Pop culture, archives, preservation, libraries, genealogy, and beyond!
This week, I'll share with you some of the latest and newest articles about archives, libraries, genealogy, history, and other topics in this "too long for email" newsletter
Hello everyone! I hope you all had a good week. I’ve been a bit prolific recently, first with a post noting recently listed titles with libraries and librarians. This was followed by a review of another of my favorite webcomics, a post about the differences between archivists and librarians and why they aren’t the same, a post about a transgender librarian in one of my favorite animated series. There was also a review of a surprisingly diverse Star Wars animated series and a review of another webcomic, which was published today. With that, let me move onto the rest of my newsletter.
I’d like to talk about archives first. My colleagues at NSA explained how the LBJ Library administratively closed MDR (mandatory review requests) because the original agencies never bothered to respond, with my colleague Lauren Harper explaining it more. Agencies receiving those requests are “expected to conduct a line-by-line review of the record(s) for public access and…release the information to the requestor” unless that information cannot be released under specific legal requirements. On another archives-related topic is a blogpost by David Ferriero, the head of NARA, about the creation of a Chief Equity Officer and a Chief Diversity Officer in order to “advance equity and integrate the principles of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility.” It remains to be seen whether measures like these that will result in a “diverse and equitable NARA” as Ferriero is aiming for, or not.
Other than this, I liked reading the review about memory and graffiti in the video game Fallout: New Vegas, by Myra Khan in The American Archivist Reviews Portal, a look inside Smithsonian’s storerooms by National Geographic, and an article on the Black History Gallery, a small museum which is preserving stories of civil rights activists. Just as important is the release of the Department of State territorial papers from 1789 to 1873, NARA’s continued commitment to the release of the 1950 census next year despite the pandemic (which genealogists will like to see), and the importance of preserving Southern history. At the same time, I loved seeing that Watermelon Woman is entering the Library of Congress (LOC) National Film Registry and it may be the push I need to finally watch the film, which I described in my September 19 newsletter as “poignant enough in terms of connections to archival concepts” to write about. And sure, there was an intriguing archivist spotlight by Sam Cross on Pop Archives about Julianna Blake in the video game Deathloop. There is, once again, another issue of Brimstone and Roses which featured the recordkeeper, Yuwei, requesting a mind wipe from the Warden but this request being denied.
There’s additional posts about cataloging at the National Archives in the UK, articles about Archives Administration 100 Years after Jenkinson’s Manual, deconstructive intersectionality and praxis, and case studies which demonstrate the “value and possibilities of [a] participatory documentation initiative.” Of note is the Lighting the Way Handbook which has “case studies, guidelines, and emergent futures” about “archival discovery and delivery.” A new book, Archival Virtue: Relationship, Obligation, and the Just Archives, seems fascinating as it “explores ideas of moral commitment, truth, difference, and just behavior in the pursuit of archival ideals.” Just as fascinating is Andrew Egan considering the “challenges that face shuttered newspapers with decades or even centuries of material to preserve,” and utilizing university archives to teach that “neutrality does not exist in the archives” and how to use primary sources. Others talked about archiving social media “evidence of atrocity crimes,” game preservation, converting images to excel tables, options for dehumidifiers in archives, and suggestions for accessioning tax papers.
The newest issue of The American Archivist is worth noting, as it focuses on writing, design records, digital collections, born-digital records, archival appraisal, copyright, archival decolonization, the role of gender in archival work, and imposter syndrome in the profession. Other articles talk about social justice, recordkeeping cultures, preservation, record-keeping in early societies, preservation, innovation, vertical history of information (i.e. the filing cabinet), and knowledge under attack.
There are a variety of articles about libraries. LOC has articles about tips for teenage researchers, conservation treatment of an 1842 Chinese scroll map, and researcher stories about Civil War photographs, “Chlorophyll Prints” and Robert Schultz. Additionally, Hack Library School had posts about invisible disabilities and library school, time management, digital humanities tools that librarians should know about, reflections on library school, and the countless benefits of a thank you folder. Alex Skoptic talks about the war on reading by the prison system in the U.S., NPR wrote about new pressure to ban books at schools, while NYPL shared views of the Empire State building within their digital collections. Of note is the value of interns in library settings, mobile libraries in Scotland, censorship and harassment of an author after their book was banned in a Texas school district, assessment of reading habits of public library users in the digital era, how Viacom forced the Internet Archive to remove hundreds of hours of MTV broadcasts from 1981 to 1991, and digital librarians sharing how users can protect themselves online.
OCLC focused on shared cataloging of the California Digital Library, and an opinion piece making an economic case for public libraries in the UK. In an August 2018 post, April Hathcock wrote about making an “effort to seek out those most marginalized and carve out a place of welcome in these spaces in which we work,” saying that we would all share in such labor, treating people with dignity, looking at your biases, not making assumptions about people, going beyond existing norms, and engaging in microaffirmations, i.e. “those small acts of encouragement and solidarity that show a marginalized person that you acknowledge and respect their belonging in the space.” There were assorted tweets about why we should be worried about fascists on a library board, not stopping when reading a book aloud, and publishers making a lot of money when libraries buy books.
That brings me to genealogy. I liked reading about the legacy of the CCC, an expert warning about the pitfalls of giving DNA tests as holiday gifts, family secrets, genealogy as family history, and an illustration about how direct-to-consumer DNA testing may “mean the end to family secrets” and its inherent dangers. There were articles about a disclosed data breach of a DNA testing firm affecting 21 million people, preparing for a research trip, disproving the racist lie that Black families can’t be traced before 1870, and genetic genealogy for the digital age. Genealogy journal had articles on an author connecting with their BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) ancestors, intergenerational wounding and healing from the perspective of someone descended from those “affected by the trans-Atlantic slave trade” and what it means to be Black with an interracial family tree.
Just as valuable is how genealogy can be a gift rooted in family history, analyzing a complex challenge on the FamilySearch family tree, the 1666-1667 New France Census, the good, bad, and ugly in genealogy, and a basic Holocaust study guide.
Connected and related to genealogy is history. Heritage Daily had posts about species of pseudo horses 37 million years ago, ancient Islamic tombs, and discovery from a unicorn cave in Lower Saxony. Perspectives on History had articles on fusing journalism and history, historians as expert witnesses, and turning sentiments into action. Historian Graham Harding wrote about champagne and the performance of femininity in Victorian Britain. Early America historian Crystal Weber explained how reproductive rights was a form of resistance for enslaved women. Priya Chhaya provided resources to learn more about LGBTQ spaces through context statements and mapping. The Daily Maverick asked if Britain helped murder an African leader and UN Secretary-General using declassified documents. Historian Emiliano Aguilar analyzed failed utopian visions in East Chicago. Genealogy journal had articles on the reciprocity between continental and diasporic Africans’ struggles for freedom and pan-Africanism, with the pursuit of a united Africa.
Smithsonian magazine, for their part, had fascinating articles. Some were about rare Roman mosaics, deer bone carvings, early colonial Boston coins, and Egyptian jewelry. Others focused on a record-setting Latine player named Marge Villa, a civilian worker who spearheaded Pearl Harbor’s most successful rescue mission, the history of the breakup album, determining whether Vikings tortured victims with a brutal blood eagle or not, and how volcanic eruptions helped ancestral Pueblo culture flourish. Most intriguing of all, however, was a post about folk speech of the LGBTQ community with people resorting to coded speech as a safeguard, when they asked people, for instance, if they were a “friend of Dorothy.”
In other articles, the magazine talked explained how Tichkematse was a favorite at the Smithsonian, said hello to a scientist harvesting clues about ancient gourds and maize, noted archaeologists finding an ancient fortress, an old English coin, a 1200 year canoe found in a Wisconsin lake, asked what Tudor England looks, smells, and sounds like, and noted ancient Sicilian dwarf elephants which diverged from a colossal ancestor. There were, additionally, articles about archaeologists unearthing slave quarters at a Pompeian villa, a 4,000-year-old snake staff discovered in Finland, and ancient footprints which may have belonged to an unknown human ancestor.
On a totally different topic is one of the biggest stories of the past week: the outage of Amazon Web Services (AWS). It was said to take down “huge parts” of the internet, and a host of websites. So, I did a little research into it, and it turns out that companies such as Adobe, Airbnb, Disney, The Guardian, Lonely Planet, NASA (specifically their image and video library), Netflix, Reddit, Samsung, Pfizer, Sony, Facebook, General Electric, Dow Jones / Wall Street Journal, Pinterest, Eventbrite, IMDB, Southwest, Blackboard, Choice Hotels, LexisNexis, and FOX all use AWS! This is according to Digital Dimensions, Yahoo! Finance, Intellipat, and AWS’s website. Clearly the outage of AWS has a massive impact on the internet itself. Most concerning is NARA’s relationship with AWS, including releasing data from the NARA catalog to them, and the catalog itself running on AWS!
I was disappointed to see The Diamondback confuse the two names of South Asian women who are part of the SGA, and they apologized for this, but it isn’t the only time they have messed up, as they previously made errors on another story. It makes you think, what other errors and issues have they made? It really lowers your confidence and trust in the paper, especially since five editors let the incorrect story which mixed up the names of the women pass by and they fired the reporter who wrote the article, the easy thing for them to do rather than make bigger changes.
In the past week, BuzzFeed put together a list of what they consider forty of the best LGBTQ characters in anime. While their definition of anime is pretty broad, of those they list, I am familiar with Tomoyo Daidouji, and Toya Kinomoto & Yukito Tsukihiro in Cardcaptor Sakura, Sailor Neptune & Sailor Uranus in Sailor Moon, Utena Tenjou in Revolutionary Girl Utena, Asami Soto & Avatar Korra in Legend of Korra, and Ilia Amitola in RWBY, although I have not watched Legend of Korra. Related to this is a review of five anime & manga who truly understand disability, none of which I have watched as of yet, 10 best comics of 2021 according to Polygon, only one of which I’ve read: The Girl From the Sea (which was very sad), and best TV shows of 2021 according to the same site. Of those listed on there, I’ve watched Arcane, and Never Have I Ever, but not Invincible, and Tuca & Bertie. I probably will watch some more episodes of Dear Brother, otherwise known as Oniisama e…, or some boy’s love anime, in the coming year as well, along with many other series.
There was also a story in The Hustle about the resurgence of vinyl records, which I was somewhat exposed to when I helped my parents sell some old vinyl records they had, Wired on a scientific screw up sixty years old which helped COVID kill, a post about a journey of someone coming out as pansexual, or articles about polyamorous and open relationships. Anime News Network reported that Seven Seas Entertainment licensed the yuri manga The Summer You Were There, Candy & Cigarettes, Shwd, and Yokai Cats. Scalwag Magazine had an article on sanitation issues in New Orleans, whether the latter city has recovered from Katrina (it hasn’t) and now Ida, and Facing South on bracing for a South after Roe v. Wade in “the region's last three abortion-safe states” (Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia). Walled Culture had articles on how academics are losing control of their papers due to copyright. The Artifice analyzed how music can “fare as a form for fantasy” and the legacy of Ramona Quimby, ancient diamonds that “show Earth was primed for life's explosion at least 2.7 billion years ago.” Genealogy journal had articles on using language to negotiate the politics of gender and one hundred years of a Japanese American’s family mortuary.
Smithsonian magazine, on the other hand, had articles about Leonard, the brightest comet of the year, the evolution of a comet, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the open ocean, and new research which “could shed light on how the circuits in our own minds work.” Hathcock, for her part, talked about, in an April 2018 post, what she called ghost syndrome, defining it as “the pervasive and often substantiated belief that your contributions have been co-opted by a colleague who is more male, more white, and better resourced than you are,” saying it has racialized and gendered aspects, and argues that it “makes you feel like maybe you don’t exist.”
The Nib had wonderful illustrations as always. Some criticized Kellogg’s for its attempts to employ scabs and weaken the strike, while others focused on conservative propaganda which goes round and round, rebelling from the “rebel girl” trope, this year’s ugliest holiday sweaters, hugging, and those who stormed the Capital blaming police brutality as a defense. Other comics focused on pyramid schemes, a hedge fund manager turning over millions of dollars in stolen antiques to avoid trial, brief history of the toothbrush, holidays at the White House, a family loss, novelty advent calendars, a family heirloom, effects of the abortion decision on the upcoming midterm elections, the history of kitty litter, thousands of years of abortion history, and the life of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. In the land of comics, ND Stevenson, the non-binary and trans creator of the newish She-Ra series had comics about games being used to explore gender, a dog chasing a ball, receiving praise, and mis-remembering the name of an actress. Their wife, Molly Ostertag, talked about her gay energy and shared the first chapter of her novel The Darkest Night.
That’s all for this week! I hope you all have a good week ahead!
- Burkely