Libraries, archives, genealogy, and more
This week's newsletter will bring together news from the library, archives, and genealogy fields, along with other news stories.
Hello everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful week. This week’s newsletter will focus on the library, archives, and genealogy field. The biggest news of the week is Blackstone acquiring Ancestry. Project ARCC, which calls itself a “task force of archivists striving to motivate the archival profession” to affect climate change, described Blackstone as a company which “profits from cooperating with ICE, financing shale development, and burning down the Amazon rainforest” and criticized the purchase. That means it is more of an ethical dilemma than ever to keep genealogical or related records on Ancestry. I’m personally still wrestling with how to proceed, short of deleting my account and leaving, and I’ll probably write a post about it. Anyway, let me put that aside for the time being and move onto the newsletter.
Let me talk about the library field. While some shared reading recommendations for the “pandemic summer,” others expressed solidarity with libraries, and noted the limits of flexibility. Additionally, the Internet Archive responded with a lawsuit about their COVID emergency library. Connected to this are posts on my Library in Popular Culture blog, with my favorite ones about libraries in Paradise Kiss, in Revolutionary War Utena, and in Wandering Son. I’ll be posting more every day, but as always, suggestions for fictional libraries/librarians I should focus on are appreciated.
This connects to the archives field. Apart from David Ferriero’s post about the 19th Amendment centennial, I had some wonderful posts on my Wading Through the Cultural Stacks. While the posts about archives in Star Wars are old hat, I think the one about Stretch Armstrong, arguably the most positive depiction of archives I’ve seen to date, although there are still clear stereotypes, is the best one. I also wrote about some scattered depictions of archives in popular culture. I just published a post outlining my schedule for the posts on the blog itself, noting that my posts, will be weekly (hopefully), or biweekly if need be. As such, suggestions for popular media which feature archivists and/or archives are appreciated.
Then there is the genealogy field. Other than the newsletter focusing on the Newgate prison in London, or another about how cousins affect the finding of ancestors, I published a post on my Popular Culture in Genealogy blog. I focus on the family tree of Steven Universe, the protagonist of one of my favorite shows, Steven Universe, which later had a movie and an epilogue series titled Steven Universe Future, concluding earlier this year. Like the family tree of Fry in Futurama, Steven’s family tree is non-traditional in part because he grows up without his birth mother, and is raised by three non-binary women, who serve as his guardians, or perhaps even his moms, as some have put it, while his dad lives in a beat-up van, while running a car wash. Additionally, characters with Gems can fuse together with each other in what is called “fusion,” an expression of a friendship or a relationship between two people. For instance, one of Steven’s guardians, Garnet, is actually the fusion of two non-binary women, Ruby and Sapphire, who have a wedding officiated by Steven in the show’s last season. Anyway, I highlighted it because it is a great show which has a lot of LGBTQ representation. I just published a post outlining my posting schedule, noting that I will be posting reviews bi-weekly and hopefully weekly, depending on how much content I can find with family history or genealogy themes. As always, suggestions are welcome.
Finally, I’d like to give a special mention to posts about big data, Minerva’s Kaleidoscope, “a source for parents and caregivers to find materials to spark kids’ imaginations” and get updates about LOC programs, a story about the Wardsboro public library staff resigning over reopening plans of the library, and the challenges of online learning in the time of COVID.
That is all for this week. I hope you all have a great weekend and week to come.
- Burkely