Notes
What happens when these cafes shut down and their archival records disappear and functions cease? #FanLIS2025
These K cafe spaces tend to demonstrate uncompensated feminized fan labor while cafe proprietors tend to be men who may not be fans themselves. #FanLIS2025
Cafes decorated with standees and posters provide a historical record of the life cycle of a media text. #FanLIS2025
Fans’ notes and art posted in cafes tend to be dated and signed, creating an informal archive, #FanLIS2025
Das’s RQ: “Do fandom-centered cafe systems exhibit characteristics of alternate, informal memory institutions?” as opposed to formal, traditional memory institutions like libraries and archives #FanLIS2025
Das is investigating cafes as a method of cross-cultural fandom for Indian fans of Korean entertainment. #FanLIS2025
First up, Susrita Das with Food, fan art, and preserving a moment in time: a case study of the fandom-themed cafe ecosystem as alternative memory institution. #FanLIS2025
Ludi Price is introducing the fifth FanLIS Symposium. #FanLIS2025 doesn’t have a particular theme. Ludi asks how are things different in FanLIS now than five years ago? (A note on names and titles: I’m using first names for people I know personally, titles/last names for people I don’t.)
Super exciting opportunity shared at #FanLIS2025, the British Library and the University of Glasgow are sponsoring a PhD student to explore the publication, collection and preservation activities of online fan communities and fan archives. Great topic at a great university!
Deborah works as a trainer for Teaching Books, which includes a Book Resume for each title that librarians can use to justify inclusion of books in their collection, especially helpful responding to book challenges. #aisl25
Deborah suggests pairing informational texts with graphic novels. For example, kids who love Ben Clanton’s Narwhal and Jelly series might be interested in Candace Fleming’s Narwhal: Unicorn of the Arctic. #aisl25
Prolific author Kate DiCamillo’s Orris and Timble series has a new book coming soon. #aisl25
Deborah says there is a trend of middle grade books with parents/adults having mental illness and kids having to keep secrets to keep siblings together. #aisl25
Deborah shares 2 books about whale falls, providing an environment for an ecosystem after a whale dies. These could be good for lateral reading, having students read one and then the other. [Life After Whale] (https://school.teachingbooks.net/tb.cgi?tid=94746) and Whale Fall. #aisl25
Looking at highly awarded, favorite authors and illustrators, variety of genres, cultural representation, and fan favorites. #aisl25
Deborah introduced Kari Lavelle’s Butt Or Face? series.
📚💬 “…surely ghosts will follow wherever there is bad record keeping.” Colin Dickey, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places 👻
Today I’m attending my first Association of Independent School Librarians institute, Booked for the Day: Reading, Reflection, and Revitalization. I’m planning to live-blog. Posts should automatically appear on Bluesky & Mastodon.
📚💬 “Here, then, is a central paradox in the way that ghosts work: to turn the living into ghosts is to empty them out, rob them of something vital; to keep the dead alive as ghosts is to fill them up with memory and history, to keep alive a thing that would otherwise be lost.” Colin Dickey, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, writing about the dissonance between Richmond’s history as the home of slave trade and torture and the fact that all Richmond’s ghosts are white 👻