Archivists, librarians, and spooky tales
A set of articles about archives and libraries for you to read on Halloween!
Hey everyone! I hope your week is going great so far. I was going to send this yesterday, but I decided to send it this morning instead, with this “scary” above image. It shows Marceline “Marcy” the Vampire Queen, one of my fav characters from Adventure Time, biting Princess Bonnibel “Bonnie” Bubblegum at the end of the episode “Red Starved.” At the time, Bonnie was her ex-girlfriend and but becomes her girlfriend in the series season finale. There’s more to the story than this, of course, but I don’t want to go off on a tangent here. As a reminder, I wrote about the show and libraries back in September, and I felt the above image directly connects with Halloween, so it seemed appropriate. The original image I had chosen for this post seemed a bit too scary, so I replaced it with this one, which is still a bit jarring.
Anyway, with that out of the way, there are a number of great articles I’d like share with you. One post focuses on the Ask an Archivist day back on October 2nd, and people’s thoughts on the day, using the SAA account to raise awareness of the resources of the professional organization. Moving over the realm of libraries, there are posts about medical librarian Megan Rosenbloom, the complicated role of the modern public library, and two posts on Hack Library School. The first is about finding community with your MLIS degree and the other is about the academic and professional elements of that same degree. I also found an article which ranked 50 fictional librarians pretty interesting, most of which embody awful librarian stereotypes, like those in Ghostbusters, It’s a Wonderful Life, National Treasure (actually an archivist, not a librarian), and The Time Traveler’s Wife (actually a positive depiction), but not those in any of the series I have reviewed on my blog. Perhaps this was because they stuck to films and comics, but it does limit the usefulness of this list.
I’d also like to plug my friend’s new magical fantasy fiction, “Lapis and Peridot’s Talk Show, Carmen’s Desperate Move, and A Return to Japan.” There isn’t any mention of libraries or archives, but this sets the scene for my friend’s new fiction chapter which will have two huge battles, each on different sides of the world, so they tell me. It also involves the classic fight of good against evil, along with a description of Japanese chess, shogi, and a talk show hosted by two of my friend’s characters, which was worthwhile challenge to write. Its a magical world, but my friend says they tried to add in some realistic elements like these, which grounded it in actual cultural customs, to make it more relatable. Also, my friend noted they published a book of their fiction stories if you are interested in that, as well.
That’s all for now! Hope you all have a great rest of the week and weekend to come!
- Burkely