The Invisible Library

“Who cares about that ol’ stuff?” That question hunts this archivist. About to enter a new profession, I plan to do all I can to increase the awareness of the importance of archives and archivists among other information professionals and the general public. Archivists can play a critical role in widening and deepening the public debate on all topics such as transparent government, free speech, human and civil rights, and other topics of national importance. Charlene N. Bickford writes (”The Coalition to Save our Documentary Heritage.” MARAC, 1983) about a specific case of archival advocacy, for example. So there are hints that many,many people care a great deal, in truth. The job of the American Archivist, government official or cultural information manager, is to assist in the equal and open access to the resources for the creation of truthful stories.

Generalizing or popularizing topics usually of interest to a small audience is an art practiced by publicists, academics, in fact anyone who employs the rhetorical arts. Archivists are the partners of storytellers. Archivists are a gateway to the work of humankind. Nothing prevents them from using their skills to tell their own story.

Far too few people know of the work we do and the good that comes of it. Information professionals, and that includes CIOs, archivists, academic and public librarians, are a highly educated and skilled work force, and they can do better to demonstrate the positive role they play in the conduct of the work of this country. Their professional values are in concert with the principles of representative democracy, so why then do we tolerate remaining an undervalued national resource? Let’s use the resources at our disposal to master the articulation of professional and ethical social values of importance to several developing national information emergencies: Executive Order 13323, the toleration of lapses of international civil rights standards, the list could go on.

I’ll post more thoughts on these matters in the future.
For now, I’m just glad to be online. Before I sign off, a point of personal privilege: I’m honored that Keith has taken me under his big ol’ bloggin’ wing. I’m looking forward to building my bloggin’ skills. Thanks, Keith.

Lucy ponders the nature of reality, while looking out the window with Don Quioxte.

Salon.com:

“The Prisoner of Azkaban” is the first true Harry Potter movie — the first to capture not only the books’ sense of longing, but their understanding of the way magic underlies the mundane, instead of just prancing fancifully at a far remove from it. In the spirit of a true romantic, Cuar�n knows that the secret to great fantasy is naturalism.

This is heartening to hear, in so many ways. While my wife loves the first two movies (and the books as well) I’ve always felt that the films lacked a certain quality; something indistinct and hard to grasp but something decidedly absent. I blame Chris Columbus for this. He’s simply a mediocre director, hamstrung more than he usually is by the rabid devotion to Rawling’s books that the fans, the studio and Rawling herself demand.

I was talking about this with my friend, Jenny, who likewise, loves the books but was even more disappointed in the films than I was (and to be honest, they are watchable, just not as enjoyable as they should have been). Jenny has been, for the past week, going back and forth between excitement and dread about this movie. Excitement, because every teaser and trailer make sit look like it will be fantastic, in every sense of the word. Dread, because she felt the same about the other two movies and was let down by hammy acting from child stars and a plodding pace.

But as the reviewer, Stephanie Zacharek, points out, Cuar�n knows how to get child actors to actually act well, instead of just pretend. He also has a sense of subtlety and nuance that Columbus lacks (his other films include Y tu Mama Tambien, Great Expectations, and A Little Princess).

Of course, the major fear of any fan of a book is that the movie will not just fall short of the story (it usually does, except in the case of Dracula and Frankenstein, the only two movies to far surpass the books that inspired them) but will in fact ruin the story, forever replacing the great images inside the head of the reader with more Hollywood cotton candy and decaying fluff. It remains to be seen if this will happen to Azkaban, which by all accounts is the favorite of the Harry Potter books among just about everyone I’ve talked to. Given what we’ve seen so far and what the reviewers have said, I don’t think we have to worry. Too much.