Culture and pop culture – Week 13 – activity

[hanan albishri]

 

A pop culture connection with library make me think of one word and that is “adaption”. Libraries have merely been place where people come to read books or find some information and soon they realized it is important to make the place more interesting and attracting. The connection of pop culture and library reminded me of word adaption because I feel now libraries have understood that as the society is changing, it is important for them to expand their categories option. I took Barbican library for my service review and was really impressed by their style of sharing and improving skills within young children’s, but I also came to learn more about their activities and events that they conduct to extract more social groups. I came to hear about their new event called S.M.A.S.H and interestingly it is a talkfest on comics, graphics and novels which includes authors of different novels and comics. It has become important for libraries to diversify and expand the amount of information that should be there in library. As Jones indicates, that the environment is becoming more challenging, libraries have to find a way to keep consumers attracted towards it as well as try capture new consumers. Barbican have understand the importance of adaption and have utilized their space in organizing exhibitions, celebrate important anniversaries, promote different genre of music and outreach to people from different culture and religion.

Recently I went through an article that talked about “What popular culture is telling us about libraries and why we should listen.” Glover explained few critical points in this article by explaining the involvement of libraries in pop culture as they are used in making comics, films and songs. It help indicate libraries carry mysterious information, futuristic archives that can be dangerous. The article help explain that libraries do contain mysterious information in a way it carries large amount of different knowledge in one library and that can be extremely dangerous. He relates his theory with Rex-Libris comic which talks about librarian being a superhero and his strongest weapon is the knowledge, another example is of Buffy the Vampire Slayer which talk about gathering knowledge from libraries to vanquish demons. The overall idea of these examples is to understand that library provide with vast amount of knowledge to idly defeat any evilest of thoughts.

Nowadays libraries also contains archives, although they are important for the success of library but at the same time they create a difficult situation in our pop culture. National Treasure movie is the best example, it shows that the way to getting treasure is in the map and that map is in National archives, which is stolen to get to the treasure. Well there are no major issues with libraries but with this example I just want to tell what all is available in library and it is up to us how we utilize the information and knowledge provided in libraries. Overall it help indicate that library is no more a place of  just books and papers but it is an entity which provide with information that prevails in popular culture.

 

 

 

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