The Archivist as Western Hero

Like most children born in the 1950s, I grew up on a steady diet of television and movie westerns. There is something so compelling about the myth of the frontiersman, a law unto himself, taming a rugged landscape filled with human and animal peril. What has interested me in the western in recent years is the universality of its appeal, and even though millennials no longer sit through a tale of dusty streets and showdowns, the formula of the western is played out again and again in other genres such as science fiction and police dramas. I feel the Information Scientist would be the perfect villain for a western: cold, ruthless, and powerful. What better role for the archivist than that of the western hero? Chivalrous, quiet, competent, and possessed with a deadly six-gun accuracy, the archivist could face the threat with real (reel) panache!