Pop culture, presidential records destruction, ALA's apparent dismissal of "internet activism," DVD longevity, LGBTQ topics, and animation
This week, I'll be sharing the latest news about archives, libraries, history, genealogy, and other topics with you all
Hello everyone, I hope you are all having a good week. On Wednesday, my next-to-last review of webcomics for some time, Cursed Princess Club, was published. Then, on Friday I had another post for I Love Libraries which reviews one of my favorite animated series ever, Milo Murphy’s Law. Yesterday, Pop Culture Maniacs published my newest post reviewing Rad Sechrist’s “Project City,” an indie animation platform / animation school, with Sechrist already agreeing to an interview, while others have thanked me for the shout out, and made other comments. And today, a blogpost where I talk about archives, what archival issue I care about, and more, as a new committee member of the SAA’s Issues & Advocacy section, was published. With all that being said, let me move onto the rest of my newsletter, considered by Substack, once again, to be “too long for email.”
That brings me to archives. My work colleagues at NSA wrote about the history of the U.S. embargo on Cuba, and an interview with an expert on the Ayotzinapa case. At the same time, I am glad to see the NSA sign a letter with other nonprofits, asking the DOJ to publish FOIA guidance for agencies. The biggest archives story of the week is the submission of White House documents from the former president to NARA, with some of those documents “reportedly torn up and taped back together,” as confirmed by NARA. The former president tried to stop the January 6th Select Committee from getting his records, but he was unsuccessful, and NARA submitted hundreds of documents he sought to block. Sam Cross said that this is no surprise to see the former president engaging in document destruction, undoubtedly to cover up his crimes. Amee Vanderpool said that there appears to be a violation of the Presidential Records Act. One person shared a 2018 article about the people who tape records together after the former president rips them up.
The new SAA President, Courtney Chartier, put out a statement on February 4, saying that the White House Office of Records Management deserves credit for ensuring that documents which were ripped up “were retained regardless of their condition, as well as the National Archives for helping to make them usable for accountability and transparency.” Chartier added that the funding and independence of NARA needs to be maintained and advocated that the Biden Administration “select an appointee who is highly skilled and well versed in the nature and management of federal government records-and particularly presidential records.” She also urged that this issue be “given the critical attention it merits on behalf of the American people.” Lauren Harper recently shared two articles about this topic, one noting that NARA had to go to Mar-a-lago to get the rest of the former president’s records (raising the question if there is anything else he has hidden or destroyed) and another saying that he continued to rip up documents throughout his presidency. Some said that the Presidential Records Act needs to be updated as it is a “relatively young law” and noted the press quoting historians rather than archivists on this topic.
Apart from this, the most recent issue of Archival Outlook just came out. Chartier asked people to recognize abundance, while other articles are about developing a podcast to share LGBTQ history, documenting disease, pandemic, and plague, role of institutions and archivists in collection development, expanding outreach and access to smaller institutions, and digital readiness. There were additional articles about disability advocacy in the archival profession, using virtual reality in an exhibit, building an archives for robotics, advancing equity, and other topics.
There was an interesting thread by Kate Crowe who responded to Archive 81, and a new document which outlines best practices for archival term positions for administrators, hiring managers, and supervisors, as promoted by Archives Gig. There were additional articles about placing archival skills in the hands of individual podcasts, preparing archival boxes before they reach the hands of researchers, cataloging contributions by citizen archivists, a producer of In Loving Color is donating a show archive to National Comedy Center, and archives taking “great pains in collecting, preserving and sharing their African American records with the public.”
Others wrote about the 1920 FDA inspection of a South Philadelphia based company which produced Black beauty and hair care products named G. T. Young, the conception of “suspended grief” which is the doubled grief “experienced and witnessed by an archivist who is undergoing simultaneous personal grief and secondary trauma while processing archival collections,” how records indicate that changes in language for Indigenous people has been pushed for many years and is nothing new, and learning to web archive.
There were additional articles about Black history and Black beauty archives, documents about Sojourner Truth, Civil War era personal tintypes, an interview with new Smithsonian Libraries and Archives director Tamar Evangelestia-Dougherty, assessing conventions of memory in the archival literature (and recognizes the importance of library twitter), QR Codes, digitization, Archives Space, formats for finding aids, an illustration about going beyond the elevator speech in talking about archives, the fact that OCR can only do so much, and archival outreach. Apart from Reddit posts about weird stuff in archives, asking collection management systems archives use, asking how biographers and historians will “access the WhatsApps etc. of today’s important cultural figures,” archiving family photos to the cloud, and storing scrapbooks of newspaper clippings, there were news about NARA’s release about the 1950 U.S. federal census. On January 28, NARA described collaboration for improved access to the 1950 U.S. federal census, which will be released on April 1, over 50 days from now. NPR described the origin of the 72-year confidential rule for federal censuses, which was enshrined in law in 1978, based on “bureaucratic happenstance,” and research strategies outlined by Nancy Coe for looking at the 1950 census records. It will be a boon for genealogy.
There was a lot of chatter about the statement by Tracie Hall, the Executive Director of the American Library Association (ALA), who said in a now-deleted tweet on February 5 that the ALA has been working constantly to “confront the egregious acts of censorship of last week and those rising exponentially the last few years,” saying they will “continue — beyond social media. This is work that must transcend internet activism,” connected to a tweet (she later posted it somewhere else) about the ALA’s OIF (Office of Intellectual Freedom). This statement has been criticized as “dismissive” (also see here, here, here, here, and here), “snarky,” have said that calls to dismiss social media needs to stop, noting that many of those “activists” are front-line workers (and ALA members), calling for more OIF staff, and saying the ALA doesn’t comprehend the power of social media.
Others connected it with vague responses by the OIF, saying social media is revealing weak points of ALA, that social media should be leveraged by the ALA, argued ALA is afraid of losing control, reliance on ALA Connect, and said ALA believes that members shouldn’t have opinions. For my part, I said that is off-putting for her to say what she did, and asked if it would be “better to use social media and internet activism, working with those in library Twitter, to achieve the ALA's goals.” I further noted I am not renewing my ALA membership, for statements like this and other reasons, like the high cost of membership in the professional organization. However, the ALA president Lessa Nani Pelayo-Lozada said that “…#LibraryTwitter makes me aware of issues I may not have otherwise known, think about things in new ways, & see who our advocates/allies are,” adding that “criticism & suggestions make us stronger & help us reimagine & change structures.”
In response to these criticisms, Hall doubled down, defending her statement as saying that “transcend” means to go beyond, rather than dismiss, adding that “all forms of media are powerful. The battle against censorship has to be fought on all tangible levels” and saying “we are all working together right now.” Some sided with Hall, saying it isn’t a swipe at library twitter and wasn’t dismissive, or said those at the ALA were exhausted. Others asked people to be less annoyed and scared of library workers, said that Hall’s tweet is a reason they aren’t an ALA member, what the ALA is doing is not enough, is ignoring library twitter (also see here), is bad at sharing its own resources, the necessity to go beyond the ALA, that the ALA has a bad reputation on library twitter, will do nothing about Republican attacks on libraries, and organizational silence at the beginning of the pandemic.
There was an interesting story of Valerie the Librarian, who appeared in 14 episodes of the Spidey Super Stories. Nicholas Hunter of Screenrant described her as defending her library from villains, working with Spider-Man, and as a Black woman and educator who sheds “much of the 1970's stereotypes in media about Black people” and uses “suction cups on the fingers and feet of the costume to mimic his wall crawling abilities.” Valerie also appeared in the educational television series The Electric Company, with Hattie Winston voicing Valerie, apparently also known as Sylvia, from 1973 to 1977. I liked reading the tweets about library users, a terribly incorrect depiction of the job librarians have, that libraries are not neutral (they are political), importance of acknowledging librarians, and the reality of library jobs. Otherwise, it was interesting to read a challenge to the dominant view of “intellectual freedom,” a librarian battling book bans, practicing critical cataloging, the story of Isaac Fisher on Michele T. Fenton’s Little Known Black Librarians Facts blog, and how Rachel Carson, when writing Silent Spring went to “federal agencies and national research libraries to do her digging.” Then there’s a post from last year about streaming platforms, i.e. content landlords as the blogger Mek terms them, undermining the option to purchase content, through an end to forever access, public domain, personal digital freedom, and the library model, with libraries facing an uncertain future.
While Mek makes good points, I still see libraries as having value even when threatened by content landlords, I would not say there is “forever access” as even physical DVDs break down, with Sony saying they last 30-100 years depending on how well they are stored, or 30 years for some others, with the Library of Congress (LOC) even having a study in 2007 on this very topic. As one person put it, “digital storage on physical media is subject to failure – and that failure can render the data inaccessible,” with federal guidance saying “data kept on…optical discs (DVDs) is highly vulnerable because…these formats are at risk of technical obsolescence” and electronic records archivist Lynda Schmitz Fuhrig of the Smithsonian writing that they “have seen a wide range of playback quality” with DVDs they have received with lossy videos, “meaning there has been compression to get smaller file sizes, resulting in some loss of data from the original production file.” Some, like Michael Saylor in The Mobile Wave: How Mobile Intelligence Will Change Everything (p. 86) have said that streaming services are a challenge for digital preservation going forward, considered as such by the federal government and is a focus currently, which will also be an issue for libraries, as would be expected.
On a different subject are history-related articles. Smithsonian magazine has articles on the significance of the toppling of George III’s statue to today’s debates over monuments, history of book burning, the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, the U.S. returning artifacts to Iraq, how Martin Luther King, Jr. evoked Langston Hughes in his speeches, and France to return 15 works of Nazi looted art to Jewish families. LOC, on the other hand, had posts on the 19th century book stamp engraver, John Feely, 17th century wardrobe regulation in the Kingdom of Spain, Black people in the military, the case that gutted Rose Parks, Black people as barbers, how the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 influenced the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, preserving signs from a Black Lives Matter fence in D.C., and how Havana became British for eleven months. The Journal of American Revolution had posts on the hidden history of the American Revolution, a continental soldier, prelude to Yorktown, George Washington and the question of slavery, the Vermont Constitution of 1777, and the resignation revolution. Southern Spaces had articles on important topics such as new urbanism and gentrification in Austin, Texas, and a review of Calypso Magnolia and Island People. At the same time, Perspectives on History had articles on a memoir and material culture and an autobiography with scholarly trimmings.
There were assorted history articles about the necessity to change Black History Month to be a catalyst for change rather than be commodified, the racial politics of demobilizing USCT (U.S. Colored Troops) regiments, seven places in the U.S. to learn more about Black history, Civil War sites in the National Register of Historic Places, and why political biographies help us understand history. Others wrote on Mai, the King of Bornu in the 17th century, uncovering an amazing revolutionary life, how American lesbian entrepreneurs “created an adult entertainment industry for their own community in the late twentieth century” (by Desirae Embree), and the importance of functional pockets in women’s clothing in the mid to late nineteenth century as a form of women’s independence.
There were some genealogy stories to share this week, whether trouble about accessing digital library content on FamilySearch, information on War of 1812 records, facts about Irish gravestones, Black people uncovering a fuller picture of themselves aided by new tools and digitization, and how genealogy can improve historical study. Genealogy journal had articles on utilizing webs to share ancestral and intergenerational teachings, untold partial stories behind the pictures, and reconstructing a historic view of death in Gaelic Nova Scotia. Others wrote about scanning photo negatives with your cell phone, digitizing records, researching historical Irish church records, genealogies of early families in San Antonio, and using the Internet Archive for genealogy research.
There are many other articles which don’t fit neatly into sections of this newsletter. This includes those about LGBTQ topics. Anime Feminist outlined some great queer manga recommendations, including a high fantasy yuri named Beauty and the Beast Girl, a four volume series with a closeted trans protagonist named Boys Run the Riot, an autobiographic comic named The Bride Was a Boy, a queer historical fiction named Goodbye, My Rose Garden, a series about an adult sapphic relationship entitled How Do We Relationship?, a boy’s love manga named I Hear the Sunspot, a sweet and earnest yuri series named Kase-san, a silly and charming comedy entitled Manly Appetites: Minegeshi Loves Otsu, a manga entitled My Brother’s Husband, a memoir manga named My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, a genre boy’s love story entitled NO. 6, and a series for queer readers entitled Our Dreams at Dusk: Shimanami Tasogare. I haven’t read any of these manga yet, although I watched the Kase-san OVA a while back and found it very sweet.
There were assorted posts about LGBTQ+ books for teens, a book, Open, exploring polyamorous relationships through personal experience, a reported difference between “omnisexual” and “pansexual,” the opening of a LGBTQ museum in the UK, and a tortoise who is the oldest living land animal and is pansexual. Of note are a paper about sexual orientation in Japan (summarized here), an article saying that seahorses aren’t as committed to partners as previously thought, a review of Semelparous which appears to have some yuri content (although in a problematic way), and wonderful cut scenes from The Girl From the Sea by Molly Ostertag, which I found to ultimately be a frankly depressing book.
There is some promising news in animation. Already, this month has the premiere of Disenchantment part 4 on February 9, new episodes of The Ghost and Molly McGee on February 12, and the reboot/revival series, The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder on February 23. On top of that, a series with various queer characters, The Legend of Vox Machina is slowly airing over time. There as news about the Hand Drawn: Documentary which is supposed to come out in October 28 of this year, the lie of “letting people like things” as a defense in response to measured critique of something, like criticism of fan service, and Disney Television Animation naming Sarah Finn as the Vice-President of this part of Disney, after previously being “responsible for overseeing production across all Disney Junior original animated television series including Fancy Nancy, Elena of Avalor and Mickey Mouse Funhouse” and will be overseeing series like Marvel's Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, Mira, Royal Detective, Big City Greens, The Ghost and Molly McGee, and The Owl House.
A bit of a wake-up call for me was the three-episode check-in by Anime Feminist, being rightly critical of sexualization in Akebi’s Sailor Uniform, a predatory lesbian in She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man and asking whether you can look past fan service in My Dress-Up Darling. I had been watching Akebi’s Sailor Uniform and My Dress-Up Darling before reading the review but decided to drop them both after watching the new episode of both. I did start watching one of their recommendations, The Orbital Children (on Netflix) and have enjoyed it so far, although I am intrigued by their other suggestions like Slow Loop (on Funimation), Miss KUROITSU from the Monster Development Department (on Crunchyroll), In the Land of Leadale (on Crunchyroll), Sasaki and Miyano (on Funimation), and Sabikui Bisco (on Funimation) and may check them out when if I have time. We’ll see what happens with that.
There are other topics I’d like to focus on in this newsletter. Tika Viteri wrote recently about how she is decolonizing her sci-fi reading, noting that she has “made a concerted effort to read more authors of color,” highlighting the Binti trilogy of novellas by Nnedi Okorafor, The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, and Chen Qiufan’s The Book of Shanghai. She cites Senjuti Petra’s 2021 article “Decolonizing Your Bookshelf: The What, The Why, and The How.” In that article, she says to read “authors of color, queer authors and authors from backgrounds different from your own” whether classics, native and underrepresented authors of a specific culture, books that have been translated, and “establish connections between the books you read,” saying you should “break free from social, cultural and political hegemony and ask questions.” She recommends reading Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead, Susan Abulhawa’s Mornings in Jenin, Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater, Farah Bashir’s Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. There were assorted articles on Black Lives Matter finances, hummingbirds seeing colors outside the rainbow, dealing with sovereign citizens in the courts, pushing for anti-racism within fandoms, return of a Sámi drum, the history of consent in romance, spies in comics, books for Black history month, and Jim Clyburn pushing a labor attorney for the Supreme Court who favors management.
Other than this were people writing about how Dave Chappelle “perpetuates the idea that straight Black men have it worse than any other group of Black people,” the reasons that NFTs are bad, the never-ending debate about rape scenes and trigger warnings and its impact on making art, and six types of editing and knowing. There’s also researchers uncovering a pristine coral reef off the coast of Tahiti, a review of autism in media, asking whether disability and death are inextricable, science predicting when bluffs in Southern California will collapse, current book list of Rise, and how people with privilege don’t need pride.
With that, I come to the last part of this newsletter, which highlights some illustrations about The Nib. Some were about right-wing discourse, while others focused on banned books week, the democracy inherent in comics, a strawman argument, how Serena Williams almost lost her life during pregnancy with maternal death during childbirth more common among Black women than White women, the conception of weathering, racism within the medical system, FBI surveillance of political groups in COINTELPRO from 1956 to 1971, and subsequent surveillance. Final illustrations are on people’s secrets, New York Times aggressive anti-union strategy, street smarts, what happened after the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, stopping the spread, and the myth of the strong Black woman.
That’s all for this week. I hope you all have a good week ahead.
- Burkely
Thanks for highlighting COINTELPRO. Important to realize surveillance is not new.
Thank you for all, but in particular the links to Tika Viteri and Senjuti Petra.