Interview with Tim Johnson

As registration for Holmes in the Heartland rolls on, we wanted to highlight the great speakers you can see at our event on August 10-12!  First up is our keynote speaker, Tim Johnson.  Tim is the curator of the Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota.  Since our theme this year is "A Curious Collection" and we are celebrating the new St. Louis Sherlockian Research Collection at the St. Louis Public Library, we felt that Tim would be the perfect keynote speaker for our inaugural event!

If you haven't registered yet, you can do so HERE and you can see Tim speak in person!

How did you become interested in Sherlock Holmes?

I read some of the stories as a youngster, and saw some of the Rathbone/Bruce movies growing up, but it really wasn't until Jeremy Brett appeared in the Granada series that aired on PBS "Mystery" that I really got roped in. There were a few of us at work who regularly watched the series--sometimes together--and my VCR was set each week to record each episode, just in case I had a conflict and couldn't watch it in real time, or to watch it again and again and again. I still have those tapes. Then, when I took the curator's position at the University of Minnesota I realized there was a whole other level of engagement with Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson. I was a babe in the woods. And, truth be told, the Holmes Collections at the U were not my main motivation for applying for the curator's position in the first place. But that quickly changed. TheNorwegian Explorers of Minnesota had a conference scheduled about two months after I started my job. I soon realized that some serious preparation was in order, so I re-read the entire Canon (a word I knew of in the biblical context, but was not yet introduced to in the Sherlockian sense) so that I might appear at least somewhat knowledgeable about the Holmesian world and could, on a very elementary level, "walk the walk and talk the talk." But I was still a babe in the woods. However, the Norwegian Explorers welcomed me with open arms, and it is a community I still value to this day. Along with the Explorers, The Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections got their hooks into me early and slowly drew me closer, educating me along the way. Julie McKuras, Dick Sveum, Gary Thaden, John Bergquist, C. Paul Martin, and the late Allen Mackler were my tutors. Those friendships cemented my interest in Sherlock Holmes. I would be poorer without them.

What is your current involvement with Sherlock Holmes and Sherlockians?

For the last twenty years, I've been the curator of Special Collections and Rare Books at the University of Minnesota, which includes being curator of our most special gathering of materials, the Sherlock Holmes Collections. And since 2010, I've been the E. W. McDiarmid Curator of the Sherlock Holmes Collections, an endowed curatorship in the University Libraries (the first) that allows me to spend at least half of my time working with the Holmes Collections, traveling to various conferences and cons, writing about the Collections in the Friends newsletter (and in other publications), creating exhibits, and helping to plan and host our owntriennial conference. (Planning for our next conference, to be held in August 2019, is already underway.) I've had the honor of being a past guest at a number of Baker Street Irregular dinners and try to get to New York for the Birthday Weekend on an irregular basis. More recently, I've become rather fond of 221B Con in Atlanta, and have now attended their two most recent conventions. I, along with Peggy Perdue from the Toronto Public Library, were guests of honor at one of the last SherlockSeattle cons. And I am now very pleased to be the keynote speaker for the Holmes in the Heartland conference. As with many fans and devotees, I've enjoyed seeing Holmes and Watson in the movies (as portrayed by Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law) or on television via BBC's "Sherlock" or CBS's "Elementary." Occasionally, I've been moved to write or comment on these recent manifestations on my blog or through presentations to various groups. I, along with our Friends of the Collections, take a "big tent" view of the Sherlockian world, something I think we inherited from John Bennett Shaw. We want to be inclusive and try to capture for the Collections all expressions of Canonical, Apocryphal, parody, or pastiche Holmes. My latest challenge is working with fan fiction creators on how best to preserve their work and make it accessible to future generations. I have, as many have noted, one of the best jobs on the planet.

Do you have a particular subset of the Sherlockian hobby that really interests you?

As I mentioned above, the newer fandom intrigues me. When compared to the output documented in De Waal's magisterial Universal Sherlock Holmes bibliography, it is astounding. De Waal lists about 25,000 items--works created between 1887 and 1994 related to Holmes. In the last ten years, new fans, through online platforms such as Archive of Our Own (AO3), created over 105,000 pieces related to Holmes--over four times the number documented by De Waal! To me, that is a mind-blowing and challenging number. Challenging because these works of fan fiction, art, videos, etc. are created within the context of online communities, communities that add its own commentary, ratings, or annotations to the original works. Thus, it is impossible to collect these works on their own. To do so would rip them out of their communal context. And, because they are digital works, as opposed to works on paper, there are additional technical challenges to try and collect and preserve this material. I have just scratched the surface in reading or experiencing fandom's creativity, but based on what I see at cons such as those in Seattle or Atlanta, this is where there's new energy and a true force in keeping forever green the memory of the Master. Also, these newer fandom communities have been ignored or scorned to some extent by "traditional" Sherlockians, in part because of how they view and embrace the relationship between Holmes and Watson. Because of my "big tent" perspective, I rejoice in what these folks are up to and how they created such a wave of interest, primarily through their interest in Holmes as expressed in the recent movies and television shows, that keeps us all afloat. It is the Great and Grand game at its greatest and grandest.

What is your favorite Canon story and why?

The Bruce-Partington Plans. I'm not sure why I was initially drawn to this adventure, but I think it is because I have a small side interest in submarines. When I lived and worked in Chicago I made multiple visits to see the German U-Boat, U-505, at the Museum of Scienceand Industry. I've also been to the Submarine Force Museum in Groton, Connecticut and enjoy movies like "Das Boot," "The Hunt for Red October," and "Run Silent, Run Deep." A recently departed friend of mine was an executive officer on a nuclear submarine; we used to spend time together talking subs and he always brought me something from one of his conventions or reunions. My interest in submarines may go all the way back to my childhood, when I saw a submarine while visiting Key West, Florida, or when a childhood friend's older brother served in the Navy aboard a nuclear sub (and could never tell his family where he was). Added to my interest in submarines is the fact that The Bruce-Partington Plans was the BSI investiture for E. W. "Mac" McDiarmid, a founding member of the Norwegian Explorers. I first met Mac when I was in graduate school at Minnesota. We renewed our friendship when I returned as curator of the Collections. I treasure those moments we spent together before he died in 2000, and was delighted when his family gave their approval for naming the new endowed curatorship after him. Finally, there's a bonus in any story that includes Mycroft Holmes. He's another character that interests me.

Is there anything you would like to promote?

As a curator I always have things to promote! First, there is the next Triennial Holmes conference co-sponsored by the Norwegian Explorers of Minnesota, the Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections, and the University of Minnesota Libraries. The conference will be held on August 9-11, 2019. The theme of the conference will be "Dark Places, Wicked Companions, and Strange Experience." I look forward to seeing a lot of Sherlockian friends in attendance. 

And, of course, I want to promote the Collections. We have a number of ways for you to explore and discover what we hold and how it can be used. We've digitized and posted a lot of material in our online repository, the UMedia Archive. You can also explore our archival holdings by browsing and searching our collection guides. The Collections website provides additional information. And you can always search our online catalog for books, periodicals, media, and other materials that have been cataloged in the Collections. Visitors and researchers to the Sherlock Holmes Collections are always welcome!