[Sfts-students] Klein Librarian update September 2026

[phoenix.alexander at ucr.edu]

Dear all,

Welcome back to campus! Fall is upon us—not that you'd tell by the
temperature. There's lots of news this month, so I'll get right into it!

I'm delighted to say that we have a* new Director of Special Collections
and Archives: Rebecca Baumann
<https://library.ucr.edu/people/rebecca-baumann>*, who joins us from the
Lilly Library at Indiana University! Rebecca brings years of experience in
the rare book and library worlds, as well as a passion for sf/f and pulps,
among other research interests. We're so excited to welcome her!

Our Processing Archivist and President of the Comic Studies Society
Research Librarians Cohort (CSSRLC), Andrew Lippert, has created and
published a  <https://guides.lib.ucr.edu/comics-studies>research guide for
comics, graphic novels, and comics studies materials in the Eaton Collection
<https://guides.lib.ucr.edu/comics-studies>. We hope that this guide will
make accessing these materials much easier. It is organized topically and
highlights some of the collecting strengths in our comics holdings and some
titles/issues of note. There is more to add down the road, both to the
collection and the guide, so keep an eye out for future updates!

The CSSRLC are also hosting an online event with *Ryan Linkof, Senior
Curator and Head of Film Programs at the newly-opened Lucas Museum, *who*
will present on the Lucas' comic art collection on Tuesday, October 13th,
10-11am PST*. You can register for the event at this link.
<https://sdsu.zoom.us/meeting/register/uQqgFkLbTpK3GGZp6tOi6g#/registration>


*The keynote speaker for the 2027 virtual Eaton Symposium has been
finalized* - more on her, soon!! I'm so excited!! - and the theme of the
Symposium will be 'horror' (snappy title forthcoming). To that end: *if you
would like to present on anything to do with horror/the uncanny/the Gothic
(think expansively), please do reach out to me*!

Finally, I'm excited to highlight the following three items that I acquired
for the Eaton this month:


   - Thad Higa, *Enshittification *(2025): a book about "pop-up
   advertisements, fracturing of media and reality, attention economy,
   surveillance, paywall capitalism, incel brain rotting and fear mongering,
   tech oligarch AI garbage marketing, and the impact of all of this on our
   conception of freedom and reality."


   - Thad Higa, *This Land is Our Land *(2024):  "a fictional narrative
   from the imagined headspace of the current day... an attempt to see & know
   the many activities and contradictions of hatred, bias, and cynicism rooted
   in sloganized and weaponized words."


   - FLY,* Future Farmaceuticals Box Set* (2026): a unique work of
   speculative fiction that comes in the form of 5 Authentic Pill Bottles
   (varying in size) labeled and containing a select collection of mini-zines.
   " In the future, art will be recognized as a legitimate form of
   treatment for society’s ills and will be covered by Universal Creative
   Health Insurance. Future Farmacuticals is at the cutting edge of the
   Prescription Art Cure: the alternative to television, consumerism and SOMA."

I'm attending Rare Books LA this weekend, so I look forward to sharing more
exciting goodies next month,

Until then: stay cool and safe!

Warmth (but not too much) and light,

Phoenix

*Recommended book of the month:*  I'm going to be *incredibly* tacky and
recommend my article on Pokopia and/as climate fiction that came out in the
LA Review of Books today
<https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/pokemon-pokopia-species-extinction-posthuman-environment-rewilding-nintendo/>.
Please forgive me!
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