Yep, Reel Librarians is back — and on track. Although it’s April Fools’ Day, this is no joke! 🙂 As you may (or may not) have noticed, this site has been on “private” mode the past few months, due to unforeseen personal as well as professional issues that needed to take priority in my life. I apologize for the unexpected and unannounced hiatus.

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Site updates:

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But not all was lost! During the site’s downtime, I went back through allllllllllll previous 7 years of posts and pages — 450+ posts + 19 pages, y’all! — to update things behind-the-scenes, including:

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Layout and media updates:

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• converting to WordPress’s new “block layout,” which exposed some bad coding that I needed to fix, especially in early posts
• changing images and clip art to openly licensed ones (excluding screenshots)
• deleting broken YouTube videos and replacing them, when available
• standardizing font sizes, layouts, and capitalization throughout all pages and posts
• refreshing the site’s background to a more recognizable (i.e. less pixelated) and public domain image of theater curtains

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Accessibility updates:

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• adding alt text and captions to all images
• changing spelled-out URLs within posts into more accessible linked text/phrases
• consistently using header blocks for headings (and NOT for random text!)
• when applicable, changing table formatting into regular text

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Inclusivity and transparency updates:

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• condensing the separate “Actor” and “Actress” lists into one, gender-inclusive “Actor” list (Note: I decided to go with the word “actor” as a general, non-gendered term)
• condensing the separate “Male Character Types” and “Female Character Types” pages into a single “Character Types” page
• splitting apart the “Class V” category into two, as I considered doing back in June 2015 (!), so now:
  • the “Class V” category now contains films with no identifiable librarians, although they mention librarians or include scenes set in libraries
  • the new “Class VI” category now contains films with no identifiable librarians and/or archivists, as these films have been mistakenly listed on other sites or lists of reel librarians (e.g. a bookseller mis-identified as a librarian)
• cross-linking films and related posts among the “Reel Substance,” “Actor,” and “Movie Lists” pages and sub-pages — these cross-linkings are now highlighted in yellow call-out boxes, as seen in the collage below, for easier identification and browsability:

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Citation updates:

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• adding a “Sources used” section to all applicable posts and explicitly citing all sources (rather than implicitly citing sources via links in the text of posts, which was my regular habit in early posts)
• adding license info to videos and images, when applicable

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New posting schedule:

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I plan on going forward with a new, streamlined posting schedule. Instead of weekly posts, I will now be posting twice-monthly posts on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of the month, at 5 a.m. PST.

You’ll note that this announcement post is a special one-off, as I posted it on Monday, April 1st. (I readily admit I did this so I could publish this on April Fools’ Day and include the “No foolin'” quote as part of the title. I will NEVER pass up the opportunity to be cheesy, y’all! 😉 )

So that means there will be a brand-new Reel Librarians post NEXT Wednesday, April 10th, which will kick off the regular 2nd and 4th Wednesday posting schedule.

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Sign up for updates:

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Not sure if you’ll remember to check out Reel Librarians when the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays roll around? To never miss out on a Reel Librarians post, please sign up for regular email updates so you’ll get automatically updated whenever a new post is published. How? Under the “Follow blog via email” heading on the right side, enter your email address, and then click on the “Sign me up!” button, as you can see in the screenshot below. It’s that easy!

Note: You will get sent a confirmation email to finalize signing up for automatic email updates.

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Comments?

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Are you excited Reel Librarians is back? Please leave a comment and let me know!

Also, please note that all comments now are moderated and approved before they become visible online. So if you leave a comment and don’t see it right away, no worries; it will become visible when I approve it. I also automatically get notified whenever there’s a pending comment.

Thanks for all the support, and I will see y’all next week… stay tuned!