In this Very Special Episode, Eric celebrates National Library Card Sign Up Month!
What better way to celebrate getting your library card than with a countdown of my favorite Disney Librarians done in Dewey Decimal Style! We take a look at animated librarians, like Monsters University. Disney Junior Librarians Like in Mira Royal Detective. Movie Detectives like Abigail Chase from National Treasure. And even Real Life Disney Librarians like Dave Smith, The founder of the Walt Disney Archives!
You should definitely Check it Out! (library pun intended)
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00:04 --> 00:07 Synergy loves company.
00:10 --> 00:53 We have this coterie of rich franchises, the company now that people want to engage with. I came here to try and continue what Walt Disney and his associates set in motion 50 years ago, which is to experiment with every new and innovative kind of entertainment possible. It's what we hope to do here, to really develop something that just more than an entertainment enterprise. It's something that contributes many other ways.
00:59 --> 28:45 Hey, this is Synergy Loves Company, where we explore how Disney connects to everything. I'm Eric H. Synergy, and I want to thank you so much for joining me today and keeping me company. You know, September is a really special time of year. It's that transition between summer and fall. Everyone's back at school. The Halloween decorations are starting to come out. Pumpkin Spice is back, and the weather can't quite make up its mind. I know by me in the Midwest, it's been hot and then cold, and then rainy, and then hot again. I don't know, it's just that weird summer fall kind of time of year. But September is actually an extra special month for people like me. Librarians. Did you know that September is library card sign up month? Do you have your library card? If you don't, you should sign up. You should sign up this September. You could really sign up whenever, but September is a great time to sign up. Go sign up. Get your card from your local public library this year. It's actually a really cool promotion. Disney and Pixar have teamed up with the American Library Association to promote this month long event. The theme this year is a library card is Elemental. And Ember and Wade from Disney, Pixar's Elemental are the official spokes characters of Library Card Signup Month. So here's a little blurb straight from the Ala, the American Library Association, about what you can do with your library card. Get in your element this September. Sign up for a library card. From borrowing books, ebooks, and museum passes to getting homework help, learning new skills, or attending a story time, a library card helps you do more of what you enjoy. Get a library card and dive into a new hobby. Use your library card to tinker in a maker space and spark your creativity. A library card is elemental, really, and everyone should have one. So to celebrate Library Card Signup Month and its connection to Disney this year, I wanted to take a look at some of my favorite Disney librarians of the past 100 years of Disney history. But before we get to that, I wanted to remind you that I'm giving away free stuff. Library cards. Those are free. I can't give you those, but I can give you a bunch of stickers, magnets, and fun things with the Synergy Loves Company logo on them. I want to send them to you because you're listening to the show. No one gives away stuff for free. But I am. There's a link in the description of this episode, and there are links on all my socials. Just go fill out the form there and tell me where to send it, and I'll get that sticker or that magnet or one of each to you in the mail. And remember, if you have been enjoying Synergy Love's Company, tell your friends about it and let them know they should be listening, too. They can get a sticker and a magnet, too. All right, let's get back to the episode in 1920 when Walt Disney returned from the Red Cross in Paris. He got a job working at the Kansas City Film Ad Company. He was an artist who would draw title slides and advertisements that would be shown before movies at theaters in the Kansas City area. This is that job where he met fellow film ad artist UB. Iwerks. Not long after starting the job, walt and UB started experimenting with rudimentary animations to make their advertisements and title slides more engaging. When they wanted to sharpen their animation skills, they went to their local public library. There it is. On the shelves there, Walt found a book that would become his guide. It was called Animated Cartoons. How they Are Made, their Origins and their Development by E G. Lutz. That's a long title. Walt and UB took this book out of the library and poured over it, using the information to hone their early animation skills. I mean, if it weren't for that library book, disney might not have become what it became. Libraries have had important roles in both the history of the company and in the content that it puts out. But, of course, every great library is made possible by the librarians who put it together and help with its upkeep. So here is a Dewey Decimal countdown of my favorite Disney librarians. Yeah, I arranged a list by Dewey decimal topic super library nerd right here. All right, let's get started with 152.46 Emotions fear the Librarian from Monsters University. I love this scene in Monsters University. It's the prequel to Monsters, Inc. Where Mike and Sully are in college together. Mike Sully and the Uzma Kappas are participating in the annual Scare Games, and they're off to a very rocky start. But there's this event in the library where they have to get a flag without being heard by the massive, scary monster librarian. She's got tentacles. She's gray. She's super creepy. The librarian is a really great character, and she's only in the movie a very short time. But she does make a big impact because she is big. She's gigantic. One cool thing is she is voiced by Marsha Wallace, who you might know as Miss Krabopple on The Simpsons, though they don't say it in the movie. Her name is actually Margaret Gessner. She is an extreme stereotype of the Shushing Librarian. If anyone makes a sound, she immediately picks them up and throws them out. Of the library whisper yelling the whole time to be quiet. Her whispers can shake the whole library. She is the perfect simulation for the monster training that's happening with these wannabe scarers. They have to be sneaky. They have to sneak past her to get the flag. In the movie, this is the first time that Mike Sully and the Uzma Kappas are able to work together. Instead of trying to stick together to keep quiet, they actually split apart and make a lot of noise. But it's this barrage of distractions and the librarian doesn't know where to look that really helps them squishy's, able to slip by unnoticed and grab the flag. It's a great scene, a great turning point in the movie. Next up 363.25 Criminal Investigation Mirror Royal Detective so Mirror Royal Detective is a Disney junior series that takes place in Jalpur, a fictitious setting that's similar to 19th century India. In the show, the young Mira gets the job as the royal detective after using her investigation skills and her mongoose sidekicks to solve the mystery of the queen's missing son. I guess that would make him the prince. Detective skills and librarian skills can sometimes be one and the same. But being a detective doesn't make you a librarian, and being a librarian doesn't make you a detective. Throughout the series, though, there are many scenes that take place in the library. But that doesn't make her a librarian either. What does make Mira a librarian is an episode from the first season titled The Case of the Missing Library Book. This episode opens with Mira pedaling the bicycle powered mobile library. Once she parks it in town, we see that she and her dad are the librarians of the mobile library. The episode then becomes a librarian's dream. Mira sings a song about libraries and why they're awesome and how to have proper library etiquette. And then when she discovers a popular book is missing, she investigates. The message behind the episode is how to be a great library patron. Remember, you need a library card to check out a book. You can't just take it. And remember to bring them back on time so the next person can have it. All right, let's stick around in Disney Jr. For the next 1553.8 ornamental stones and gems. Sophia I she was just a girl in the village doing all right. Then she became a princess overnight. Sophia I was voiced by Ariel Winter, who's known for playing Alex Dunphy on Modern Family, an ABC sitcom. Disney ABC. She became the first Disney Junior princess when her commoner mom marries the King of Enchantia and she becomes a princess and is gifted with the magical amulet of Avalor, this mystical magical gemstone that contains Elena of Avalore. But I'm getting ahead of myself. This happens before that as Sophia is trying to figure out how to do it right. She's got so much to learn and see, I had to keep doing the song thing. She discovers that the Amulet of Avalore has a lot of different magical powers. In the third season of the show, Sophia uses the amulet to help her find a secret library that can only be accessed through a hole in the wall of her bedroom. On the way there, she travels down a magical waterway that passes landmarks and artifacts from all of the Disney princess movies. When she arrives at the library, she finds her Aunt Tilly, who's already there, and explains that all of the stories in the library are unfinished. Tilly tells Sophia that the amulet has chosen her to be the library's storykeeper, and it means that she has to help finish the stories on the shelves. Okay, I know she's not entitled a librarian, but she is in charge of maintaining this library collection. And aren't librarians storykeepers? I mean, that's kind of a cool name. I want to be a storykeeper. I'm a librarian, and then I could be a storykeeper. I'm going to count it. Sophia I is a librarian because she is the storykeeper. All right, our next librarian comes from 398.2 Folk literature and folklore. Yeah, I guess there's a lot of characters from Disney that could fit into folklore, but this one specifically is Belle French from Once Upon a Time. Belle from Beauty and the Beast is probably the princess most likely to be a librarian. She loves the books. She goes to the bookstore in town. She borrows books from the bookstore. She gets the collection of books from the beast, although I guess she's not in charge of them. She just gets to read all of them. That's her thing, right? She loves books, but she's not like, a librarian. Well, not exactly. In Disney's ABC Studios once upon a time. Belle is actually a librarian. In 2001, Disney debuted Once Upon a Time as a way to bring the fairy tale characters from the Disney animated films into the live action modern world. Think of a more grown up, slightly more subtle descendants, like a multiverse of Disney animated features. It was an hour long soap opera like drama that had avatars of most of the Disney princesses in intertwined storylines. The character of Belle from Beauty and the Beast in Once Upon a Time is portrayed by Emily Deraven playing Belle French. Get it? Belle French. Beauty and the Beast is from France. Come on. You might recognize Emily from Lost, another ABC show, as Claire. I know that's where I mostly knew her from. I was a big Lost fan in the show, though Once Upon a Time, she does go through an imprisonment and a beastly Stockholm syndrome y situation. Not with the beast. It's different. No spoilers. But she does this time actually get to head up the Storybrook library as the librarian. There Storybrook being the setting of Once Upon a Time, and in this timeline, Belle actually gets to be a real librarian. Go, Belle. Not just reading the books at the library. She's in charge of it now. For our next librarian, I had some trouble deciding where I would put this one on the shelf, and I ultimately decided with 796.2 extreme sports skateboarding, not because of what she did, but because of the movie she's in. Sylvia Marple, the university librarian from an extremely goofy movie. Oh, the Disney made for home video movies. There were so many in the early two thousand s with varying degrees of success. Some are pretty great, some are not. An Extremely Goofy Movie from 2000 has one of the best librarian characters ever, though it's a pretty good movie, too. I would recommend it. And that's Sylvia Marple. She's voiced by BB. Newworth, who I always think of as Lilith from Frasier or Cheers. And in the story, Max is off to college and Goofy joins him because he's a few credits short of a degree. And in the university library, Goofy meets a love interest in librarian, Sylvia Marple. She's really a very cool, quirky character. She's obsessed with the 70s, which works out for Goofy in the movie because he's often wearing, like, his grooviest leisure suit and he's disco dancing, and she loves disco, too, so it kind of works. They actually, when they meet, they bond over their mood rings. Good old 70s fads. Sylvia is one of my favorite Disney librarians because she helps to break the ages old media stereotype of librarians. I know I said I did love the monsters inc. Librarian, but she's kind of like a super stereotype that kind of makes fun of it. In general, we want these modern librarians to be seen. Sylvia is far from the uptight shusher that we're used to seeing as librarian in movies. She's a realistic character with some very human qualities, and her obsession with the 70s is super realistic. There are tons of real life librarians who are obsessed with one very specific part of pop culture. Like if there was a librarian who is obsessed with the Walt Disney Company and how it connects to everything. But I digress. All right, our next librarian comes from one of my favorite sections of the Dewey Decimal System 741.5 graphic novels and comics. Wong, the commartage librarian of the ancient books from all across the MCU, but mostly the Doctor Strange movies. A lot has happened in the MCU. Like, a lot. We are deep in the number of heroes in the MCU, and many have done some pretty cool stuff. But only one is a librarian. Wong, portrayed by Benedict. Wong might have become the Sorcerer Supreme, but he started out as the librarian of Camaradage. Becoming an effective sorcerer takes a lot of work. When Dr. Stephen Strange arrives at Camaritage to try to overcome his debilitating injuries, he starts his training as a sorcerer. And part of that training means he needs to study. Wong is the librarian whose job it is to protect the ancient books, which have the knowledge that Stephen Strange needs. Wong has fallen into the role as librarian because he has been a longtime follower of the ancient one, and his studying makes him the character that is most knowledgeable of all of the ancient texts. Wong is a pretty awesome librarian character. I would love to see a Wong movie or series free from Doctor Strange. I know he's popped up in some places like she Hulk, but I want him to do something that's just like his own thing. Come on. Justice for Wong. We want the Librarian MCU movie. All right, our next librarian might be a little bit of a deep cut, but it's perfect for this fall season. It comes from 813.5 American literature, and that is Charles Holloway, the greentown Librarian. From Something Wicked This Way Comes Being from the Chicagoland area, I have to love Ray Bradbury. He wrote a whole lot of stories set in Greentown, a fictitious northern Illinois town modeled after Joaquin, Illinois, where he grew up. Probably the most famous of his greentown stories is Something Wicked This Way Comes. It pretty much invented the idea of the creepy carnival when the book was first published in 1962. Around 20 years later, in 1983, disney decided to adapt Something Wicked This Way Comes into a movie. It is not exactly what you'd expect from Disney, so it didn't do too well, but I really love it. In the movie, Will and Jim are two young boys that are haunted by Mr. Dark, the leader of a creepy fall carnival that has come into town. In the movie, Will's dad, Charles Holloway, played by Jason Roberts, is the local librarian, and really important scenes take place at the library, some really suspenseful scenes. Charles Holloway is the kind of librarian who loves his collection. He often stays late into the night and really encourages Will and Tom to find the books that they'll love at the library. He encourages them to explore and love the books as much as he does. Even though I love the movie Something Wicked This Way Comes, it's not the same as the book, which I also love. Charles Holloway is not the librarian in the book. He's actually the janitor of the library. But the same thing happens. He loves the book so much that he spends so much time reading on the job that he knows the collection better than the librarians. He also stays late into the night working and reading, and I kind of love that even more that he's not the librarian per se, but he's just in love with that collection and stays late into the night reading and getting to know it better. We only got a couple more down the list here. We're getting into the 900 section. That's kind of the end of the Dewey decimal system. Our next one comes from 973 United States history revolution period. Abigail Chase, archivist in national treasure. Yes, national treasure. In National Treasure, when Benjamin Franklin Gates discovers a plot to steal the Declaration of Independence, he first tries to report it to the FBI. And Abigail Chase, who's the archivist for the National Archives, they don't believe him. The security system of the National Archives is too secure. No one could steal the Declaration of Independence. Or can they? Abigail Chase, played by Diane Krueger, is the archivist at the National Archives in charge of protecting the United States'most treasured documents. Archives are very specialized libraries, and archivists are very specialized librarians. They're really into preservation, not circulation. You can't just walk out of the National Archives with the Declaration of Independence. The coolest thing about Abigail is that when the Declaration of Independence does get stolen spoiler alert sorry she stops at nothing to get it back. She really cares about her items in her collection, and she's not just going to wait around for the authorities to bring it back. She's going to go get that declaration on her own. In trying to get the Declaration of Independence back, she gets kidnapped, she gets rescued, and she joins up with Ben Gates in the adventure that is National Treasure. It's a great movie. I love National Treasure. All right, this next one's out of order. I went from 973. Now I got to go back a couple of shelves to 920.2, where we keep all the biographies, and that is for my favorite Disney librarian, disney legend Dave Smith, the founding librarian archivist of the Walt Disney Archives. Dave Smith is definitely my favorite Disney person. I said it my favorite Disney person. Yeah, I know. I love Michael Eisner. I love his story. I love Walt Disney. Of course, you can't not love Walt Disney, but Dave Smith is my favorite Disney person, and, I mean, a lot of it has to do with him being a librarian, but we'll get there. Dave Smith got his Master's of Library Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He interned at the Library of Congress, and then he started working at the University Library at UCLA in the late 1960s. It was there that he noticed a lot of people started asking for information about the late Walt Disney. Being an amazing librarian who saw a need and was also a fan, he decided to collect resources into an annotated bibliography about where all of the Disney information was. While he was working on the bibliography, he reached out to the Disney Company to get access to publications and information that only they had. And it was this connection that led to Roy O. Disney, Walt's brother, hiring Dave to catalog and archive the contents of Walt's desk. This was the beginning of Disney's official archives. Ever since Dave Smith archived Walt Disney's desk, the Disney Company has been industry leading in preserving their past. When you think of it, it's this, the Disney Archives, that has enabled us mega Disney nerds to become even bigger fans I don't think any other company in the world has the kind of fandom that Disney has, and I believe that the Archives have a lot to do with that. The Disney Archives project led Dave Smith to his extensive research and knowledge of Disney. This led to the ask Dave articles and Disney Magazine publications and the books that Dave published, like Dave Smith's Disney Encyclopedia or Disney A to Z. The Archives have also given us some wonderful glimpses into the company through D 23 and museum experiences, like the Disney 100 exhibition that just left Philadelphia and is on its way to Chicago. I can't wait till it gets to Chicago. I got my tickets. I'm ready to go. It's just a couple of months away. The Archives are why we have so many Disney historians also who can do great research and write great Disney history books and articles for me to read and for me to make podcast episodes about which strengthens my fandom and hopefully your fandom for listening to this. And the cycle continues. As I'm thinking about the Disney Archives, I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing that it all started with an annotated bibliography and Dave Smith. When Dave Smith passed away, he had built up the Archives from a one man operation to a full fledged department. Today, the head archivist, Becky Klein, follows in Smith's footsteps, keeping the Archives stocked and the Disney historians with plenty of research information. I just love the Disney archives. I hope you had fun with this episode. I'm a library nerd. I'm a Disney nerd. This is where it all gets to come together and get your library card month. So go get your library card. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Synergy Loves Company. Before I close out the show, I do want to take one more moment to remind you for the reason I got here in the first place. September is officially a library card sign up month. Go and get your library card. If you don't have your library card, I really encourage you to head to your local public library and sign up today to gain access to a bunch of great stuff that's completely free. If you do have your library card, go encourage your friends and your family members to go get theirs. Support your local public library. And also, like I mentioned at the top of the show, I'm giving away free stuff. I have stickers and magnets I want to give you for listening and for following me online. You just have to tell me where to send them to you. There's a link in the show description of this episode as well as on all my social media accounts, and you could click the link, fill out the form, and I'll send you a sticker or a magnet or both. If you already asked for one, you should have gotten it already or be looking for it soon. So if you want to find where you could contact me to get that stuff or just say hi, you can find that link and me on Instagram and threads at Synergylovescompany. And I'm still on Twitter, as long as it's free at Eric h synergy. But you could also find me on Blue Sky at Eric h synergy. And if you're enjoying synergy loves company, don't just keep it to yourself. Share it with a friend who loves Disney just as much as you do. Just tell them to visit Synergylovescompany.com, because sharing the show is the number one way that you can support the show. And your support it means the world to me. Thanks again for exploring Disney's connections with me. Until next time, keep discovering the magic in everything. Dip.