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Amanda Brennan
NationalityAmerican
EducationRutgers University (BA)
Drew University (MLIS)
Occupation(s)librarian, blogger, writer

Amanda Brennan is the former Head of Editorial at Tumblr and is known as the "meme librarian." At Tumblr, she sorted through site's content and cataloged trends.[1] She began her career at Know Your Meme where she gained her nickname. Due to her history of cataloging trends, she has also been called "The Librarian for the Internet."[2] She is frequently quoted in the press because of her expertise on internet memes and statistics about internet memes.[3][4][5][6][7]

Education and early life

Brennan attended Drew University, graduating in 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and a minor in Linguistics. In 2011 she earned her Master of Library and Information Science degree from Rutgers University.[8]

Meme librarianship

In a 2014 interview for the Library of Congress blog, Brennan describes the importance of cataloging memes, saying "Recording these smaller moments are like recording local history, tiny bits that make up a whole that would have been incomplete in the future. They’re also representative of how current culture reacts to life, which will be important to understand how this era thought about the world."[9] She continued those thoughts in 2015, remarking to the Washington Post that, "The importance of sitting down to find these sources gives the creator the credit he/she deserves. Sometimes it gets buried under all the we-heart-its and the rebloggys, but without sitting down and saying, “This is important,” the creator loses his content – and that's not fair."[10]

Publications

References

  1. ^ Carpenter, Julia. "Meme librarian is a real job — and it's the best one on the Internet". The Washington Post. Retrieved October 29, 2016.
  2. ^ "Tumblr's 'meme librarian' tracks our online obsessions | Toronto Star". thestar.com. 10 January 2016. Retrieved 2016-11-02.
  3. ^ Carpenter, Julia (2015-12-19). "2015's best Tumblr memes were all about playing with language". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2016-11-02.
  4. ^ Masuma Ahuja (11 December 2015). "The Dress: Blue & Black? White & Gold? Cease & Desist?". CNN. Retrieved 2016-11-02.
  5. ^ Ohlheiser, Abby (2015-12-15). "'Star Wars' fans are very, very afraid of spoiler trolls right now". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2016-11-02.
  6. ^ "Tumblr's 'Meme Librarian' has the best job on the internet". The Independent. 2015-12-22. Archived from the original on 2015-12-24. Retrieved 2016-11-02.
  7. ^ McCracken, Allison (2020). "Going Down the Rabbit Hole: An Interview with Amanda Brennan, Head of Content Insights and Social, Tumblr". a tumblr book: platform and cultures. University of Michigan Press. pp. 37–47. doi:10.3998/mpub.11537055. ISBN 978-0-472-05456-5. S2CID 213691692.
  8. ^ "amanda brennan, meme librarian". Retrieved 29 October 2016.
  9. ^ Owens, Trevor; Fernandez, Julia (14 July 2014). "LOLCats and Libraries: A Conversation with Internet Librarian Amanda Brennan". The Signal. Retrieved 29 October 2016.
  10. ^ Carpenter, Julia (2015-12-21). "Meme librarian is a real job — and it's the best one on the Internet". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2016-11-02.
  11. ^ Pagowsky, Nicole; Rigby, Miriam E., eds. (2014). The librarian stereotype: Deconstructing perceptions and presentations of information work. ACRL. ISBN 978-0838987049.
  12. ^ Brennan, Amanda. "Everyday I'm Tumblin': Strengthening Your Library's Community Through Tumblr". Prezi. Retrieved 29 October 2016.
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