Cultural Research

Terminator: The Cyborg in the Archives

Detail from Self Made Man Episode Still Photo

I've been watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and in the second season (disc 3 via Netflix) is an episode entitled Self Made Man (2008) in which an upscale academic library's research archives are a key element.

Cameron, a reprogrammed Terminator cyborg protects John Connor (Sarah's son) and those around him. By the second season she's developing her own network of resources that includes a wheelchair bound grad student who lets her into the library at night when it's closed.

Cameron embarks on a research mission to decipher an image from the 1920's and her search in the library's archives becomes a key storyline for this episode.

Her search entails visiting a number of different collections each of which is stored in a different format. It's a pretty believable romp through the archives with only a couple of unlikely moments that don't mar the pleasant surprise of a library playing a key role in a great television series.

Definitely some potential here to use excerpts from the episode in an introduction to library archives for high school and undergraduate students.

Side note:

The juxtaposition above of the time travelling cyborg on the right, the human in a wheelchair (in a looser sense, also a cyborg) on the left and a traditional card catalog in the background is an interesting one to consider.

Once everything's digitized this story line would have been squashed into a single digital download scene with images from different time periods flickering past.  Who knew old school methods held so much opportunity for drama?

Cambridge Library Collection: Library & Press Partner for Online & POD Access to Special Collections

The Cambridge Library Collection - Books of Enduring Scholarly Value

I used to think of digitization as an incredibly boring topic but the continuing drive to move special collections online, giving potentially universal access to rare materials previously limited to fixed locations, along with Google's massive scanning operation have certainly changed that landscape.

The above video, an excellent marketing tool, discusses the Cambridge Library Collection, a project that grew out of a partnership between the Cambridge University Library and the Cambridge University Press.

What I especially appreciate here is the addition of publish-on-demand (POD) services to the process of scanning out-of-print titles for online access. As I understand it, the Library is responsible for the digitization of the books and maintenance of those archives while the Press handles the publish-on-demand aspect providing individual copies as needed.

This is an awesome example of a partnership that builds on individual strengths to create a complete system providing access to otherwise difficult to obtain materials.

Via TeleRead.