Magical librarians, fiction, the limits of "original order," institutional racism, and corporate culture
Happy Sunday! This week I'll be noting new pop culture reviews I wrote, stories about records management, LGBTQ library collections, history, genealogy, and beyond
Good afternoon everyone! I hope you all had a good week. I’ve been very prolific this week. For one, I wrote a post about Doctor Strange and the Black sorcerer librarian in an episode of What…If? and the broader implications for librarians at large. Jennifer Snoek-Brown, who writes over at Reel Librarians, called the post excellent and said it provides some “really thought-provoking points about the harm that even well-intentioned notions like ‘librarians are magical’ do cause” while Archives in Fiction said something similar, arguing that for the audience it seems that librarians suffer “the same lack of acknowledgment (basically invisible labor) as archivists” and are only there to convey or be the “vehicle for that all-important information.”
I also wrote two reviews for The Geekiary on two of my favorite animated series, Helluva Boss and The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated!, the first a mature animation with morbid humor and the second an anime which scrambles tropes, while following up on the latter show with a review for Pop Culture Maniacs! And on Tuesday, my friend published a fan work continuing their Avaloran Chronicles series, titled “Royal Crisis: Elena’s Dilemma and Isa’s Internal Strife.” Here’s the lead-in to their wonderful story:
After learning from Zuzo about the horrifying act she committed, by proxy, Elena begins questioning herself more than ever before. She wants to leave everything behind. However, if she decides to go down that path, it will have a ripple effect, affecting her wife, Naomi, her sister Isa, and the realm of Avalor itself! Meanwhile, Isa decides that now is the time to seize power from the usurpers on the throne, but is she going too far? Will everything just fall apart?
Dun dun dun! My friend says they will hopefully have some more stories in coming days, which will mention libraries, librarians, archivists, or archives. And when that happens, I’ll likely note them here to help out my friend in any way I can. Anyway, let me move onto to the rest of my newsletter, which was again deemed “too long for email,” so it may cut off for you all.
There was a lot of chatter about archives in the past week. I came across some scattered tweets about archives in Kentucky Route Zero (a video game), an overwhelmed archivist as a trading card, and the first female dean at Penn State being very good “friends” with her career-long roommate. Thursday was #AskAnArchivist day. I penned some tweets about a number of topics, including saying that the most competent archivist in pop culture I know of is in one of my friend’s stories (Mx. Lawlor). I also heard about a series with an archivist, specifically Rutherford Falls on Peacock and told the story of my path to becoming an archivist which is not that glamorous.
Some shared their stories of how they became archivists, through work at the archives of a radio and electricity museum, due to public history work before becoming an archivist (something which I connected to based on my experience), or through the process of saving collections. Others said they wanted to try something different after working as a legislative assistant at the House of Representatives, began own the archivist track due to an interest in curatorial work and history, and started to be interested in archives because of a need for a job and a love for history. There were those who enjoyed the “reference labor of connecting readers with resources that met their needs,” noted their winding road to become an archivist, realized their transferable skills, and stated that working in archives was a second job. Others stated that they began in the profession for a number of reasons, like wanting to do museum work, due to a digitization project, or a desire to ensure that a legacy can be preserved. There are many more people tweeting on #AskAnArchivist, not all of which I can link to here, so I’d check out that hashtag.
Others replied on Ask An Archivist day as well. One library noted that their employees have “backgrounds in art history, creative writing, and linguistics before coming to the archives profession” and one woman, Brim Watts, who directs HistSex (on history of sexuality) and works on the APA Div 44 Committee on Consensual Non-Monogamy, suggested to NOT preserve a melting dildo, which was an…interesting comment, to say the least! While I tweeted this week about a “kleptomaniacal cataloguer” mentioned in some newspaper article, I liked seeing that Henry Louis Gates is asking archivists to answer genealogy-related questions, SNAP is hosting a spooky-themed discussion about horror in archives, the importance of collection care, and a thread from Maarja Krusten discusses how technology affects our workplaces.
And this is NOT the right way to store your materials people:
In other non-Twitter news related to archives, my work colleague, William Burr, at NSA wrote about the U.S. Navy and nuclear deterrence, while David Ferriero of NARA ended his series of land acknowledgements of Indigenous land that NARA facilities sit on, Samantha Manz, collections associate for the Minnesota Historical Society’s Native American Collections, talked about the Minnesota Historical Society’s Native American Artist-in-Residence Program, and Ferriero noted NARA’s participation in the International Council of Archives. Krusten, in a blogpost in late September, wrote about topics such as acknowledging women in archival work, like Cary McStay, the work that those at NARA do “behind the scenes” as you could describe it, the Obama Presidential Library, and how the work culture at NARA changed over time. The College and University Archives Section welcomed a new steering committee member named Liz Scott and another member, Caitlin Colban Waldron, who will be the new blog editor for the section’s blog! Ben Wrubel, Senior Manuscript Processor at Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, wrote about remote transcription of legacy finding aids at Cornell’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. Archivists Erin Barsan, Lara Friedman-Shedlov, Shira Peltzman, and Paige Walker described what DANNNG (Digital Archival traNsfer, iNgest, and packagiNg Group) an “inter-institutional collaborative working group of digital archives practitioners” is.
April K. Anderson-Zorn and Dallas Long wrote an academic article about digitizing yearbooks, with the challenge of creating digital access while considering student privacy and other legal issues. Archives AWARE! interviewed Bridgett Pride who is a Reference Librarian for the Manuscripts Archives and Rare Books Division along with working as part of the Arts and Artifacts Division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, where she focuses on “Black collections and zine making”! It was noted in a recent news roundup by the SAA’s Privacy and Confidentiality Section that the ACRL/RBMS Guidelines Regarding Security and Theft in Special Collections are in the process of revision, guidelines which currently “encourage punitive action to safeguard collections, spaces, and staff.” The Abolition in Special Collections group of the Abolitionist Library Association is encouraging archivists to “read and sign their statement to the RBMS Executive Committee which will support a revision that will make special collections reading rooms safer spaces.”
There are so many more articles related to archives, including the 250th anniversary of the Second Parish in Hingham which was “founded in 1746 as one of the churches of the “Standing Order” of the Massachusetts Bay Colony,” Andrew Harman, saying that archives CAN split up a family history collection, even if some declare it goes against the “principle of respect des fonds and the overarching rule of archives to not impose order,” in order to make it more accessible and because there were “practicality two separate collections only loosely related by ancestral ties.” Maarja Krusten wrote about renovations to the National Archive building in D.C., employee well-being at NARA, and noted that ensuring safety for those who speak historical truth, for visitors and employees is “up to us,” among other topics.
Assorted articles focused on the digital archives of the Hairenik Association, an Armenian organization, a virtual tour of the SWE Archives at Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University in Detroit, provided by SWE archivist Troy Eller English, the availability of conference sessions “highlighting current scholarship on the topic of government films and filmmaking,” known as Films of State: Moving Images Made by Governments, and the vast archives at JFK Library providing information for a new documentary on Ernest Hemingway which is “shedding new light on the acclaimed novelist,” with the library having manuscripts of Hemingway, “personal correspondence and about 11,000 photographs”! There were assorted articles noting that Carl Reiner’s Archives will go to the National Comedy Center, the felted tributes to family archives by Melissa Joseph, the announcement that France opened Mitterrand's Rwanda archives as “part of an effort to better understand the nation’s role in the African country during its 1990s genocide,” Annette Gordon Reed receiving the Empire State Archives History Award, and that in April of this year it was reported that “almost 10%” of the speeches by the former president, especially to large public libraries, were “excluded from the official record” provided to the Compilation of Presidential Documents, which is problematic for historians. And the speech noted in that article is STILL not in that compilation.
Otherwise, NY Times had an article on enlarged photos of the Fire Island hamlet in the 1950s which “was a refuge for gay men and lesbians,” and another on the Strong National Museum of Play announcing it will create a National Archives of Game Show History. Currently, they are looking to collect “records and materials of the many professional producers, performers, directors, designers, writers, and staff members who have been involved in all facets of game show development, production, marketing, and distribution.” The National Archives of India were reported to declassify state secrets. ArtNet noted that you can now view the complete archives of painter Charles White in a new collection of records digitized by the Smithsonian. A reporter rightly criticized the argument that NARA’s anti-racism task force is “erasing history” (it obviously isn’t). Additionally, of note, are posts on Rach’s dormant blog, Living in the Library World, about conservation and security and another on responsibilities of archives when it comes to access and reference coupled with issues connected with both which crop up from time to time.
Some of the library discourse this week online is worth noting. This included a poll asking whether listening to an audiobook was reading (67% said yes, 33% said no). While I wasn’t sure at first, I came around to the idea it is reading since “reading can be silent or aloud,” as I put it, and as Randi Jo Dalton, a Mohawk librarian, wrote in a tweet, “there are a thousand ways to tell a story.” Related to that is my contention that no one should feel bad if they stop watching a TV show, reading a book, watching a movie, or whatnot. Jennifer Snoek-Brown wrote, on Reel Librarians, about recently added titles, and re-examined her past review of a Latina newspaper archivist in the 1995 film Just Cause, and was even more critical this time around, recognizing the racism in the film. The Library of Congress (LOC), on the other hand, had all sorts of posts, as they do every week. Some focused on magnificent maps from the World Digital Library (some of them are really bizarre, like the last one in the post), new digital collections from the Business Division, the story of Hazel Scott, said to be “the gorgeous face of jazz at the mid-century…the most glamorous, well-known Black woman in America” at one time, population and business trends of Latino people, new acquisitions by LOC for Indigenous People’s Day, the story of sportscaster Buck Canel, celebrating 150 Years of composer Alexander Zemlinsky, and the Prints & Photographs Division using Flickr to share interesting images, including those on dogs, going back to school, and mystery stereographs, among more.
LOC posts beyond this were on several topics. Cary O’Dell, Boards Assistant to the National Recording Preservation Board, wrote about the ongoing mystery of ABC’s Wide World of Mystery (1973-1976) in terms of missing original films which were part of the series, asking that if anyone has missing copies to let them know. Ann Hemmens, a senior legal reference librarian with the Law Library of Congress, described the plots of the Boggs Family at the Congressional Cemetery. Sean DiLeonardi, 2021 Junior Fellow, an intern at LOC, was interviewed as was Julie Schwarz, a Foreign Law Intern. In the latter case, she noted that LOC doesn’t only have journals or books but also “drawings, photographs, films, and sound and video recordings” and other items. Neely Tucker, writer-editor in LOC’s Office of Communications, explained that slaveowner Thomas Jefferson’s copy of the Quran is making its appearance at the World Expo in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, one of the library’s treasures, as it was described. Kristi Finefield, Reference Librarian in the Prints and Photographs Division, described a recently published research guide on Latin America and the Caribbean in Photographs by Curator of Photography which will reveal “new views of the landscapes and people of this large region, many through the eyes of creators from those countries.” Manuscript reference Librarians Loretta Deaver and Lara Szypszak hosted a research orientation featuring LGBTQ topics in June of this year. While it is over 40 minutes long, it is definitely worthwhile to listen to this webcast in its entirety or read the transcript of the orientation, noting the library has the papers of…
Alla Nazimova, a woman who was in a romantic relationship with actress Eva Le Gallienne
Dr. Frank Kameny, who was fired as an astronomer for being gay in 1957
Lilli Vincenz, dismissed from the Women's Army Corps in 1963 because she was a lesbian
Bowers v. Hardwick, a 1986 Supreme Court case where the “court ruled that there is no constitutional protection preventing a state from criminalizing sexual conduct involving same sex couples” which was later overruled in Lawrence v. Texas, with Justice Harry A. Blackmun dissenting and joined by Thurgood Marshall, thanked by a DC Catholic LGBTQ group
Baynard Rustin, a gay Black civil rights leader
Walt Whitman or collections related to him
They suggested looking at the LGBTQ+ LibGuide about LGBTQ+ resources in the Manuscript Division of LOC. There are, at the same time, guides about LGBTQ+ resources in business and the workplace, a resource guide about resources at the library as a whole, another guide about legal resources, and one listing specific guides and resources within LOC which cover LGBTQ+ topics.
Apart from LOC posts, NPR reported that late fees were eliminated in the NYPL system, while in Campbell County, Wyoming some librarians are “accused of putting books some [i.e. County Attorney Mitchell Damsky and a local pastor named Susan Sisti] say are obscene in sections for children and teenagers,” i.e. books about LGBTQ issues and sex education. We Here, a collective of librarians of color which gathers every month online, about critical race theory in library and information studies.
Hack Library School had several relevant posts. Robin Mgee, a student at University Wisconsin Madison and community manager of the site, wrote that “decolonization is not just a metonym for social justice…repatriation of Indigenous land and life…[that] libraries…can be a force of good in their communities” which can involves becoming “comfortable with discomfort,” building relationships based on trust with indigenous communities, collection development that “includes Native authors and scholars,” and to point patrons “towards resources that offer Indigenous perspectives.” Paige Szmodis, a student at Simmons University concentrating in the Cultural Heritage Informatics, on the same site wrote about the importance of interdisciplinary library school education. NPR had an article about hot-spot library born in two shipping containers in a Cape Town slum, NYPL librarians explained where to start with Octavia Butler and recap and recordings of World Literature Festival, while Daily Tar Hill had a column arguing that UNC can't remain a research powerhouse without library resources.
Then there’s April Hathcock’s post from April 2019, where she argued that masters and misses own and run the library and archives fields, specifically white cisgender men, despite “feminization of the field,” and those below are those who have been allowed to stay in the profession, able to assimilate enough to be allowed in but when there is an attempt to see themselves as equal, they are put in “their place,” only meant to be there for “lip service diversity and feel-good neoliberal multiculturalism.” She further argues that the ability to stay in the profession is precarious and temporary, but not permanent, not in the slightest, while so-called paraprofessionals are outside the profession with unrecognized and undervalued work, who are never welcome in the profession, while young gentlemen and ladies from other disciplines are welcome to move into the profession, but others are not. She concludes by saying “yes, librarianship is a plantation…if we truly value equity and inclusion—if we truly wish to change the literal face of this profession—then we need to conscious and intentionally let go of this plantation mentality.” A lot to think about here.
That brings me to genealogy. Ancestry, unsurprisingly, wants a case against it dismissed, about those people suing over digitization of their yearbooks, and wanting to be compensated for such, as I’ve noted in previous newsletters. Find A Grave had a post on restoring the Old Saltsburg Cemetery. Genealogist Daniel Loftus tells the story of his great grandmother, Cáit Fraher, an Irish woman. Irish Central reported that Jameson whiskey, an Irish distillery, released 100 years of employee records online, now part of an Ancestry database, stretching from 1862 to 1969. IrelandXO had an insight on a trip of Frederick Douglass to Ireland in the 1845 and 1846, and again in 1887. George Hall told a tale of luck in finding his grandfather’s grave. Lisa S. Gorrell wrote about the process of finding Civil War Era Compiled Military Service Records. EvaAnne Johnson, librarian of The Family Librarian, tells the story of the Chicago brickmakers after the Chicago fire of 1871.
In a post from way back in June 2012, Judy Russell of The Legal Genealogist said that while you can get DNA from a sample of hair, but hair “poses some problems in terms of what DNA you can get,” and you can only do mtDNA testing which is “typically least useful for genealogical purposes” and the problem is finding a lab to do the test as usual genealogy DNA test companies won’t do hair testing, meaning you need to find a commercial lab of some type. Maybe Meet the Fockers was onto something with pubic hair? Not usually a way DNA tests are done, though, as I noted in a short post about the film on my now dormant blog which once reviewed genealogy in popular culture. James Tanner, another genealogist, outlined strategies for searching church records. Christine Sleeter, a historian and genealogist, provided an introduction to critical family history in Genealogy journal, describing it challenges historians to “ask about their ancestors” in order to answer difficult questions such as: “Who else (what other groups) was around, what were the power relationships among groups, how were these relationships maintained or challenged over time, and what does all this have to do with our lives now?” Something I probably should do with my own family history. Other articles were about Schaumburg Library's Genealogy Program which highlighted naturalization records, one woman’s story of her ancestry, Professor Celal Şengor saying that Anatolians only have 7% genes from Central Asia, and Al.com noting the 3 most common last names in Alabama in an article.
That brings me to history. Smithsonian magazine wrote that humans likely “sported clothes made of jackal, fox and wildcat skins some 120,000 years ago,” explained how A.I. digitally resurrects a trio of Gustav Klimt paintings, noted an interactive map which “lets users explore England’s hidden archaeological landscape,” explained the earliest use of tobacco by humans discovered in Utah. Other articles included a retrospective of Chicago’s Great Fire in 1871, a study which found that Europeans enjoyed beer and blue cheese 2,700 years ago, and a study identifying a correlation between Confederate monuments and lynchings. The said study says, in part:
…we show that Confederate monuments are tied to a history of racial violence. Specifically, we find that the number of lynching victims in a county is a positive and significant predictor of Confederate memorializations in that county, even after controlling for relevant covariates. This finding provides concrete, quantitative, historically and geographically situated evidence consistent with the position that Confederate memorializations reflect a racist history, marred by intentions to terrorize and intimidate Black Americans.
Smithsonian had articles on a rare 18th-century drawing by Rococo artist Tiepolo discovered in English estate’s attic, the untold story of Vincent van Gogh’s once-maligned painting, “The Potato Eaters,” Disney World now reckoning with its White middle-class past, archaeologists extracting 1,300-Year-Old wooden ski from Norwegian ice, a letter from the so-called “Father of Vaccination” Edward Jenner sold at an auction, and two photographers reexamining these affectionate portraits of life in the Crescent City. Other articles reported that UNESCO is weighing changes to the cultural heritage status of Stonehenge, archaeologists uncovering a 3,000 year old shark attack victim, a new history by Victoria Krebs noting the changing balance of power “between Ethiopia and medieval Europe,” archaeologists excavating the legacy of “group of white rioters razed the Providence neighborhood of Snowtown” in 1831, and how Indigenous stories helped scientists understand the origin of three huge boulders.
Journal of the American Revolution had posts on the numerical strength of George Washington’s army during the 1777 Philadelphia campaign, a review of Samuel A. Foreman’s new book Ill-Fated Frontier: Peril and Possibilities in the Early American West, detailed perspectives from William Howe’s war plan of 1776, a review of David O. Stewart’s new book, George Washington: The Political Rise of America’s Founding Father, and about victory and defeat for Benedict Arnold in Virginia. LOC had a post by Sonia Kahn, Library Technician in the Geography and Map Division, about the great Chicago Fire. William Hogeland, an Early American historian, noted the “American tendency to make everything about the Constitution,” in his words. Ty Ginter talked about saving LGBTQ heritage in the Hollywood area. Ken Lopez, founder of Our History Museum, which calls itself a “virtual and crowdsourced museum for documents, memorabilia, and old photographs” on its homepage, with an app to submit such items launching next year, explained how in 1864, Private John M. Lovejoy stopped “briefly in Alexandria to write a letter to his cousin, Cynthia, and describe the deplorable conditions at his camp.” The idea behind this museum will be to upload “pictures or scans of items, documents, and other assorted relics of the past and tap into a network of local history buffs who can help identify, explain, or catalog what the item is.” Although the museum could allow for people to bypass sometimes complicated rules for adding items to museum / archives / library collections, on the other due the fact that the museum will be app-based, the knowledge that trained staff could add is lost, and the museum itself is private (called a “business venture”), adding another complication. Alex Wallerstein told the story of the leak which brought the H-Bomb debate out of the cold. Historians wrote about “the intellectual implications of digital history.” IrelandXO provided insights on Ireland’s historic buildings. Aashish Velkar of University of Manchester said that imperial measurement systems have “always been political.”
As always, there are articles which don’t easily fall into the categories of archives, libraries, history, or genealogy, but still should be mentioned in this newsletter. One of those is by the editor of The Geekiary, Angel Wilson, a publication I occasionally write pop culture reviews for, saying that Netflix is NOT an ally of the LGBTQ community after keeping Dave Chapelle’s transphobic, and otherwise awful special, on the streaming platform, while suspending a trans engineer working for the company and later firing the organizer of a walk out (a Black trans woman) to protest the company’s stance on keeping the show! Netflix is not alone in this, as Amazon did something similar when they fired Chris Smalls, who organized a walk out at the company, claiming he “violated” COVID protocols. Netflix, in this case, claimed the organizer had leaked internal documents, in order to avoid the perception that they are engaging in retaliation for a worker organizing a walk out. Sophie Labelle had a wonderful illustration about Chapelle in her webcomic, Serious Trans Vibes. This is all happening in the wave of strikes across the U.S., including the almost-strike by IATSE (representing film and TV workers) before an agreement was struck, of 100,000 workers across many industries, which some have dubbed “Striketober,” in light of what some have called the “Great Resignation.” Jade King wrote in The Gamer, in an article criticizing Disney’s reasoning for cancelling The Owl House as not fitting Disney’s brand, calling it nonsensical, and adding that while the show “leans more towards a young adult audience than children,” it might have “a future under new leadership.” She went onto say that “Netflix and Prime Video have shown that original programming - even animation - can live and thrive in this space without compromise, and The Owl House could have done exactly that for Disney+ if it was given a chance,” which is interesting considering this whole Chapelle debacle.
Otherwise, Smithsonian magazine had articles on how Native Artisans in Alaska bring innovation and humor to their craft, a genetic mutation which could explain how humans lost their tails, evolution of modern crocodiles, NASA not renaming the James Webb Space Telescope despite the fact he “participated in the systematic discrimination against gay and lesbian employees during his tenure Undersecretary of State during the Truman administration,” with cosmologist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein as one of those who objected to the naming, questioning whether scientists can map the entire sea floor by 2030, a study identifying 1700 solar systems, the drought in the Western U.S. driving a decline in hydroelectric power generation, not surprisingly, and exploring Latinx stories in American art. Yuri Reviews gave their final thoughts on the summer anime season, noting yuri themes in Blue Reflection Ray, Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon S, Magia Record: Mahou Shoujo Madoka☆Magica Gaiden (TV) 2nd Season – The Eve of Awakening, and My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! X, along with comments in other shows with implied yuri like Aquatope on the White Sand and Kageki Shoujo! Anime News Network reported that Seven Seas Entertainment acquired the license of the manga series Black and White: Tough Love at the Office by Sal Jiang, said to be a “violent yuri love story,” apparently meaning “either violent office attacks or angry lesbian sex.” Yikers!
The Nib had wonderful illustrations. Some were about police brutality, Haiti’s long road to freedom, relatable comics, and right-wing campaigns to undermine public education. Others called for global action on climate change, noted climate change destroying the world’s coral reefs, bombing campaign in Yemen, cats being high on catnip, a conservative columnist getting “silenced,” weird ingredients in prescription drugs, and harmful architecture. Six of the final illustrations were on solidarity through survival when climate-related disasters hit, cops refusing to get vaccinated for COVID, deforestation, realizing one’s queerness, “fall drugs” such as melancholy, cozy sweaters, cocaine, and candy corn, and a death threat to The Nib editors.
That’s all I have for this week. Hope you all have a good week ahead.
- Burkely