jehovah’s Witnesses suing Museum of Military History in Dresden, saying their retention of 31 files of documents from JW members deprives them of “a significant and invaluable part of our cultural heritage,” which was rejected by a regional court in Germany.
In my first mention of archives in popular culture in this newsletter, I’d like to point to Tony Stanza of the Stanza Archives in Welcome to the Wayne. In the first episode of the series, Clara Rhone talks about the archives, saying that time doesn't change inside and asks Tony to do research on his problem inside the library. In the second episode Rhone talks and fights a shadowy figure, Tony Stanza. Later in the first season, there is a gyre and a set of terminals to access information about the gyre, like an archive or even a data center. In the first episode of season 2, Jonah Bishop is revealed to be "Tony Stanza.” In an episode of the same season, Alice's ancestors are shown to be the keepers of the Wayne's history for generations. The book, Wayne cyclodex, isn't for reading but it can take you places. This is another archival theme in the series, as shown in the below image:
In December 2020, Samantha Cross talked about Wan Shi Tong (voiced by an American actor of Puerto Rican descent, Héctor Elizondo), who appeared in two episodes, the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Library" and Legend of Korra episode "A New Spiritual Age." Cross described Wan as a "giant owl spirit tasked with collecting knowledge, information, and specimens for the Spirit Library," voiced by Hector Elizondo, saying that he once "brought the library from the spirit world into the human world so that knowledge might be shared." She notes that humanitarian was not responsible with this vast amount of knowledge, so Wan banned "humans from utilizing the library if their intent was for violence and evil." When Sooka announces the defeat of Fire Nation with knowledge from the library, "Wan grows angry and attacks the group," so they flee, as Wan Shi Tong "sinks the library back into the spirit world." She goes on to write that Wan, in his second appearance, meets Jinora, Avatar Aang's granddaughter and offers to explain how a radio works when he gets it wrong, to get access to the library. Wan later is revealed to side with the uncle of Korra and his "desire to free the dark spirit Vaatu," claiming he is doing this because "he cares about spirits while Korra has shown no such interest." She further explains Wan. I'd like to give my own take on this since Wan is said to embody the "scary librarian" or "magic librarian" by TV Tropes. I think it can be said that he is an archivist, but I’ll have to review it in the future.
There was a lot of news about libraries this week. Some on Twitter talked about the impact of book bans, library and museum positions offering “poverty wages,” while The Week noted that Jeopardy winners keep being defeated by librarians from Chicago. Hack Library School had posts about a day in the life of a paraprofessional, becoming a parent while getting a MLIS, and what it’s like to publish a book in LIS, with insights from authors of a librarian’s guide to games and gamers from collection developments to advisory services. It was also wonderful seeing the publication’s call for new writers, specifically for those writers who “are graduating in December 2022 or later should apply.” They clarified on Twitter that they “sometimes make exceptions for guest posts from LIS professionals” and said that if I have “an idea of something you’d like to write about, shoot us an email.” So, I may give that a shot.
A number of resources were shared by Matthew Noe, the ALA GNCRT President, when watching a LibLearnX presentation entitled “History of Black Librarianship and its Impact on the Present,” including an article revisiting “Rosemary DuMont’s 1986 articles on Black librarianship and racial attitudes in LIS,” books entitled The Black Librarian in America and Handbook of Black librarianship, the 1992 proceedings of the First National Conference of African American Librarians, a blog entitled Little Known Black Librarian Facts, a book entitled Library Service to African Americans in Kentucky, from the Reconstruction Era to the 1960s, and a journal article about Lillian Haydon Childress Hall, a pioneer Black librarian. He, additionally, shared a book entitled The 21st-Century Black Librarian in America, an upcoming edited collection entitled The Black Librarian in America Reflections, Resistance, and Reawakening, a link to the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA) website, an article about how to attract people of color to the library profession, a website about Augusta Baker EDI Programming at USC (which also has a speaker series), a book entitled Freedom Libraries: The Untold Story of Libraries for African Americans in the South, a national forum on the Future of Black Librarianship from BCALA which is funded through an IMLS award, and Katrina Spencer’s a Comprehensive Guide to Resisting Overcommitment from Uproot Knowledge. The latter was noted in a tweet by Courtney Chartier (@cowboycourtney on Twitter), the SAA’s President, about ways to avoid overcommitment, sharing a chart from the guide.
Reading Spencer’s guide, I would say I’m as overcommitted as those mentioned in the post, but I am, personally, planning to pull back in a lot of ways this year. My blog on archivists/archives in popular culture (Wading Through the Cultural Stacks) will, more likely than not, end this year, unless something miraculous happens. Even my blog reviewing libraries/libraries in pop culture (Pop Culture Library Review) will begin to slow down as well. My posting on social media will slow and I’m planning to leave the ALA this year unless something changes on that front.
There were many other library-related articles. Book Riot reported on Gene McGee, the mayor of Ridgeland, Mississippi “withholding $110,000 from the library system until all “homosexual materials” are removed,” a principal of a Cedar Heights Middle School in Kent, Washington, removed books “in anticipation of potential publicity for those materials being made available to students,” specifically LGBTQ materials, and conservative nonprofits. There were assorted articles on how university libraries can protect scientific freedom and data, libraries and publishers battling over terms for public use of e-books, impressive ancient libraries, a project by Trinity College to relocate vulnerable books, thoughts and advice for new student leaders, the current collection of We Here which aims to provide “a safe and supportive community for Black and Indigenous folks, and People of Color (BIPOC) in library and information science (LIS) professions and educational programs,” and critical management studies. Then, Reel Librarians had a guest post about Yugoslavians in the library. Ana Ndumu, a Black woman who is all about “LIS, demography, & info behavior life,” according to her Twitter, wrote on topics such as: HBCUs, LIS education, and institutional discrimination; critical perspectives on diversity and equality in U.S. LIS practice; how changes in the U.S. Black population impacts racial inclusion and representation in LIS education; and adapting an HBCU-inspired framework for Black student success in U.S. LIS education.
April Hathcock, on the other hand, in a poignant post from April 2016, discussed “whiteness as ideology and hegemonic practice,” adding that whiteness “plays a role in the marginalization of people based on class, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, able-bodiedness, and other modes of identity,” and coining “oppressive normativity,” defining it as the fact that “people who are middle-class, male, straight, cisgender, Christian, fully able-bodied, etc. are privileged in their professional and personal lives,” while those not within those identities are “professionally and personally marginalized, excluded, and erased.”
The Library of Congress, as always, has wonderful posts. Some focus on the lifecycle of parliamentary documents, while others talk about new digital collections, transcribing the federal theatre project, a new acquisition of a 14th century manuscript, remembering Sidney Poitier, and a masterpiece of medieval geography.
There was an assortment of tweets on various subjects. Matthew Noe, the ALA GNCRT President, wondered whether you have to “be in a library to be a librarian,” saying that taking the skills library workers have and applying them to non-library spaces means someone isn’t likely to be called a librarian. I must agree. Alex Brown, a librarian, historian, and author, said that in 2020 they were burnt out and sick of dealing with the “system pressure” of being Black and queer in a “profession that wanted me silent,” and was grateful she found a school she loves working at.
Noe also said that librarians should not give up on fair compensation and noted that people are “finding better pay and working environments outside of libraries,” doing similar work. Apart from this, Lisabarian asked if anyone else needed downtime after dealing with people all day at work, while J.E. Kearns, a Bookseller at Kearns Rare Books & Curiosities, pointed out that librarians curse too (obviously), callan (@eminencefont on Twitter) noted staff reductions at her library, and Tasha Nins, a Minnesota librarian, stated that she is not in it to die for her library job, not in it to “die for your comfort or entertainment.” Other librarians talked about a question from a GIS librarian, a book walk in a library, and a book in a university library which has literally no information about what it is.
That brings me to genealogy. Crista Cowan, a corporate genealogist for Ancestry, noted that the company added “another 900,000+ records” from Find a Grave. KCRW quoted Henry Louis Gates Jr. as saying “there's a lot of pain in the past.” IrelandXO focused on the Irish county of Mayo. In a recent review of The Geekiary by Jessica Rae, it examined issue 10 of Robin which “takes Damian Wayne back to the past” and a character, Mother Soul, wanting him to “understand his family history and where he comes from.” There were articles in Genealogy journal on cultivating critical land-based family history, race, gender, and class at the English divorce court, 1872–1939, and defining terms like “race” and “ethnicity.” Jim Wade wrote about the creation of an obsessed genealogist.
Connie Denney talked on researching, then verifying, while Keith Whitcomb, Jr. noting genealogists which solve family mystery with Vermont ties, scholars argued that mixed-ancestry genetic research shows a bit of Native American DNA could reduce risk of Alzheimer’s disease, and Denise May Levenick outlined 12 steps to reducing your genealogy paper clutter. Then, an Ancestral Findings podcast focused on how to preserve ancient genealogy documents.
On a related subject are history-related articles. Smithsonian magazine wrote about how the Elgin marbles ended up in England, China’s artificial sun breaking a record for longest sustained nuclear fusion, East Africa’s oldest modern human fossil determined to be way older than previously thought, the quest to protect California’s transcontinental railroad tunnels, archaeologists proposing a 4,500-year-old burial mound was world’s first military memorial, and other mammals, not dinosaurs, keeping our ancestors down. Other articles focused on unraveling a myth in Nova Scotia, the day Germany’s first jet fighter soared, and researchers uncovering a strange carving of a naked man at a Roman fort.
There were additional history-related stories about the march to independence in the Southern colonies during the Revolutionary War, and who wrote the “political story” of the revolution. Book Riot had a U.S. history reading list. Others highlighted cataloging Black knowledge, noting how Dorothy Porter assembled and organized a premier Africana research collection, Smedley Butler, a critic of U.S. empire, and Black teen dance shows in the 1950s and 1960s which were on the one hand “commercialized diversions during an era of profound changes in the racial dynamics of the South” but on the other “spaces that celebrated the creative potential and everyday lives of black youth,” to name a few articles.
There’s a lot of news when it comes to animation. On January 28 was the debut of season 1 of The Legend of Vox Machina and on February 23 was the debut of The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, the reboot/revival of The Proud Family, a Black sitcom which aired from 2001 to 2005. There are many other series, such as those recommended by a Rotten Tomatoes critic, like Ark: The Animated Series (which looks pretty exciting), Chainsaw Man which appears to be very bloody and violent but interesting like The Boys: Diabolical, and the wild series, The Cuphead Show, which is coming next month, on February 18. There isn’t enough information to assess their series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Army of the Dead: Los Vegas, Uzumaki, The Devil is a Part-Timer!, Magic: The Gathering, or a continuation of Bleach. I can say with certainty, however, that I fully agree with Anime Feminist’s recommendation of The Aquatope on the White Sand, although I can’t agree with what they said about The Heike Story or Restaurant to Another World – Season 2 since I have not watched either one of those series. The reviews of The Legend of Vox Machina in Black Girl Nerds and Autostraddle made me more excited to see it, as did the interview in Polygon with those creating the show, making clear it is not for children. There were also articles about the seventh season of Totally Spies which is scheduled to premiere in 2023, the aesthetic splendor of The Simpsons, and The Proud Family original series coming to DVD and Blu-Ray starting in March, along with The Proud Family Movie! Technadu noted a Funimation Home Release Schedule 2022, with release of the complete season of Adachi and Shimamura on February 1.
This interconnects with LGBTQ representation in fictional media. Some argued that Arcane set the gold standard, while others criticized Arcane for its “queer aesthetics” but settling for “a maybeship” rather than committing to the existence of LGBTQ+ characters. While I am not sure I would go that far or say that “the show seems to relegate any overt gay behavior to spaces that look like bawdy houses,” I do think they have a point about vagueness of relationship between Vi and Caitlyn, although I would call it a bit “subtle,” and I think they have a good point that companies pull in queer audiences with scraps, with inclusion as a “marketing tool to capture a broader audience,” rather than a “necessary starting point.” This leads to getting “the safest reflection, a fraction of a facet, instead of a vibrant, authentic portrayal” adding that if the representation is “ambiguous enough for queer people to put the clues together,” but not alienating its more conservative audience, then “it can be ignored if so desired.” Hopefully, the representation is better in the next season. In other more positive news, in March, Warner Bros. brings Adventure Time: Distant Lands to Blu-Ray. April Hathcock, on the other hand, wrote about growing awareness as a trans an genderqueer ally, noting the difference between gender as a “random social construct created by folks in the dominant group” sometimes interconnected with one’s assigned sex, and sex as “nothing more than biological description.”
Otherwise, a Book Riot writer, C.J. Connor, listed what they described as 8 of the best queer space opera books, specifically Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit, Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Khan Wong’s The Circus Infinite, Jaqueline Koyanagi’s Ascension, Charles Jane Anders’ Victories Greater Than Death, Alechia Dow’s The Kindred, M.K. England’s The Disasters, Laura Lam and Elizabeth May’s Seven Devils. CBR provided a guide of the best yuri manga. Of those, I’ve read Mage & Demon Queen but not Ring My Bell, Getting To Know Grace, Pulse, and You Were Worth It. CBR outlined the best LGBTQ storylines in the gaming industry, Erika Hendrickson of Book Riot noted 8 manga about love, and Gayety talked about Hollywood’s “queer coding problem” as they described it, with queer coding describing characters which aren’t “explicitly confirmed to be queer” but have “traits, behaviors, and dialogue that can be associated with queerness” and negative portrayals can harm a young queer audience and “further perpetuates existing negative stereotypes.” It is different from queerbaiting, which is “inserting queer themes or implying that characters might be queer for the sole purpose of provoking and attracting more audiences.” There were further articles about the conception of “solo polyamory,” meaning someone can “maintain multiple intimate relationships, some lasting years, while…keeping the freedom and autonomy of single life,” as being single becomes more popular culturally, another article about Indians on open relationships and polyamory, and Tessa Thompson saying that Taiki Waititi, director of Thor: Love and Thunder, wants to explore Valkyrie’s sexuality more.
There are other articles about topics which don’t neatly fit into this newsletter. Biden said he supports the “right to repair.” PBS noted COVID became an opportunity to feed kids in Maine. The Markup had an article about College Prep software Naviance is selling advertising access to millions of students. Muckrock noted requests for information about anomalous sightings at Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station, and another request for FBI records on Woodie Guthrie and Pete Seeger. There are also requests for records on Sidney Poitier and Nixon target Joseph Tydings. Psychology Today asserted that writing by hand promotes better and faster learning, while others talked about Optical Character Recognition (OCR), challenging stereotypes about Appalachian life, the truth about ghostwriting around the world, and peat lands worldwide drying out which threatens to release 860 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year.
Book Riot had posts on podcasting about books, balancing poetry, non-fiction, and fiction, eight 2022 queer graphic novels and memoirs (Pixels of You by Ananth Hirsh, Messy Roots by Laura Gao, Flung Out of Space by Grace Ellis and Hannah Templer, Rabbit Chase by Elizabeth LaPensée and KC Oster, Fine by Rhea Ewing, The Third Person by Emma Grove, Our Colors by Gengoroh Tagame, and M is for Monster by Talia Dutton), getting to know the reporter Nellie Bly, and reading books (the somewhat weird idea of “blind dates with a book”). I also learned recently that Patreon, GoDaddy, and Substack also seem to use AWS (Amazon Web Services) meaning that even if you want to escape Amazon’s grasp, that’s easier said than done.
Finally, we get to The Nib. Illustrations this week focused on “living through” pharmacies, “parallel Earth” which differentiates from our actual world when it comes to mask-wearing, “threats” going to the movies, the best of 90s nostalgia, bottled water, and gun owners possibly being required to get liability insurance in San Jose, California.
That’s all for this newsletter. I hope you all have a good week ahead.
- Burkely