Saying goodbye to 2020, pop culture reviews, and remaining hopeful
This will be the last newsletter of 2020, where I'll talk about archives, libraries, note some recent pop culture reviews I've written, and much more! Enjoy!
Hello everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful week. This week’s newsletter will focus on archives and libraries yet again, along with other topics. This will be the last newsletter I’ll send this year, so have a happy rest of 2020 and a new year to come!
I published a number of reviews this week, either on my own blogs or on other websites. I examined the aspiring archivist named Rae is one of my favorite webcomics, Always Human, and her significance to the story while relating it to established archival values, along with other webcomics like Lore Olympus and That Awkward Magic!! It’s a heartwarming, but also realistic, depiction of archivists. On another of my blogs, I took a broader view, looking at the library as a battlefield in Glitch Techs, The Owl House, Mysticons, Roswell Conspiracies: Aliens, Myths, and Legends, and Zevo-3. Speaking of reviews, I published my second review on Pop Culture Maniacs which is about one of my favorite series, Cleopatra in Space. I’d definitely recommend it as a read. Oh, I Love Libraries, for which I’ll be publishing a review in January about the librarian in Hilda, which mentioned me in one of their wrap-up articles about favorite library stories in 2020. They wrote that pop culture provided an escape from a difficult year, saying they loved exploring the best and not-as-great depictions of librarians in media, adding “librarian Burkely Hermann analyzed two recent examples of libraries in animation,” pointing to my August 11 article highlighting librarians in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power and Cleopatra in Space. Apart from that, Jennifer Snoek-Brown at Reel Librarians accepted my submissions for their list focusing on librarians in TV shows, animated, anime, and live-action. Hopefully, in the coming year, I’ll do an interview and/or a blog post on her website about diverse librarians and archivists in popular culture. So, that’s great.
Now onto some stories about archives and libraries. Off the Record, a blog of SAA, focused on mentorships and the challenges of adapting to COVID in archival environments. Similarly, others talked about archival accessioning, introduced a new steering committee member College and University Archives Section, and lessons from the Teaching with Primary Sources Unconference this year. Also, Cristin J. Monahan and Emily Kunasek, two of my colleagues of the National Security Archive, talked about cyberspace. When it comes to libraries, there were also some articles. Hack Library School had blogs about grad schools and questions about the value of an MLIS degree. At the same time, the Library of Congress had posts about locating digitized historic images, animal holiday songs, legislative data, copyright, and secret lives of NASA scientists. Other blogs focused on tourist maps, hidden treasures of the Law Library of Congress, research guides that focus on law in U.S. states and territories, and Irish Supreme Court rules.
Apart from the stories about libraries and archives, there are stories about the strange origins of the presidential pardon, how YouTube can radicalize people, open-access models of the nature journals, and how teachers are sacrificing student privacy. Additionally, a New York Times article focusing on stealing unpublished book manuscripts, how piracy and controversial copyright laws are tucked inside the COVID relief bill, and the lasting effects of genealogy. The copyright laws are sad and unfortunate, as I did sign a petition in the last week about it, but apparently, the petition had little effect. Hopefully, ordinary users on social media platforms are not affected by the changes, which are said to only affect people making money from streaming copyrighted content.
I hope you all have a wonderful rest of 2020!
- Burkely