Soviets, pop culture, cool librarians, archives, and much more!
This week's newsletter will focus on libraries and archives, like always, but also on a recent Twitter discussion I participated in, and the cool librarian in Hilda
Hello everyone! I hope you all has a productive week! The end of the year is in sight, and there’s so much to talk about in this week’s newsletter! Of course, libraries, archives, and the like, including a recent post from Svetlana Savranskaya, one of my colleagues at the National Security Archive about Anastas Mikoyan, the Soviet First Responder and Smiling Diplomat, and a discussion on Twitter Thursday night about libraries and archives in pop culture hosted by the SAA’s SNAP section. I’d like to make a plug for Hilda (on Netflix), a screenshot of which is shown at the beginning of this newsletter, because there are two whole episodes (“The Witch” and “The Jorts Incident”) in the recent season with the librarian, whose name is finally revealed and is a big help to the story’s main characters. I don’t want to say any more than that so that I don’t spoil it, but it’s a nice animated show that I’d highly recommend.
Let me start with the discussion on Thursday, most of which can viewed here in a “Moment” I created. I talked about how archivists and archives are often not shown positively in pop culture, noting examples like the Fates in Lore Olympus, the self-declared archivist in Stretch Armstrong & The Flex Fighters, Rei in Always Human, Abigail Chase in National Treasure, Recorded by Arizal, and some bad examples in shows such as Amphibia, Star Wars, and Little Witch Academia, and The Bravest Knight (more about that last one later in my newsletter). I also noted The Joker, the upcoming S.A.L.E.M. series, Other archivists noted shows like Warehouse 13, Captain Marvel, American Animals, The Mandalorian, Rogue One, Record of a Spaceborn Few, The Knowledge Spirit (Wan Shi Tong) in Avatar the Last Airbender, and an upcoming 8-episode mini-series titled The Archivist. Samantha “Sam” Cross noted how archivists are “typically depicted as older, white men in dusty basements,” and said that National Treasure is terrifying if looked at “from Abigail's point of view.” In talking about libraries, I noted the Read or Die/R.O.D the TV series, Hilda, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Gargantia, Ascendance of A Bookworm, with others noting Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Evelyn in The Mummy, the Librarian from The Magicians. I further said that I’d like to see more non-White archivists doing archival work in pop culture. This sentiment was also expressed by other people calling for “greater diversity in the portrayal of librarians & archivists in pop culture, persons from a range of ages, of racial & ethnic backgrounds, of sexual orientations & gender expressions, of physical abilities, etc” (Gina Powell) and a tv show where people “traveled to unique archives and the archivists could show the materials they have, how they do preservation work, and kind of advertise what they collect” (Laurel P.), along with suggesting tags to add to certain works or saying there is a lot to explore if an archivist is put in the right setting. With that, let me move onto the rest of my newsletter.
This past week I posted two reviews about libraries and archives, the first of which focused on digital, virtual, and space libraries in various shows, mainly animations (apart from the Soviet film, Solaris) and the other focusing on the hall of records in The Bravest Knight, noting recent tweets by the show’s creator where he said he was aware of issues with conservation in crafting the hall of records itself. That didn’t prevent me from offering my criticism of the show in hopes of improving representation of archives going forward. Speaking of that, I recently published volume 1 of my posts which review libraries and librarians in popular culture, available to read (or download) for free on the Internet Archive! I plan to publish another volume of posts reviewing archivists and archives next, and when I do, I’ll let you all know. With that, here’s a cool image of the past original rough sketches of the librarian in Hilda which I was pretty excited by and love all of them:
Now, onto archives. David Ferriero wrote about maximizing NARA’s value to the nation, the American Archivist Reviews Portal talked about memory lab network resources, and another NARA blog talked about the proposal plans for the Washington Monument. Apart from this, Margot Note wrote about approaches to archival acquisition, and the essential nature of archival records. In the same vein was a post on the SAA’s ER section about the importance of recognizing how climate change affects archival practice, the Hingham Archives wrote about the Boston Tea Party and citizens of Hingham who attended, and the Religious Collections section of the SAA published their December 2020 newsletter, Archival Spirit, noting updates in the world of preserving and maintaining archival records at religious institutions and religious records held by other institutions.
As for libraries, there were posts on Hack Library School about library school experience during the pandemic, capstones, professional goals, and transitioning to studying library science. At the same time, there were articles about academic library budgets, finding books where you forgot the title, Github expanding its open source archive program, and the Library of Congress (LOC) collection on corporate social responsibility. At the same time, there were LOC blogs about various topics, such as selected maps from Napoleon’s final battle at Waterloo, Christmas music, legal research, plant and animal quarantining in U.S. legal history, the South Sea Bubble, the story of how a silent 1927 film was saved, and new films entering the LOC’s National Film Registry. In the latter case, the new films that entered the registry include “Grease,” “Shrek,” “Outrage,” “The Dark Knight,” “The Hurt Locker,” and “The Blues Brothers.” I would nominate some new films, but the films within the long list have to be 10 years old in order to be included. I would try and nominate some films, if you see any that aren’t on their list. I nominated one of my favorites, Punishment Park, but you might have some others you like too.
I’d like to end this newsletter with a mention of a few articles. The Guardian talked about the solving of a book heist, Journal Star listed 50 interesting facts about the Internet, the Journal of the American Revolution had an article about yellow fever and church attendance during the Revolutionary War, while ABC News had an article about how books are resilient and still selling, despite the pandemic. William Hogeland, an Early American Historian, wrote about the current Supreme Court, the founders, and the First Amendment, and on another topic: American slavery and the continued love (to an absurd degree) of Alexander Hamilton. Finally, the Smithsonian magazine had articles about an ancient city in Saudi Arabia opened to archaeological exploration, a new study saying that climate change, not a tsunami, doomed the now-submerged territory of Doggerland in the present North Sea. Also of note is an article in the magazine highlighting a new database titled Enslaved: Peoples of the Historic Slave Trade which draws connections between existing datasets to piece together fragmentary narratives about enslaved peoples!
I end with a video about Health Science Archives, for those who are interested:
That’s all for this week. I hope you all have a great weekend and week to come.
- Burkely