From animation to webcomics, archives to libraries: running the gamut
This week's newsletter will highlight some new reviews of pop culture I published last week, along with the typical summary of news about archives and libraries.
Hello everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful week and Thanksgiving. This week’s newsletter will focus on archives, libraries, and more, as always, but I’d like to highlight a few posts first.
I’d like to start with a new review I wrote for Pop Culture Maniacs about the children’s animation, Victor and Valentino, hopefully setting the stage for other reviews in the future, either on that site and others. I’m so excited they published the review! In terms of other reviews, I looked at libraries, records, and archives in one of my favorite webcomics, Lore Olympus, and I pointed out ten of the most beautiful libraries in animated series that I have watched at this point.
With that, there were some interesting topics in archives this past week. David Ferriero talked about a new way to explore Bureau of Indian Affairs photographs, while a post pointing out a guide to documenting born-digital workflows was posted on the blog site of the SAA’s Electronic Records Section and the National Security Archive had a post about the declassification of a 1987 CIA damage assessment on the Jonathan Pollard spy case. Additionally, the blog site of the SAA’s Women’s Collections Section highlighted an exhibit focusing on the Admission of Women to the University of Michigan and the SAA’s Acquisitions & Appraisal Section pointed out some highlights and accomplishments in 2020. I recently stumbled upon a blog on Issues and Advocacy, the blog of the Issues & Advocacy section of the SAA, about archives in popular culture, specifically focusing on true crime documentaries. It’s a narrow subject, you could say, but I’m glad some other archivists are writing about these subjects! I can happily report that I have blogposts in upcoming weeks on my blog, Wading Through The Cultural Stacks which will focus on archives or archives themes in various films, webcomics, anime, and animations. I would list them all here, but I want them to be a surprise! So look forward to that!
When it comes to libraries, I was overjoyed to see my post mentioned by Jennifer Snoek-Brown of Reel Librarians, who reviews appearances of librarians in popular culture. I have her a suggestion of 33 series to add to her TV series listing. As soon as she updates the list, I’ll tell you all about it in this newsletter. This past week I read stories about spyware in libraries, elimination of fines in the Chicago Public Library system, the attempts by college librarians to provide support to students upended by the pandemic, and the history of dust jackets. At the same time, I loved reading about how German librarians caught a book thief, the UC Berkeley library embracing the term “undocumented immigrants” to replace “illegal aliens” even as the Library of Congress hasn’t made the change to their subject headings, yet. The same could be said of a study looking at the loose requirements when it comes to LibGuides created by libraries, and Snoek-Brown writing about law books and research in the film, Marshall. In addition, Hack Library School had posts about getting a library job, selling your skills (and competencies), encouraged people to submit to the Student Research Journal (if you are a student), gave tips on how to save money on textbooks in library school, and talked about thankfulness in troubling times.
Since I didn’t come across as many articles on genealogy as I did last week, for this newsletter, I’m going to roll them into the section about honorable mentions. Jeannette Austin had newsletter posts about Virginia pioneers in the 18th century and discovering people in old photos. In terms of honorable mentions, Scientific American had an article noting how government-funded science laid the groundwork for the COVID-19 vaccines, the importance of reading for pleasure, and how it can reduce stress, along with an interview with pop culture historian and archivist Rob Klein, which was really interesting! I also came across posts noting the annual conference of the Popular Culture Association in the June of next year will have papers on “any aspect of Popular Culture as it pertains to libraries, archives, museums, or research.” I wish I had known about this sooner, but I look forward to seeing what papers people present next year. Finally, the post about the films, literature, and other popular culture the Smithsonian appeared in is a useful resource, for reviewing pop culture.
I hope you all have a productive week to come.
- Burkely