Erica Boudreau has a good summary of the workshop as taught by Tim Pyatt and Michael Shallcross on her blog, so I will try not to repeat too much here. Of interest to those looking to learn more about e-recs is the Bibliography and the pre-readings, which consisted of several pieces from the SAA Campus Case Studies website. We were asked to read Case 2, “Defining and Formalizing a Procedure for Archiving the Digital Version of the Schedule of Classes at the University of Michigan” by Nancy Deromedi, and Case 13, “On the Development of the University of Michigan Web Archives: Archival Principles and Strategies” by Michael Shallcross, as well as “Guarding the Guards: Archiving the Electronic Records of Hypertext Author Michael Joyce” by Catherine Stollar.

On the first day, the instructors discussed electronic “recordness,” authenticity/trust, the OAIS and PREMIS models, advocacy, and challenges, and reserved time for the participants to break into groups to discuss the three case studies. On the second day, we dove into more practical application of e-records programs, in particular a range of workflows. One of the takeaway messages was simply to focus on doing something, not waiting for some comprehensive solution that can handle every variety of e-record. Seth displayed a Venn diagram he revealed at SAA this year, which separates “fast,” “good,” and “cheap” into three bubbles — each can overlap with one other focus area, but not both. That is, for example, that your workflow can be cheap and good, but not fast; good and fast but not cheap, et cetera.

Seth and Nancy illustrated a multi-step workflow using a checksum creator (example used was MD5sums), Duke DataAccessioner for migration, checksums, as well as plugins for Jhove and Droid, WinDirStat for visual analysis of file contents, and FTKimager for forensics. They also discussed Archivematica for ingest and description, which still seems buggy, and web archiving using tools such as ArchiveIt, the CDL’s Web Archiving Service, and HTTrack. Perhaps the most significant thing I learned was about the use of digital forensics programs like FTKimager, as well as the concept of a forensic write blocker, which essentially prevents files on a disk/USB from being changed during transfer. Digital forensics helps us to see hidden and deleted files, which can help us provide a service to records creators — recovering what was thought lost — and creating a disk image to emulate the original disk environment. Also shared: Peter Chan at Stanford put up a great demo of how to process born digital materials using AccessData FTK on YouTube.  It was helpful to see these tools I have been reading about actually demonstrated.

Our cohort briefly discussed UC Irvine’s “virtual reading room,” which is essentially a way for researchers to access born-digital content in a reading room environment using DSpace, through a combination of an application process and limited user access period. Our rules of use are also posted. I have a lot of thoughts in my mind about how this may change or improve over time as we continue to receive and process born-digital papers and records — when we are doing less arrangement and better summarization/contextualization/description, how can we create a space for researchers to access material with undetermined copyright status? What will the “reading room” look like in the future?

Our digital projects specialist and I attended the workshop and I think we found some potential services and programs that could help us with our born-digital records workflow. Above all, it was helpful to see and hear about the tools being developed and get experienced perspectives on what has been working at Duke and Michigan. I enjoyed the review of familiar concepts as well as demonstrations of unfamiliar tools, and could see myself enrolling in future DAS courses. The certificate program includes an option to test out of the four Foundational courses, at $35 a pop. If I choose to complete the program, it must be done within 2 years, with a comprehensive exam ($100) that must be completed within 5 months after completing the required courses. Some people are cherry-picking from the curriculum, choosing only courses that are the most relevant to their work. I think a DAS certification could help train and employ future digital archivists (or, in my mind, archivists in general — since we’ll all be doing this type of work) and may create a “rising tide lifts all ships” type of situation in our profession. While there is a risk of a certification craze meant for financial gain of the organization, I was grateful to learn from experienced archivists in a structured setting. There’s something to be said for standards in education in our profession. I hope that DAS will raise the standard for (digital) archivists.

My presentation for the interview was an answer to the question, “What key challenges will archivists in academic research libraries face in the next 5 years?” See my response below, which I feel illustrates the core of my professional identity as an archivist:

• Becoming more user-centered
• Managing digital expectations
• Revisiting description
• Revisiting discovery
• Everyone is an archivist
• Represent and document

Ben Goldman of U Wyoming, who wrote an excellent piece in RB&M entitled “Bridging the Gap: Taking Practical Steps Toward Managing Born-Digital Collections in Manuscript Repositories,” talked about basic steps for dealing with electronic records, including network storage, virus checking, format information, generating checksums, and capturing descriptive metadata. He uses Enterprise Checker for virus checking, Duke DataAccessioner to generate checksums, and a Word doc or spreadsheet to track actions taken for individual files. Melissa Salrin of U Illinois, Urbana-Champaign spoke about her use of a program called Firefly to detect social security numbers in files, TreeSize Pro to identify file types, and a process through which she ensures that the files are read-only when moved. She urged the audience to remember to document every step of the transfer process, and that “people use and create files electronically as inefficiently as analog.” Laura Carroll, formerly of Emory, talked about the famous Salman Rushdie digital archives, noting that donor restrictions are what helped shape their workflow for dealing with Rushdie’s born digital material. The material is now available on a secure Fedora repository. Seth Shaw from Duke spoke about DataAccessioner (see previous posts) but mostly spoke eloquently in what promises to be an historic speech about the need to “do something, even if it isn’t perfect.”

After lunch, I attended Session 410: “The Archivists’ Toolkit: Innovative Uses and Collaborations. The session highlighted interesting collaborations and experiments with AT, and the most interesting was by Adrianna Del Collo of the Met, who found a way to convert folder-level inventories into XML for import into AT. Following the session, I was invited last-minute to a meeting of the “Processing Metrics Collaborative,” led by Emily Novak Gustainis of Harvard. The small group included two brief presentations by Emily Walters of NC State and Adrienne Pruitt of the Free Library of Philadelphia, both of whom have experimented with Gustainis’ Processing Metrics Database, which is an exciting tool to help archivists track statistical information about archival processing timing and costs. Walters also mentioned NC State’s new tool called Steady, which allows archivists to take container list spreadsheets and easily convert them into XML stub documents for easy import into AT. Walters used the PMD for tracking supply cost and time tracking, while Pruitt used the database to help with grant applications. Everyone noted that metrics should be used to compare collections, processing levels, and collection needs, taking special care to note that metrics should NOT be used to compare people. The average processing rate at NC State for their architectural material was 4 linear feet per hour, while it was 2 linear feet per hour for folder lists at Princeton (as noted by meeting participant Christie Petersen).

On Saturday morning I woke up early to prepare for my session, Session 503: “Exposing Hidden Collections Through Consortia and Collaboration.” I was honored and proud to chair the session with distinguished speakers Holly Mengel of the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries, Nick Graham of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center, and Sherri Berger of the California Digital Library. The panelists defined and explored the exposure of hidden collections, from local/practical projects to regional/service-based projects. Each spoke about levels of “hidden-ness,” and the decisionmaking process of choosing partners and service recipients. It was a joy to listen to and facilitate presentations by archivists with such inspirational projects.

After my session, I attended Session 605: “Acquiring Organizational Records in a Social Media World: Documentation Strategies in the Facebook Era.” The focus on documenting student groups is very appealing, since documenting student life is one of the greatest challenges for university archivists. Most of the speakers recommended web archiving for twitter and facebook, which were not new ideas to me. However, Jackie Esposito of Penn State suggested a new strategy for documenting student organizations, which focuses on capture/recapture of social media sites and direct conversations with student groups, including the requirement that every group have a student archivist or historian. Jackie taught an “Archives 101″ class to these students during the week after 7 pm early in the fall, and made sure to follow up with student groups before graduation.

After lunch, I went to Session 702: “Return on Investment: Metadata, Metrics, and Management.” All I can say about the session is…wow. Joyce Chapman of TRLN (formerly an NC State Library Fellow) spoke about her research into ROI (return on investment) for manual metadata enhancement and a project to understand researcher expectations of finding aids. The first project addressed the challenge of measuring value in a nonprofit (which cannot measure value via sales like for-profit organizations) through A/B testing of enhancements made to photographic metadata by cataloging staff. Her testing found that page views for enhanced metadata records were quadruple those of unenhanced records, a staggering statistic. Web analytics found that 28% of search strings for their photographs included names, which were only added to enhanced records. In terms of cataloger time, their goal was 5 minutes per image but the average was 7 minutes of metadata work per image. Her project documentation is available online. In her other study, she did a study of discovery success within finding aids by academic researchers using behavior, perception, and rank information. In order from most to least useful for researchers were: collection inventory, abstract, subjects, scope and contents, and biography/history. The abstract was looked at first in 60% of user tests. Users did not know the difference between abstract and scope and contents notes; in fact, 64% of users did not even read the scope at all after reading the abstract! Researchers explained that their reason for ignoring the biography/history note was a lack of trust in the information, since biographies/histories do not tend to include footnotes and the notes are impossible to cite.

Emily Novak Gustainis from Harvard talked about her processing metrics database, as mentioned in the paragraph about the “Processing Metrics Collaborative” session. Her reasoning behind metrics was simple: it is hard to change something until you know what you are doing. Her database tracks 38 aspects of archival processing, including timing and processing levels. She repeated that you cannot compare people, only collections; however, an employee report showed that a permanent processing archivist was spending only 20% of his time processing, so her team was able to use this information to better leverage staff responsibilities to respond to this information.

Adrian Turner from the California Digital Library talked about the Uncovering California Environmental Collections (UCEC) project, a CLIR-funded grant project to help process environmental collections across the state. While metrics were not built into the project, the group thought that it would be beneficial for the project. In another project, the UC Next Generation Technical Services initiative found 71000 feet in backlogs, and developed tactics for collection-level records in EAD and Archivists’ Toolkit using minimal processing techniques. Through info gathering in a Google doc spreadsheet, they found no discernable difference between date ranges, personal papers, and record groups processed through their project. They found processing rates of 1 linear foot per hour for series level arrangement and description and 4-6 linear feet per hour for folder level arrangement and description. He recommended formally incorporating metrics into project plans and creating a shared methodology for processing levels.

I had to head out for Midway before Q&A started to get on the train in time for my return flight, which thankfully wasn’t canceled from Hurricane Irene. As the train passed through Chicago, I found myself thinking about the energizing and inspiring the projects, tools, and theory that comes from attending SAA…and how much I look forward to SAA 2012.

(Cross posted to ZSR Professional Development blog.)

On Thursday, I attended Session 109: “Engaged! Innovative Engagement and Outreach and Its Assessment.” The session was based on responses to the 2010 ARL survey on special collections (SPEC Kit 317), which found that 90% of special collections librarians are doing ongoing events, instruction sessions, and exhibits. The speakers were interested in how to assess the success of these efforts. Genya O’Meara from NC State cited Michelle McCoy’s article entitled “The Manuscript as Question: Teaching Primary Sources in the Archives — The China Missions Project,” published in C&RL in 2010, suggesting that we have a need for standard metrics for assessment of our outreach work as archivists. Steve MacLeod of UC Irvine explored his work with the Humanities Core Course program, which teaches writing skills in 3 quarters, and how he helped design course sessions with faculty to smoothly incorporate archives instruction into humanities instruction. Basic learning outcomes included the ability to answer two questions: what is a primary source? and what is the different between a first and primary source? He also created a LibGuide for the course and helped subject specialist reference/instruction librarians add primary source resources into their LibGuides. There were over 45 sections, whereby he and his colleagues taught over 1000 students. He suggested that the learning outcomes can help us know when our students “get it.” Florence Turcotte from UF discussed an archives internship program where students got course credit at UF for writing biographical notes and doing basic archival processing. I stepped out of the session in time to catch the riveting tail-end of Session 105: “Pay It Forward: Interns, Volunteers, and the Development of New Archivists and the Archives Profession,” just as Lance Stuchell from the Henry Ford started speaking about the ethics of unpaid intern work. He suggested that paid work is a moral and dignity issue and that unpaid work is not equal to professional work without pay.

After lunch, I headed over to Session 204: “Rights, Risk, and Reality: Beyond ‘Undue Diligence’ in Rights Analysis for Digitization.” I took away a few important points, including “be respectful, not afraid,” that archivists should form communities of practice where we persuade lawyers through peer practice such as the TRLN guidelines and the freshly-endorsed SAA standard Well-intentioned practice document. The speakers called for risk assessment over strict compliance, as well as encouraging the fair use defense and maintaining a liberal take-down policy for any challenges to unpublished material placed online. Perhaps most importantly, Merrilee Proffitt reminded us that no special collections library has been successfully sued for copyright infringement by posting unpublished archival material online for educational use. After looking around the Exhibit Hall, I met a former mentor for dinner and went to the UCLA MLIS alumni party, where I was inspired by colleagues and faculty to list some presentation ideas on a napkin. Ideas for next year (theme: crossing boundaries/borders) included US/Mexico archivist relations; water rights such as the Hoover Dam, Rio Grande, Mulholland, etc; community based archives (my area of interest); and repatriation of Native American material. Lots of great ideas floated around…

(Cross posted at ZSR Professional Development blog.)

The workshop program started with Glynn Edwards of Stanford and Gretchen Gueguen of UVa, who discussed collection development of born-digital records. The speakers suggested that both collection development policies and donor agreements should have clear language about born-digital material, including asking donors to contribute metadata to electronic records from his/her collection. The challenge, they note, is in collaboratively developing sound guidelines and policies to help archivists/curators make decisions about what to acquire. A group discussion about talking to donors about their personal digital lives and creating a “digital will,” both of which help provide important information about an individual’s work, communication, and history of using technologies.

Kevin Glick and Mark Matienzo from Yale and Seth Shaw from Duke discussed accessioning, the process through which a repository gains control over records and gathers information that informs other functions in the archival workflow. While many of the procedures for accessioning born-digital material is the same for analog material, the speakers distinguished accessioning the records from accessioning the media themselves (ie the Word document versus the floppy disk on which it is saved). Mark described his process of “re-accessioning” material through a forensic (or bit-level) disk imaging process, whereby he write-protected accessioned files to protect data from manipulation. He used FTK imager to create a media log with unique identifiers and physical/logical characteristics of the media, followed by BagIt to create packages with high level info about accessions. Seth discussed Duke’s DataAccessioner program, which he created as an easy way for archivists to migrate and identify data from disks. A group discussion asked: what level of control is necessary for collections containing electronic records at your institution? and, what are the most common barriers to accessioning electronic records, and how would they show up? Our table agreed that barriers include staffing (skills and time); being able to read media; software AND hardware; storage limits; and greater need for students/interns.

Simon Wilson from Hull, Peter Chan from Stanford, and Gabriela Redwine from the Harry Ransom Center at UT Austin discussed arrangement and description. They questioned whether archivists can appraise digital material without knowing content therein, which conflicts with the high-level, minimal processing emphasized in our field in the past few years. Another major issue is with volume: space is cheap, but does that mean archivists shouldn’t appraise? It isn’t practical to describe every item, but how will archivists know what is sensitive or restricted? Hypatia provides an easy-to-use interface that allows drag-and-drop for easy intellectual organization of e-records, as well as the ability to add rights and permissions information. Peter Chan described a complex method for using a combination of AccessData FTK in combination with TransitSolution and Oxygen to compare checksums, find duplicate records, and do a “pattern search” for sensitive terms and numbers (such as social security numbers). Gabi Redwine explored her work with a hybrid collection (analog and digital records) where she learned that descriptive standards should be a learning process for staff, not students or volunteers. Her finding aids for the collection included hyperlinks to electronic content and she advocated for disk imaging. The group discussion following this session was intense! The hotbed topic was: are professional skills of appraisal, arrangement, description still relevant for born digital materials? Our group agreed that appraisal and description remain important; however, we were strongly divided about whether archivists will need to contribute to arrangement of e-records. I believe that arrangement becomes less important as things become more searchable, as argued in David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous. Arrangement emerged before the digital realm as a way for archivists and librarians to contextualize and organize material based on topics/subjects; however, with better description, users can create their own ways of organizing e-records!

Finally, Gretchen Gueguen (UVa) and Erin O’Meara of UNC Chapel Hill discussed discovery and access. Our goals as archivists include to preserve original format and order as much as possible, and apply restrictions as necessary, while balancing this with our mission to make things accessible and available. Gretchen suggested the idea of Google Books’ “snippet” idea as a way to provide access without compromising privacy or restrictions on sensitive material. Her models for access for digital material include: in-person versus not; authenticated versus not; physical versus online access; and dynamic versus static. Erin described her use of Curator’s Workbenchwithin FOXML and Solr to control access permissions and assign restrictions and roles to e-records. Another group discussion included chewy scenarios for dealing with born-digital materials; my table had to consider: “you are at a large public academic research library; director brings several CDROMs, Zip disks and floppy disks of famous (secretive) professor from campus; they are backup files created over the years; office has more paper files; professor and his laptop are missing; no one can give further details on files; write 1 page plan for preserving/describing files; working institutional repository exists.” With no donor agreement and an understanding that the faculty member was very private, we couldn’t go ahead with full access of the material.

At the end of the day, I left with a much better grasp of how I see myself as an archivist dealing with born-digital material (primarily those on optical and disk media). It seems that item-level description works best for born-digital while aggregate description works best for analog materials. Digital records are dealt with best through collaboratively-created policies and procedures for acquiring, processing, and describing them. Great stuff!

Here is the suggested reading list to help participants prepare for the course:

• Charlesworth, Andrew. “Digital Lives: Legal & Ethical Issues.” britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/files/digital-lives-legal-ethical.pdf(Digital Lives Research Paper, 2009)
• Forstrom, Michael. “Managing Electronic Records in Manuscript Collections: A Case Study from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.” American Archivist 72, 2 (Fall/Winter 2009): 460-477.
• Hilton, Christopher and Dave Thompson, “Collecting Born-Digital Archives at the Wellcome Library,” Ariadne 50 (January 2007), http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue50/hilton-thompson/ (accessed 13 June 2011).
• John, Jeremy L. “Adapting Existing Technologies for Digitally Archiving Personal Lives: Digital Forensics, Ancestral Computing, and Evolutionary Perspectives and Tools” (2008).
• John, Jeremy L., et al.  Synthesis for the Digital Lives research project. Version 0.2 (2010).
• Kirschenbaum, Ovenden, and Redwine. Digital Forensics and Born-Digital Content in Cultural Heritage Collections (CLIR 2010). Familiarize yourself.
• Paradigm project, Workbook on Digital Private Papers, 2005-7. Familiarize yourself.
• Stollar Peters, Catherine. “When Not All Papers Are Paper: A Case Study in Digital Archivy.” Provenance XXIV (2006): 23-35. https://pacer.ischool.utexas.edu/bitstream/2081/2226/1/023-035.pdf
• Tufts University Digital Collections and Archives, “TAPER: Tufts Accessioning Program for Electronic Records.”  http://sites.tufts.edu/dca/about-us/research-initiatives/taper-tufts-accessioning-program-for-electronic-records/ (accessed 9 August 2011).

(Cross posted to ZSR Professional Development blog.)

*Update: all of the workshop presentations have been posted to the born digital archives blog.

Late last year, Nick Graham of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center was contacted by LeRae Umfleet of NC C2C about teaching a few regional workshops about planning digitization projects. The workshops were created as a way to teach smaller archives, libraries, and museums about planning, implementing, and sustaining digitization efforts. I volunteered to help with the workshops, which were held in January 2011 in Hickory as well as this past Monday in Wilson.

The workshops were promoted through multiple listservs and were open to staff, board members, and volunteers across the state. Each workshop cost $10 and included lunch for participants. Many of the participants reminded me of the folks at the workshops for Preserving Forsyth’s Past. The crowd was enthusiastic and curious, asking lots of questions and taking notes. Nick Graham and Maggie Dickson covered project preparation, metadata, and the NC Digital Heritage Center (and how to get involved); I discussed the project process and digital production as well as free resources for digital publishing; and Lisa Gregory from the State Archives discussed metadata and digital preservation.

I must confess that the information was so helpful, I found myself taking notes! When Nick stepped up to describe the efforts of the Digital Heritage Center, which at this time is digitizing and hosting materials from across the state at no cost, I learned that they will be seeking nominations for North Carolina historical newspapers to digitize in the near future, and that they are also interested in accepting digitized video formats. Lisa also introduced the group to NC PMDO, Preservation Metadata for Digital Objects, which includes a free preservation metadata tool. It is always a joy to help educate repositories across the state in digitization standards and processes!

While many of my colleagues were in Philadelphia for ACRL, I traveled east to the coast of North Carolina for the joint conference of the Society of North Carolina Archivists and the South Carolina Archival Association in Morehead City.

After arriving on Wednesday around dinnertime with my carpooling partner Katie (Archivist and Special Collections Librarian at Elon), we met up with Gretchen (Digital Initiatives Librarian at ECU) for dinner at a seaside restaurant and discussion about digital projects and, of course, seafood.

On Thursday, the conference kicked off with an opening plenary from two unique scholars: David Moore of the NC Maritime Museum talked about artist renditions of Blackbeard, Stede Bonnet, and other pirates, as well as archival research that helped contextualize these works; Ralph Wilbanks of the National Underwater and Marine Agency detailed his team’s discovery of the H.L. Hunley submarine, including the Civil War-era men trapped inside.

Session 1 on Thursday, succinctly titled “Digital Initiatives,” highlighted important work being done at the Avery Center for African American Research at the College of Charleston, UNC Charlotte, and ECU. Amanda Ross and Jessica Farrell from the College of Charleston described the challenges and successes of digitization of material culture, namely slave artifacts and African artwork in their collections. Of primary importance was the maintenance of color and shape fidelity of 3-D objects, which they dealt with economically with 2 flourescent lights with clamps, a Nikon D80 with a 18-200 mm lens by Quantaray (although they recommend a macro lens), a tripod, and a $50 roll of heavy white paper. Their makeshift lab and Dublin Core metadata project resulted in the Avery Artifact Collection within the Lowcountry Digital Library. Kristy Dixon and Katie McCormick from UNC Charlotte spoke carefully about the need for strategic thinking and collaboration at a broad level for special collections and archives today, in particular creating partnerships with systems staff and technical services staff. They noted that with the reorganization of their library, 6 technical services librarians/staff were added to their department of special collections!

Finally, Mark Custer and Jennifer Joyner from ECU explored the future of archival description with a discussion about ECU’s implementation of EAC-CFP, essentially authority records for creators of archival materials. Mark found inspiration from SNAC, the Social Networks and Archival Context Project (a project of UVa and the California Digital Library) to incorporate and create names for their archival collections. Mark used Google Refine‘s cluster and edit feature to pull all their EAD files into one file, grabbed URLs through VIAF and WorldCat identities, and hope to share their authority records with SNAC. Mark clarified the project, saying:

Firstly, we are not partnered with anyone involved in the excellent SNAC project. Instead, we decided to undertake a smaller, SNAC-like project here at ECU (i.e., we mined our EAD data in order to create EAC records). To accomplish this, I wrote an XSLT stylesheet to extract and clean up our local data. Only after working through that step did we then import this data into Google Refine. With Refine, we did a number of things, but the two things discussed in our presentation were: 1) cluster and edit our names with the well-established, advanced algorithms provided in that product 2) grab more data from databases like WorldCat Identities and VIAF without doing any extra scripting work outside of Google Refine.

Secondly, we haven’t enhanced our finding aid interface at all at this point. In fact, we’ve only put in a few weeks’ worth of work into the project so far, so none of our work is represented online yet. The HTML views of the Frances Renfrow Doak EAC record that we demonstrated were created by an XSLT stylesheet authored by Brian Tingle at the California Digital Library. He has graciously provided some of the tools that the SNAC project is using online at: https://bitbucket.org/btingle/cpf2html/.

Lastly, these authority records have stayed with us; mostly because, at this point, they’re unfinished (e.g., we still need to finish that clustering step within Refine, which requires a bit of extra work). But the ultimate goal, of course, is to share this data as widely as possible. Toward that end, I tend to think that we also need to be curating this data as collaboratively as possible.

The final session of the day was the SNCA Business Meeting, where I gave my report as the Archives Week Chair. That evening, a reception was held to celebrate the award winners for SNCA and give conference attendees the opportunity to participate in a behind-the-scenes tour of the NC Maritime Museum. Lots of fun ensued during the pirate-themed tours and I almost had enough energy to go to karaoke with some other young archivists.

On Friday, I moderated the session entitled “Statewide Digital Library Projects,” with speakers Nick Graham from the NC Digital Heritage Center and Kate Boyd from the SC Digital Library. The session highlighted interesting parallels and differences between the two statewide initiatives. Kate Boyd explained that the SCDL is a multisite project nested in multiple universities with distributed “buckets” for description and digitization. Their project uses a multi-host version of CONTENTdm, with some projects hosted and branded specifically to certain regions and institutions. Users can browse by county, institution, and date, and the site includes teacher-created lesson plans. The “About” section includes scanning and metadata guidelines; Kate mentioned that the update to CONTENTdm 6 would help with zoom and expand/reduce views of their digital objects. Nick Graham gave a brief background on the formation of the NCDHC, including NC ECHO and its survey and digitization guidelines. He explained that the NCDHC has minimal selection criteria: simply have no copyright/privacy concerns and a title. The NCDHC displays its digital objects through one instance of CONTENTdm. Both programs are supported by a mix of institutional and government funding/support, and both speakers emphasized the value of word of mouth marketing and shared branding for better collaborative efforts.

Later that morning, I attended a session regarding “Collaboration in Records Management.” Jennifer Neal of the Catholic Diocese of Charleston Archives gave an interesting presentation about the creation of a records management policy for her institution. Among the many reasons to begin an RM program, Jennifer noted that it was likely the legal reasons that were most important, both federal and state (and in her case, organizational rules). She recommended a pilot RM program with an enthusiastic department, as well as a friendly department liaison with organizational tendencies. Jennifer came up with “RM Fridays” as a pre-determined method for making time to sort, shred, organize, and inventory the materials for her pilot department. Her metrics were stunning: 135 record cartons were destroyed and 245 were organized and sent off site. Kelly Eubank from the NC State Archives explained how the state archives uses ArchiveIt to harvest social media sites and websites of government agencies and officials. She then explored, briefly, their use of BagIt to validate GIS geospatial files as part of their GeoMAPP project.

It was great to meet and network with archival professionals from both Carolinas and learn about some of the innovative and creative projects happening in their institutions. Right now I am thinking about EAC, collaboration with tech services, CONTENTdm, and records management.

Last week, our long-time coordinator of Baptist archives retired. At the same time, our department head asked each of us to put on our thinking caps and consider ways to restructure our team to better reflect our priorities.

Knowing that an opportunity to discuss restructuring doesn’t come very often, I began looking critically at my current position description. As processing archivist and digital projects manager, I knew that my position was a combination of two important jobs suggested by an archival consultant months before I arrived. These two jobs were meshed into a project archivist position. Over the next year, it became more clear that my position seemed to schizophrenically address the same priority: to create access to archival materials. The consultant’s report suggested a processing archivist and a digital projects manager as two separate roles.

I recognized that the consultant’s suggestions were appropriate. I spoke with my intern-turned-associate who recently finished library school, and she seemed to be a perfect fit for a position that we started calling “access archivist,” essentially taking on the role of coordinating processing, accessioning, and helping select collections for digitization. I began to think that I could serve the role of digital projects archivist…and brought the idea to the department head.

Here is (the second draft, after suggestions from my supervisor) what I created. The role is based on job descriptions for positions including “digital projects archivist,” “digital archivist,” and “digital projects librarian.”

POSITION SUMMARY:

The Digital Projects Archivist will coordinate a program for digitization of analog and curation of born-digital archival resources; supervise metadata creation, authority control, quality control, and workflow for digitization projects involving archival and manuscript materials; and participate in digital preservation efforts. S/he will create and improve online finding aids and lead the department to more effective and robust implementation of descriptive tools and standards. S/he will process archival and manuscript collections, focusing in particular on those collections that are un- or under processed and are promising candidates for digital projects. The Digital Projects Archivist is responsible for maintaining equipment used for digitization. S/he will help coordinate discovery tools and interfaces for digital archival materials and collections; supervise student assistants; and provide user instruction for students, faculty, and other researchers. This is a twelve-month Visiting Assistant Librarian appointment, reporting to the Director of Special Collections and University Archives.

QUALIFICATIONS:

Education, Experience, and Training

Master’s degree in Library Science; at least two years working in an academic or special collections library with an emphasis in archival processing and description and/or digital projects. An equivalent combination of education and experience may be accepted.

Knowledge, Skills, Ability

• Expert knowledge of archival description software, such as Archivists’ Toolkit.
• Knowledge of recent changes in archival practice, particularly minimal processing; coupled with the judgment and research skills to proceed beyond minimal processing when a collection merits it.
• Experience with digital projects, preferably in a coordinating role.
• Ability to manage a digital production lab, including a variety of scanners, scanning software, scanning techniques and best practices for a wide range of formats. High level of organization and foresight in managing multiple projects executed by multiple individuals; coupled with the ability to communicate the organization and workflow to others so that they understand rationales.
• Attentiveness to good order and security of originals chosen for digital projects.
• Understanding of metadata standards and description of digital collections including Dublin Core, MODS, METS, XML/XSL, EAD, MARC, LCSH, AAT, and other traditional and non-traditional schemas.
• Working knowledge of XML, XSLT, databases, web design, and digital asset management systems.
• Familiarity with standards and best practices for digital collections and digital preservation.
• Understanding of best practices for rights management, copyright, and associated concepts related to digitization.
• Excellent interpersonal and oral and written communication skills.
• Ability to work effectively, both independently and collaboratively, within a collegial environment.
• Ability to succeed as Library Faculty in an academic environment.
• Evidence of ability to represent Wake Forest University within the University and to external audiences at state, regional, and national levels.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:

• Advance the processes by which the department expands its intellectual control over its holdings through the skilled use of archival management software (such as Archivists’ Toolkit) and migration of this information to future tools. The Digital Project Archivist will invest at least a third of his/her time in addressing the department’s archival backlog and inadequate finding aids.
• Coordinate a digital projects advisory group and program for the creation, access, and preservation of digital archival and manuscript collections.
• Coordinate workflow design, digital production, and quality control for digital projects in collaboration with a variety of programming and digital project-oriented librarians and staff, including the Preservation Librarian, Web Services Librarian, Digital Production Coordinator, and Access Archivist.
• Participate in the coordination of the department’s digital production lab, including troubleshooting for scanning equipment and communicating maintenance concerns with the technology group within the Research, Instruction, and Technology Services team.
• Supervise creation and application of metadata for digital collections, including thesauri and descriptive schemas.
• Manage digital assets created from digitized and born-digital archival collections through collaboration with digital projects staff as well as shared coordination of the library’s institutional repository (DSpace).
• Participate in supervision of archival processing and description according to DACS, including creation of EAD XML and MARC records for finding aids.
• Ensure compliance with grant-funded digital projects and assist Department of Special Collections and Archives with grant proposals and grant-funded project workflows.
• Help lead user interface changes for finding aids and digital collections in collaboration with the Department of Special Collections and Archives and the Research, Instruction, and Technology Services team.
• Provide reference service and research assistance in Special Collections. Provide library instruction in Special Collections and in general collection for subject areas of expertise.
• Participate in outreach, marketing, assessment, and other library initiatives. Contribute cooperatively to library initiatives. Participate in team and library-wide activities. Serve on library committees.
• Participate in local, regional, or national professional organizations; enrich professional experience by attending conferences and continuing education opportunities.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Essentially, my goal is to move forward with the ongoing process of creating and formalizing digitization policies and processes. Processing and knowing about the scanning equipment were added in the second draft, though I feel that these could be full time positions on their own. Now I wait for feedback/approval from library administration. Have you ever written your own job description?

The problems with MARCXML exported from AT are few but significant. My colleague Mark Custer at ECU recently posted to the AT user group listserv a question about the fact that AT does not currently allow subfields for subject headings, so the MARC from AT is missing the subfield indicators. I set up a meeting with a cataloger at my library to help me look at the MARCXML files being exported from AT to see what her thoughts were about whether the records could be considered complete. We took a look at MARC for archival material already on WorldCat and compared that to what we exported from AT. She illustrated what she saw as the issues that would prevent proper sharing of the MARC with our local catalog and WorldCat:

• Missing fixed fields including Ctrl, Desc, and Date (if no date range was included in the finding aid)
• Missing subject heading subfield delimiters
• 650 used instead of 600 field in some instances
• Missing indicators for 245 (and 545, optional)
• Missing cataloging source for 049 and 040

Because the MARC exported from AT is in MARCXML format and our catalogers work with the MRC format, we used MARCedit to convert the record from MARCXML to MRC. Once these missing and erroneous elements were fixed using MARCedit, we were ready to test import the record. Our library’s account with OCLC Connexion accepts imported records in DAT format, so we saved the MRC file as a DAT file. We tried uploading to Connexion using local bibliographic import and were successful. We determined that it would probably be easier to edit the MARC directly in Connexion, so we will do that in the future. The cataloger and I decided to upload the file to WorldCat as an official record, which worked, as well as to our local catalog, which also worked!

One issue for my library is that our finding aids are missing subject terms and authority work that most catalogers would require for submission to WorldCat. We have started incorporating this cataloger into our processing workflow and introduced her to the Names and Subjects modules in AT so that she can finalize subject headings and names that we assign. We can also consider an automated batch update for all our exported MARCXML to include the edits listed above, incorporating help from our technology team and their knowledge of FTP and scripting. In the meantime, we will be submitting our MARC one at a time since our finding aids are incomplete.

Here’s a recap of our tentative workflow, for your information:

• Open MARCedit, then Tools
• Choose MARCXML file as input file
• Tell program output file name (copy and paste input file info; change ending to .mrc)
• Select MARC21XML to MARC plus Translate to MARC8
• Select Execute
• Open OCLC Connexion
• Import records; browse to .mrc file
• Edit directly in OCLC Connexion
• Update fixed fields including Ctrl, Desc, and Date
• Change 650 to 600 when necessary
• Add subfield delimiters to subject headings
• Add indicators to 545, 245 as needed
• Add cataloging source to 040 and 049
• Save and validate
• Login to OCLC, select ActionHoldingsUpdateHolding to load directly to WorldCat

Thoughts, comments, ideas, and suggestions are gratefully welcomed! I am really curious to know how others approach this issue.

I brought this training manual with me to North Carolina, and with Kelley’s permission I incorporated her work with the standards used at my institution, DACS, and the Archivist’s Toolkit User Manual. The result? The Archival Processing Guide for Staff, Students, and Volunteers. I also include the chapters about processing and the over-the-shoulder look at processing from Michael J. Fox and Peter L. Wilkerson’s Introduction to Archives, now available free online.

The guide and its rules are constantly under review but I think this would be a great starting resource for any archives or special collections repository looking for some standards for training staff, students, and volunteers about the basics of archival processing. Comments are welcome!

This has been my favorite SAA of the three I have attended, mostly because I felt like I had a purpose and specific topics to explore there. The TwapperKeeper archive for #saa10 is available and includes a ton of great resources. I also got the chance to have my curriculum vitae reviewed at the Career Center not once, but twice! I loved every moment of being in DC and will definitely be attending more of the receptions/socials next time!

Tuesday, August 10 was the Research Forum, of which I was a part as a poster presenter. My poster featured the LSTA outreach grant given to my library and the local public library and explored outreach and instruction to these “citizen archivists.” I got a lot of encouraging feedback and questions about our project, including an introduction to the California Digital Library’s hosted instances of Archivist’s Toolkit and Archon, which they use for smaller repositories in the state to post their finding aids.

Wednesday, August 11 consisted primarily of round table meetings, including the highly-anticipated meeting of the Archivists Toolkit/Archon Round Table. The development of ArchivesSpace, the next generation archives management tool to replace AT and Archon, was discussed. Development of the tool is planned to begin in early 2011. Jackie Dooley from OCLC announced that results from a survey of academic and research libraries’ special collections departments will be released. A few interesting findings:

• Of the 275 institutions surveyed, about 1/3 use Archivist’s Toolkit; 11% use Archon
• 70% have used EAD for their finding aids
• About 75% use word processing software for their finding aids
• Less than 50% of institutions’ finding aids are online

A handful of brief presentations from AT users followed, including Nancy Enneking from the Getty. Nancy demonstrated the use of reports in AT for creating useful statistics to demonstrate processing, accessioning, and other features of staff work with special collections. She mentioned that AT can be linked to Access with MySQL for another way to work with statistics in AT. Corey Nimer from BYU discussed the use of plug-ins to supplement AT, which I have not yet used and hope to implement.

Perhaps more interestingly, Marissa Hudspeth from the Rockefeller and Sibyl Shaefer from the University of Vermont introduced their development of a reference module in AT, which would allow patron registration, use tracking, duplication requests, personal user accounts, et cetera. Although there is much debate in the archives community about whether this is a good use of AT (since it was originally designed for description/content management of archives), parts of the module should be released in Fall 2010. They said they’d post a formal announcement on the ATUG listserv soon.

On Thursday, August 12, sessions began bright and early. I started the day with Session 102: “Structured Data Is Essential for Effective Archival Description and Discovery: True or False?” Overall summary: usability studies, tabbed finding aids, and photos in finding aids are great! While the panel concluded that structured data is not essential for archival description and discovery due to search tools, Noah Huffman from Duke demonstrated how incorporating more EAD into MARC as part of their library’s discovery layer resulted in increased discovery of archival materials.

Session 201 included a panel of law professors and copyright experts, who gave an update on intellectual property legislation. Peter Jaszi introduced the best practice and fair use project at the Center for Social Media, a 5-year effort to analyze best practice for fair use. Their guidelines for documentary filmmakers could be used as an example for research libraries. In addition, the organization also created a statement of best practices for fair use of dance materials, hosted at the Dance Heritage Center. Mr. Jaszi argued that Section 1201 does not equal copyright, but what he called “para-copyright law” that can be maneuvered around by cultural heritage institutions for fair use. I was also introduced to Peter Hirtle’s book about copyright (and a free download) entitled Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for Digitization for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, which I have started to read.

I wandered out of Session 201 into Session 209, “Archivist or Educator? Meet Your Institution’s Goals by Being Both,” which featured archivists who teach. The speakers emphasized the study of how students learn as the core of becoming a good teacher. One recommendation included attending a history or social sciences course in order to see how faculty/teachers teach and how students respond. I was inspired to consider faculty themes, focuses, and specialties when thinking about how to reach out to students.

Around 5:30 pm, the Exhibit Hall opened along with the presentation of the graduate student poster session. I always enjoy seeing the work of emerging scholars in the archival field, and this year was no different. One poster featured the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries in a CLIR-funded project to process hidden collections in the Philadelphia region — not those within larger repositories, but within smaller repositories without the resources or means to process and make available their materials. The graduate student who created the poster served as a processor, traveling to local repositories and communicating her progress and plan to a project manager. This is an exciting concept, since outreach grants tend to focus on digitization or instruction, not the act of physically processing the archival materials or creating finding aids.

On Friday, August 13, I started the morning with Session 308, “Making Digital Archives a Pleasure to Use,” which ended up focusing on user-centered design. User studies at the National Archives and WGBH Boston found that users preferred annotation tools, faceted searching, and filtered searching. Emphasis was placed on an iterative approach to design: prototype, feedback, refinement.

I headed afterward to Session 410, “Beyond the Ivory Tower: Archival Collaboration, Community Partnerships, and Access Issues in Building Women’s Collections.” The panel, while focused on women’s collections, explored collaborative projects in a universally applicable way. L. Rebecca Johnson Melvin from the University of Delaware described the library’s oral history project to record Afra-Latina experiences in Delaware. They found the Library of Congress’ Veterans’ History Project documentation useful for the creation of their project in order to reach out to the Hispanic community of Delaware. T-Kay Sangwand from the University of Texas, Austin, described how the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives were processed and digitized, then stored at UCLA. Ms. Sangwand suggested that successful collaborations build trust and transparency, articulate expectations from both sides, include stakeholders from diverse groups, and integrate the community into the preservation process. One speaker noted that collaborative projects are “a lot like donor relations” in the sense that you have to incorporate trust, communications, and contracts in order to create a mutually-beneficial result.

On Saturday, August 14, I sat in on Session 502, “Not on Google? It Doesn’t Exist,” which focused on search engine optimization and findability of archival materials. One thing to remember: Java is evil for cultural heritage because it cannot be searched. The session was a bit introductory in nature, but I did learn about a new resource called Linkypedia, which shows how Wikipedia and social media interact with cultural heritage websites.

Then I headed to Session 601, “Balancing Public Services with Technical Services in the Age of Basic Processing,” which featured the use of More Product, Less Process, aka “basic processing,” in order to best serve patrons. After a few minutes I decided to head over to Session 604, “Bibliographic Control of Archival Materials.” The release of RDA and the RDA Toolkit (available free until August 30) has opened up the bibliographic control world to the archival world in new ways. While much of the discussion was outside of my area of knowledge (much was discussed about MARC fields), I learned that even places like Harvard have issues with cross-referencing different types of resources that use different descriptive schemas.

My last session at SAA was 705, “The Real Reference Revolution,” which was an engaging exploration of reference approaches for archivists. Multiple institutions use Google Calendar for student hours, research appointments, and special hours. One panelist suggested having a blog where students could describe their work experience. Rachel Donahue described what she called “proactive reference tools” such as Zotero groups to add new materials from your collection and share those with interested researchers, and Google Feedburner.

It was a whirlwind experience and I left feeling invigorated and ready to tackle new challenges and ideas. Whew!

Note: this post is duplicated at http://cloud.lib.wfu.edu/blog/pd/.

After completing my project as a 2009 Emerging Leader (updating the wiki and resources of the Joint Committee on Archives, Libraries, and Museums, also known as CALM) I was nominated to join the Emerging Leaders subcommittee, which is a big reason why I participated in ALA Annual 2010.

On Friday, June 25, I attended the 2010 Emerging Leader poster session, which included excellent reports from this year’s EL cohort. Final projects have been posted to ALAConnect. The 2010 EL group assigned to CALM created a podcast that included an interview with the Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero. After the poster session, I joined the hush of librarians that waited patiently for the Exhibit Hall to open.

On Saturday, June 26, a session entitled “Developing a Sustainable Digitization Workflow” was canceled, so I wandered over to the professional poster sessions and discovered a relevant and interesting poster by Melanie Griffin and Barbara Lewis of the University of South Florida’s Special & Digital Collections department. Entitled “Transforming Special Collections: A (Lib) Guide to Innovation,” the poster detailed the department’s creative use of LibGuides to create special collections guides that unify digital objects and EAD into one interactive interface. Here is an example of a guide to graphic arts materials, with a specific collection tab selected. Their MARC (via Fedora) and EAD (via Archon) is displayed in LibGuide boxes using script created by their systems librarian. Perhaps the most interesting result of the experimental project is that statistics show higher hits to collections that were displayed as LibGuides. I am in touch with Melanie and Barbara, who continue their project and are working to create a new stylesheet for their EAD as well.

After lunch, I attended the Emerging Leaders summit, which was a discussion led by current and past Emerging Leaders to reflect on the process and experience of the EL program. I gathered feedback to bring to the EL subcommittee meeting. On Sunday, June 27, I participated in the EL subcommittee meeting (my first experience with ALA committee work). We discussed the EL mentor experience and project development, as well as assessment and managing expectations from both the EL and mentor/sponsor perspective.

After lunch with Atlas Systems regarding the Aeon archives management program, I attended the LITA Top Tech Trends forum. This was my first time at TTT, which Erik explores in greater detail in an earlier post. Cindi Trainor brought up a topic that I thought I would hear only at an archivists’ gathering: after declaring the end of the era of physical copy scarcity, she asked “what will the future scarce commodities be” in libraries. Of course, my ears heard “what will future special collections and archives be?” For the first time, I started thinking that as an archivist, I should be part of LITA.

“The North Carolina Digital Heritage Center is a statewide digitization and digital publishing program housed in the North Carolina Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Digital Heritage Center works with cultural heritage institutions across North Carolina to digitize and publish historic materials online. Through its free or low-cost digitization and online hosting services, the Digital Heritage Center provides libraries, archives, museums, historic sites, and other cultural heritage institutions with the opportunity to publicize and share their rare and unique collections online. The Center operates in conjunction with the State Library of North Carolina’s NC ECHO (North Carolina Exploring Cultural Heritage Online) project. It is supported by the State Library of North Carolina with funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act.”

Some of you who are familiar with North Carolina may wonder, “what happened to NC ECHO?” Based on discussions with colleagues across the state, it looks as though NC ECHO no longer exists as it originated*. (*Since I am relatively new to the state as a librarchivist, I am still unclear about the original purpose of the NC ECHO Project. Two of the largest deliverables from NC ECHO include its survey and institutional directory and its LSTA digitization grant funding program.) The preservation and emergency response focus of NC ECHO has become NC Connecting to Collections and NC SHRAB’s Traveling Archivist program, as well as possible regional emergency response networks like MACREN. The digitization planning and project funding aspect of NC ECHO appears to have joined with UNC Chapel Hill to form the NC Digital Heritage Center.

In previous posts, I have been excited about this Digital Heritage Center being North Carolina’s version of the California Digital Library’s Calisphere. I originally thought that the CDL was a statewide initiative of the state library, but recently realized that it is, like the NCDHC, an initiative of a university system. The CDL is not a resource provided by the state library of California. It is a project of the University of California system. This is what the digital collections portal of the California State Library looks like; this is what the State Library of North Carolina’s digital repository looks like. Why do the statewide library and archives systems for these states have such limited digital resource, while academic libraries in these states carry digital collections technology and access into the future? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the state library to be the digital repository, instead of providing funding for it?

The obvious answer is that the state library does not have the technological resources or expertise to make this happen. Academic libraries and archives are research-oriented, so they are able to do more experimentation and use the knowledge of systems librarians and programmers to create new and innovative resources. Perhaps most importantly, the state library supports academic libraries that make these resources accessible, which is possibly the only reason I am willing to overlook the potential conflict of interest of having UNC and the state library so closely intertwined.

The NC Digital Heritage Center arrives at an exciting moment in the history of digital libraries and digital collections. The team and advisory board exist to provide project management, digitization, and web hosting to smaller and less-funded institutions in the state in order to create access to primary resources across the state. I hope that institutions both large and small can participate in this effort to create a statewide digital repository. In this way, resources from community-based institutions and repositories holding the history of underrepresented groups can be made available for research and review like never before. I continue to follow closely the development of the Center.

With feedback from the digital/web librarian who attempted to create a digitization policy about two years ago and a lot of reading, I created four documents to get our digitization “task force” talking about our project process. These documents, in draft form, are as follows:

• Digital Collection Development Policy: This document is modeled after the original policy document. It describes types of digitization projects, defines a “digitization advisory group” that decides what projects to do and who will be part of the projects, as well as project selection criteria.
• Digital Project Life Cycle: This document describes the process of identifying and implementing a digital project. Team roles are described, as well as technical and metadata specs (still in development).
• Digitization Project Proposal: This is a very short form that groups can fill out to propose a digital project to the “digitization advisory group.”
• Project Proposal Checklist: This is the checklist that the “digitization advisory group” would use to help the group decide on and prioritize digitization projects. Adapted from Syracuse University Library’s “Digital Library Project Proposal Checklist.”
  

There are other forms and policies, such as a work order submission form and copyright research policy — I have some great guidance from the Society of Georgia Archivists’ Forms Forum, which has a lot of excellent examples. Some of the other resources I consulted and adapted include:

• Cornell University’s “Digital Imaging Tutorial“
• East Carolina University’s “Digital Collection Development Policy“
• The NINCH Guide to Good Practice in the Digital Representation and Management of Cultural Heritage Materials
• NEDCC’s Handbook for Digital Projects
• The Claremont Colleges’ “Dublin Core Metadata Elements Best Practice“
• Suzanne Preate’s “Digital Project Life Cycle“

For me, the development policy and life cycle documents are the most important. Once our “task force” comes to agreement on these documents, they can serve as the backbone for our projects, as well as evidence that we all support a long-term, collaborative digitization effort. Feedback and suggestions are welcome. Thank you for reading!

As an unrelated note, Touchable Archives is the blog of the month for May 2010 at Simmons’ GSLIS!

I was not trained to create EAD finding aids in grad school (although I have experience with XML and HTML). Instead, I was trained to create EAD-compatible MS Word docs that were plopped into an EAD template by an encoder and sent over to the OAC. For me, AT was not part of the process of creating a finding aid.

In my current job, I’m working with old EAD files that were outsourced and tied to a problematic stylesheet (they referenced JPG files and included HTML color codes). I imported these old EAD files  into AT — minor editing was needed, but nothing that made me reference the EAD tag library. I have yet to create one from “scratch,” although I did recently attend the basic EAD workshop through SAA. I can now search and edit the contents of our existing finding aids (all 450+ of them) and create new ones within the AT interface…and with less opportunity for human error.

I am moving toward the idea of going straight to AT for EAD since it exports “good” EAD (that I have seen so far). I am going to train our grad students and library assistants how to use AT for accessions and basic processing…why would I need to teach them EAD? I am still in the process of answering that question because we are working on a new stylesheet for our finding aids — which means I need to learn more about XSLT. AT might give me a nice EAD document, but it doesn’t make it look pretty online for me.

AT experts like Sibyl (@sibylschaefer) and Mark (@anarchivist) are right when they suggest that an understanding of EAD is important when you need to do stuff with the EAD that AT exports. Just being aware of elements and the tag library helps me “read” an EAD document…and hopefully, it will help me create better, more beautiful finding aids through stylesheets that interact with the data in functional, interactive ways.

So I suppose the question to consider is, “how much do you need to learn about EAD in order to go right to AT or Archon?”

I was fairly nervous about my attempt to gain consensus among this mixed, highly trained, busy group. Without a director of special collections, our ragtag task force became more of a brainstorming session. I brought everyone a copy of Suzanne Preate’s “Digital Project Life Cycle” slide from the 2009 NNYLN conference and allowed for a little storytelling about the history of efforts to create a digital collections program. Once everyone had a chance to express their past frustrations and concerns, we began to ponder the idea of a digital collections process that would work for our institution.

Everyone immediately agreed that special collections alone should have final say about what is selected for digitization, since our staff should have the best idea of what is in our collections. I mentioned that our manuscript collections are not processed to the point where potential digital projects could be created, but our rare books librarian could likely make decisions about rare books that could be digitized. At the same time, everyone wanted to be a part of the creation of a digital collection development policy (also known as selection criteria), which was a relief. I was asked to draft the policy and email the group for feedback and suggestions.

The remainder of the meeting was spent discussing issues with post-production, such as user interface and what the tech team called the “discovery layer” for DSpace. It turns out there is a possibility of creating a new portal for digital collections that pulls from DSpace, without having to use the standard DSpace interface templates. Basically, DSpace and Encompass are the databases, and our new digital portal and VuFind (our catalog) will be the discovery layers. I am still learning about this. Our head tech programmer mentioned that we could use VuFind or a blog (catablog?) as our special collections interface, with MARC records mapped from Dublin Core records that are in DSpace. Of course, this would not work with our finding aids, since the majority of the information therein would not be fully searchable as a MARC record. Our tech team asked special collections to send examples of best practices of how a DSpace portal could look (I did not find many good examples online) as well as any examples we could find of interfaces that may have DSpace as a backend (this is in the works).

We then turned back to the need for a project process. Our copyright expert librarian chimed in to mention a need to document efforts to determine copyright status for orphaned and unpublished works. She urged us to consider creating a standard rights statement for our digital objects. I gave her a copy of the “Well-intentioned practice for putting digitized collections of unpublished materials online” document shared in the recent post from hangingtogether.org entitled “Archivists: be bold and do your job.”

We closed with a few goals in mind: meet again in June after our visit to ECU’s Digital Collections team, and for me to draft a digital collection development policy/selection criteria. My initial thoughts? While disorganized, our meeting established our group’s commitment to a long-term digitization program. We will need to work on a project life cycle of our own in the near future.

• Archival Soup: archival, library, historical, & museum stuff
• Black in the Stacks: an African-American perspective on the archival profession
• Archives Matter(s): records, archives history — why they matter
• The Backward Glance: history, digital humanities
• History-ing: digital history, digital humanities

As archival studies, digital humanities, libraries, museums, and public history overlap and converge, I find more to read and learn about the work that I do.

• EAD Workshop in New Orleans
• Society of NC Archivists Annual Meeting in Pinehurst
• The future of discovering archival resources (written for library website)

Thanks for reading!

I had a lot of the same thoughts in 2009, when I decided to take the ACA exam. I have an MLIS with a specialization in archival studies, but I wondered what else I could do to identify myself as an archivist. In the US, most archivists are historians or librarians by training – and archivists by experience. In this difficult job market, I was willing to do as much as I could to show off my interest and specialization.

Besides the informative and required reading from the ACA exam handbook, I found two websites particularly useful when studying for the exam. This post from Archives Found details many of the most important readings to consider when studying for the exam. In addition, the 2009 version of the Washington University Libraries ACA study group (currently up to date with new readings for 2010) helped me prioritize which areas I felt I needed to study further.

If you are a practicing archivist dealing with things like ethical issues, processing, accessioning, donor relations, and outreach/reference, you are ahead of the curve. If you took any archives courses in graduate school and have a good grasp of archival concepts (provenance, respect des fonds, etc) then you will likely need only to review these concepts for the exam.

The works that were most useful for me:

- Schellenberg’s Modern Archives
- Daniels et al’s Modern Archives Reader
- Yakel’s Starting an Archives

I also read works by some of the other respected names in archival theory/studies: Jenkinson, O’Toole, Cox, Roe, Pugh, and Ritzenthaler. Many of the suggested core readings should be re-read.

It looked like there were a lot of historians at my testing site. The passing score in 2009 was 67%. The test is multiple-choice. I found the test was not as difficult as I thought it would be. It was oriented to the decision-making process, including general standards for processing/description and ethics. I call it “what would an archivist do?” in multiple-choice format. I expected more questions that were specific to particular theories, but was pleasantly surprised at the blend of questions about different aspects of the work and theory of archives.

I finished early and passed, becoming a provisional member until my supervisor submitted a letter confirming that I had been doing archival work for 1 year. Once I submit a full member application, I will be “official.” Other than providing the title of “Certified Archivist,” the organization does not work on archival issues. It is a society in the traditional sense. Anyone with a master’s degree and some archival experience can take the exam.

Overall, I am glad that I took the examination. I felt proud to have a group of experienced professional archivists confirm that I, too, am part of their profession. At the same time, I know that this confirmation does not make me a good archivist, nor can the title provide me with skills to be a better archivist. It has, however, helped me appreciate the origins, theories, and methods of archival work — and I believe that interest in and understanding of these is what makes a great archivist.

Last week, I was offered and accepted a position as archivist and digital projects manager at Wake Forest University. Collaborative projects, networking, and prior experience led me to become the final candidate for this multi-faceted opportunity. I feel that I was in the right place at the right time. 

I look forward to starting this new adventure and returning to the world of academic special collections. My interview presentation focused on the how and why of archival processing. After exploring the basic concepts of archival processing, I explained what I feel is the reason for processing and digitization — ACCESS. Other than good old fashioned archival processing, I will get to work with Archivist’s Toolkit to create EAD finding aids and collaborate with the technology team to formulate a new digital collections interface, as well as create metadata. I’m sure there will be many more responsibilities and outlets for creativity.

Wake Forest is currently seeking an innovative, creative Director of Special Collections and University Archives, so I eagerly anticipate the arrival of our department’s advocate and visionary. For me, there is much expected, much to learn, and much to contribute.

My first response was to mention the Online Archive of California, but after that, I realized that my knowledge of visually appealing finding aid design and special collections websites was very limited.

The OAC is one of the first archival initiatives of its kind, because it attempts to digitally collocate archival resources in the state of California. Finding aids here are not only easily discovered through each repository’s website, but also through Google, ArchiveGrid, and OCLC (including OAIster when appropriate). Of course, the appealing interface doesn’t hurt the possibility of user discovery. The finding aids (here’s an example) have more visual interest through use of color blocks and links on the right side, as well as a sans-serif font. Perhaps the best part about a statewide interface? Consistency in design and usability.

The purpose of the site, however, is clear: to search finding aids (also referred to as collection guides). Digital content is tied to relevant collections with a small eyeball icon. Users can browse from A-Z and view brief collection descriptions. Overall the site has a clean interface with a simple purpose. The OAC’s collections are tied to the UC system’s Calisphere, which is a public- and educator-focused search site for over 150,000 digital objects (it also includes teacher modules for K-12). Both of these projects are powered by the California Digital Library.

Because my colleague was interested in EAD finding aids, I decided to start with SAA’s EAD Roundtable website. The site includes a list of early adopters of EAD, so I took a look at how creative some institutions were with representing their finding aids online.

My favorites so far?

Emory’s Manuscripts and Rare Books Library has a great search and browse interface. From the main page, users are informed that they can browse, search, and also search the catalog for resources. The database includes unprocessed collections, which is a pleasant surprise in the era of “hidden collections”. The finding aids themselves are visually interesting, with linked content, as well as icons for the PDF and printable versions (see the James D. Waddell papers for example).

Columbia University’s Archival Collections Portal searches both finding aids and digital content. I think this type of searching is natural for users, making it easier for users to access resources. The finding aids appear to be in a variety of formats depending on the collection, including HTML and PDF, but each record in the portal includes a descriptive summary and subject terms.

Both of these go against the typical left-side menu browsing of many EAD finding aids. I started to realize with my preferences that EAD was less important than the overall visual appeal and ease of use of the finding aid itself. If we can do a full-text search of any text document, why are we doing complex EAD encoding? Why aren’t we just doing HTML? How about catablogs? The idea is that, like MARC, having standards can help researchers find similar resources.

I’m at the beginning of understanding the many reasons to use EAD, but already I find myself questioning it. Jeanne over at Spellbound Blog talked about the possibilities of simpler EAD finding aids in 2008, through the Utah State Historical Society’s next-generation version of the Susa papers. There’s the Jon Cohen AIDS Research Collection, which is a finding aid and digital collection. Then there is the famous Polar Bear Expedition collection of next-generation finding aids.

There seems to be a lot of overlap between finding aids and digital objects, which I’ve seen at Duke and Eastern Carolina University, among others. Then there’s the movement to push our resources onto Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, etc. If repositories host their own finding aids and digital objects, they can repurpose and collocate them anywhere on the web, right?

I still don’t know if I have a good answer for my colleague. I know I have much to learn. I am curious to know…what’s is your favorite EAD finding aid site? The most beautiful finding aid site?

Speaking of grants, my library (in partnership with Wake Forest University) recently received an outreach grant from the State Library that provides digitization equipment and preservation training in locations throughout our county. This grant is unique to North Carolina and is being watched carefully by the State Library due to its somewhat unusual concept. Put simply, we are putting expensive scanners “out there” for the general public and providing preservation education for nonprofit groups and individuals.

This Saturday was our first workshop, which was focused on local nonprofit organizations. From genealogy clubs to food banks, churches to social clubs, we sent emails and postcards to as many groups as we could find. Our workshop’s limited RSVP list was filled within a week, and I began hearing from groups that I know I had not yet invited! We are having three more rounds of workshops in 2010.

On Saturday, we brought in Rachel Hoff, preservation expert from UNC Chapel Hill, as well as Barry Davis, multimedia coordinator at Wake Forest, to teach our community partners about preservation, repair, and digitization of their organization’s archives. The enthusiasm of our participants was absolutely contagious. Not only were they fully engaged from 10 am to 5 pm, but they were thrilled to learn about book repair, archival housing, and the steps to use our VHS-to-digital, cassette-to-digital, slide scanner, and flatbed scanner!

We need to get all of the public library staff involved with the equipment to the point where they are comfortable showing a customer how to use the scanners. At a small public library branch with a few full-time staff, it is hard enough to get the staff trained on the equipment, let alone ask them to spend time with a customer who is just getting started! So we’ve decided to expand our training on the digitization equipment to become part of our regular computer training classes, allowing for small seminars.

While it sounds simple, the grant is compelling in its implications. This equipment will be open to the public. There are no restrictions as to what can be digitized, and no requirements that digital objects be shared with our libraries or hosted on a designated server. It is empowering for community-based archives to be provided with training and resources to preserve their history their way. I will post more in the future as our project develops.

In related news: the NC Digital Heritage Center is coming…!

The event format appeared to be modeled partially from the 2006 UCLA Diversity Recruitment Summit, which incorporated small group discussion, brainstorming, and reflection as a larger group. While the UCLA event focused on ways to bring diversity to the field, iDEALS attempted to address ways to better prepare future information professionals for “relevant, appropriate and effective services in and with diverse, globalized and technological communities.”

Perhaps what made the program so unique was the diversity of participants. Faculty, students, and practitioners were invited to participate in the discussion, creating an intellectual potpourri. Small groups were sent into sessions where they discussed real world experience, education and professional development, research, and community, as they relate to LIS education, research, and practice.

I was part of a group led by Dr. Nora Bird, who further divided our group to discuss specific topics listed above. She avoided allowing participants from the same group sit together (i.e. no two students sitting together). My small group was asked to focus on education and professional development, something with which I have recent experience!

As we brainstormed skills and knowledge for graduates with respect to diversity, engagement, and access, the conversation kept returning to a lack of opportunities for LIS students to feel truly engaged with the local community, as well as opportunities for students to gain valuable professional training (read: not shelving books). Desired skills and knowledge: empathy, ability to listen to others, openness, exposure to different types of communities and cultures, ability to TEACH, being an advocate, and being knowledgeable about existing and new resources. There were a lot more suggestions, but we crystallized our discussion into two main points: mentoring and service learning.

We concluded that today’s LIS students need mentoring from a variety of sources. The student government can arrange 2nd-year/1st-year mentorships; alumni can provide networking and mentoring opportunities at the local level; NCLA/SNCA can continue and expand their mentor programs; and of course, there is always the national level. Mentoring does not just provide networking opportunities, but it also creates professional development that cannot happen in the classroom. Professional skills can be learned simply by watching and listening to an active practitioner.  Finally, professional organizations should encourage research at the graduate level by providing student poster sessions (especially at the state level) and supplementing or changingmerit-based scholarships into research funding.

Perhaps most importantly, we felt that service learning (as opposed to internships/practicums) offered the greatest opportunity for education and professional development to LIS students. By “learning by doing,” students are able to take classroom knowledge and apply it to a real-life situation. In particular, service learning projects with community-based organizations push developing information professionals into a new role as resident “expert,” where he or she must make decisions about how to deal with challenging situations. Service learners must teach and share knowledge — in effect, becoming advocates. Service learning provides a variety of experience for a budding information professional in a short period, and provides the chance to experience different communities. We felt that student organizations and LIS departments have a responsibility to help create community organization projects for students, with clear learning objectives and goals. These projects must be mutually beneficial.

I must admit my influence in this discussion was based on my experience with service learning at UCLA. I chose to work with Visual Communications, an Asian-American nonprofit film/media organization. Without an archivist, my peers and I were seen as archivists by default, and found ourselves using newly learned techniques and approaches to arranging, preserving, and making accessible their archives. This could not have happened in an established archive, where our work would have been more limited and, perhaps, at a paraprofessional level. The challenges of a limited budget and overworked staff are familiar today. My peers and I also learned about the information needs of a diverse and underserved community.

While the iDEAL Summit was focused on ways to improve UNCG’s program, nearly everyone I spoke to felt that this method could be replicated on other campuses and in other communities. It was inspiring to see three types of information professionals — students, faculty, and practitioners — in the same room, asking for the same transformation. I wonder how many other LIS programs incorporate service learning into the curriculum. In the near future, I hope to see more service learning as well as more practitioners who mentor.

I am in the midst of my first-ever annual review and I thought I’d share my experience,  both with fellow neophytes and supervisors. When I was hired into my current position, my county HR department said that I would start at the bottom of the salary range because I did not have any professional experience (pre-MLIS experience of 6 years did not count) and that I could negotiate my salary after 1 year. In addition, my salary increase would be based on the “market rate” for a librarian in my county — which was a good 20% higher from my starting rate. Good, I thought, in order for me to show my value as a professional and be paid a fair wage.

Not until this week, however, was I informed that the “market rate” is merely a representative figure — not an actual rate that most librarians are paid. Employees start at the bottom and, through merit-based appraisals, receive a percentage of the market rate as an increase in their salary per annum. Many employees don’t actually reach 100% of the market rate, and this year, the highest possible salary increase is capped at 2% of the market rate. That means a perfect appraisal would merit just a few hundred dollars extra the following year, due to the lower rate of pay. For a library director, a 2% increase could mean a few thousand dollars.

The difference between a poor appraisal and an excellent appraisal could mean a difference of a couple hundred bucks for a new librarian or archivist. Why would a government employee work harder than the minimum requirements? Why would a new librarian/archivist want to bring new ideas to the table and challenge him or herself to make changes? With new jobs asking for more and more training and education and experience for less pay, what will today’s information professionals have to gain?

Full disclosure: I got an excellent review. I love my job. I have few resources but full support from my colleagues and supervisor. I am grateful every day that I have a job, especially one related to special collections. But without mentorship and motivation, some new information professionals find themselves feeling lost. A recent post on The New Archivist discusses the feelings of inadequacy and lack of confidence that can appear with the challenges of a first job (limited resources, a bit of naivete, overwhelming projects) and it resonated with me. I hope that I can continue to be confident and excited in my second year as a librarian/archivist.

While UNC Chapel Hill has been relatively quiet about the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center (see previous post), there certainly were special collections librarians and archivists at NCLA who were curious to know more about how such a program might work. They will likely have a Program Coordinator early next year. With the NC ECHO statewide survey of cultural heritage institutions and the NC SHRAB’s Traveling Archivist going out to community groups to consult on preservation, the NC DHC stands as the next big effort to democratize efforts to make accessible the heritage of North Carolina.

En route to Greenville, one of my colleagues mentioned a recent meetup at a “Library Cooperation Summit” to discuss the potential for statewide collaboration to increase public access to state resources. One major idea that emerged from the summit: a statewide ILS using open-source software such as Evergreen. On Thursday, David Singleton, Director of Library Experiences at the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County, discussed his experience with Evergreen in the state of Georgia, where the software originated to support the PINES project. Users of PINES can check out materials at any participating library across the state and return the materials to any other library across the state, using the same library card. Studies showed 90-95% user satisfaction with the open-source ILS. As for North Carolina, the State Library representative in the audience was a bit hesitant to respond that they hope to have a statewide system in place by late 2010.

Nick Graham, North Carolina Maps Project Librarian at the Carolina Digital Library & Archives at UNC Chapel Hill, discussed interactive GIS applications on NC Maps. He explored points, polygons, and georeferencing. Points are latitude and longitude, expressed in decimal degrees. If you can see a point on a map, you can see it in context among other locations — such as Historic Des Moines‘ pushpins feature that shows where historic photos were taken. Polygons are, essentially, shapes. At least three points encompassing a shape can be used to search without text — instead, users can create bounding boxes (or other shapes) to view particular areas. Nick mentioned the Kentucky Geography Network as an advanced version of what NC Maps aims to do, which is better demonstrated through the UNLV’s Interactive Spatial Image page, which “searches by spatial coverage.” And finally, georeferencing is matching up points on a given map to the same points on another map. With historic maps, this is groundbreaking — users can now take a historic map and put it over a modern map to compare development, ecology, land ownership, etc. NC Maps has already started doing georeferencing. Overall, the goal for NC Maps is for interactivity, accessability, and usability by the public.

Mark Custer, Markup & Text Coordinator for Joyner Library Digital Collections at ECU,  discussed the Daily Reflector Image Collection, which has over 7000 images from Greenville’s local newspaper. Mark’s focus was on identifying ways that the collection has been shared with the public. His argument: seek out familiar places and hosting — don’t create new (and therefore unfamiliar) frameworks. The Daily Reflector images are available through ECU’s Digital Collections portal, through the Daily Reflector newspaper’s website, as well as on Flickr. Mark described the ease of extracting metadata from their images and batch uploading to Flickr. Of the 200 photographs uploaded to Flickr, the images have been seen by over 800 people — without advertising of any kind. Over 550 comments have been made to Daily Reflector digital images.

Overall, both presentations highlighted new developments in interactive special collections, aka digital collections. Perhaps the ECU Digital Collections portal could be explored in greater detail for its usability (I explore it in some depth for the upcoming issue of the Journal for the Society of North Carolina Archivists). A number of librarians/archivists in the audience were interested in the ways these resources are discovered, particularly ways repositories can share their resources. The NC Digital Heritage Center came up in a question, though there was little information available about how the Center will work to create greater access to widespread resources. These are exciting times to be a special collections librarian…

I attended the Government Resources Section’s session on politician papers in libraries, with Betty Carter from UNCG and Tim West of UNC Chapel Hill.

UNCG was given permission to acquire the papers of Senator Kay Hagan, and also has the papers of Congressman Howard Coble. While their collection’s strengths lie primarily with performing arts and early 20th century authors, UNCG’s University Archives and Manuscripts department also has political papers. Betty Carter mentioned two important things to consider when acquiring political papers: size and research potential. She also mentioned the usefulness of SAA’s publication entitled Managing Congressional Collections.

 Tim West from the Southern Historical Collection represents a large special collections repository. He mentioned the importance of obtaining special funding for a processing archivist, which the SHC has done successfully by asking for funding from donors. Research value (through archival appraisal) for historians, journalists, community activists, undergraduates, relatives, and constituents is of utmost importance to the SHC. Mr. West mentioned the importance of collecting from individuals and groups of “exceptional impact” such as officeholders who have been influential outside of political activity, people involved in politics who did not hold public office, political journalists, and more.

During the ensuing discussion, the panelists agreed that there is a need for a statewide documentation strategy for political papers. I am concerned with the role of academic special collections departments in making available political papers to the public. Academic libraries focus on students and faculty. What role do public libraries play in this? We recently de-accessioned and donated to the State Archives the papers of a local state representative because we felt they would be researched more frequently there. I had not thought that academic libraries with ties to political figures might also collect these types of work — what about the State Archives as a repository for government documents? Perhaps election materials and personal papers do not fall within their collection development policy? Also, what about elecronic records? Neither have, so far, begun collecting born-digital resources.

Another issue that became highlighted during the panel: the majority of those participating were government documents librarians, most of whom had never dealt with manuscripts. It was interesting to watch librarians and archivists discuss archival concepts — and it made me realize how much further we have to go to understand each other and our methods in dealing with “records.”

Later that afternoon, I helped introduce Michael Hill, supervisor of the Research Division of the NC Office of Archives & History and also coordinator of the North Carolina State Highway Historical Marker Program. His presentation on editing William Powell’s North Carolina Gazetteer was engaging and amusing, exploring some of the origins of unique place names in the state (i.e. Asey Hole, Pig Basket Creek, Whynot). I am really looking forward to the book, which should come out sometime next year and will undoubtedly become another reference must-have.

Nearly one year into my first professional position as librarian-archivist, I have some idea of how I would like to proceed with the unique collections of the North Carolina Room. I decided early on to formulate a structure for our existing archival and special collections materials, but first we needed a place for stuff to go. I got an NCPC grant and had a locking cage built where our department would be moving. Then my colleagues and I started moving collections, objects, and rare books into the cage (photographic and audiovisual materials are kept in a temperature-controlled closet).

The North Carolina Room has officially moved to the ground floor of Central Library, where I am now able to deal directly with the materials in our cage, particularly record groups that need finding aids. Our community organization archives (League of Women Voters, Daughters of the American Revolution, as well as StoryLine) can be kept securely in one place, but no one knows about them. My next step? Create an inventory of fonds (as well as objects, scrapbooks, and other unique materials).

After that, I have to admit I am unsure where to go. Ideally I would work with an IT team and administration to purchase and install Archon/AT and start adding finding aids that can be exported into our catalog as MARC and through our website as EAD/HTML. But we don’t have an IT team, our budget is slashed, and our county government programmers are not interested in supporting a database (yet).

I’ve developed an accession numbering system to go through all of the inventoried “collections” and am creating MS Word-based, very preliminary finding aids that I will hand to our cataloger so we can at least get some “placeholder” MARC records in the catalog. Then I am going to create a catablog and/or create HTML finding aids and investigate the possibility of our finding aids becoming part of ArchiveGrid.

In some ways, I have come to prefer “placeholder” MARC records that can be shared on WorldCat to the multitude of complicated, expensive finding aid programs out there. At UCLA (before AT) we would create a MS Word finding aid, an MS Excel container list, then send these files to an EAD coder who would then program the finding aid and send it to the OAC for harvesting. The Brooklyn Historical Society’s catablog, Emma, combines full-text searchable summary entries with links to PDF finding aids — using a free blog interface.

In my mind, and in line with the now overhyped MPLP method, people prefer to know that you have a group of records about someone/something instead of waiting for a precise description of every single item in a group of records. I see rows of unprocessed scrapbooks, slides, maps, artwork, administrative records, etc… and see a lot of information that isn’t being shared. Basically what I am wondering is: are finding aids in the traditional sense worth it?

Here’s to making things available. Feedback/suggestions are welcome!

This year was the first regional session of the original THATCamp, or “The Humanities and Technology Camp,” first held by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. As a user-generated “unconference” consisting of discussion groups, training sessions, and “dork shorts” demonstrating new projects, THATCamp is an ideal kind of spontaneous, creative outlet for  newbie archivists/digital humanists/historians.  Lisa Grimm was one of the archivists in attendance in June and wrote this inspiring post about the potential for THATCamp in Austin.

A few weeks later, THATCamp Austin was  born (care of Lisa Grimm, Ben Brumfield, Peter Keane, and Jeanne Kramer-Smyth). As I read the excited tweets about the program and encouraging news that anyone interested in digital humanities could apply, my hesitation about being a public library archivist/special collections librarian among digital humanities folks began to subside.  I applied and my idea to discuss redefining the  boundaries of memory institutions was accepted!

Overall, I could sense that the environment at THATCamp would be supportive, energetic, and a lot of fun. My enthusiasm grew as I got to the UT-Austin lecture hall where our event would be held. A narrow hallway was filled with smiling faces, free pizza, and free t-shirts thanks to some angel sponsors and a few incredibly hardworking organizers.

We settled ourselves in an auditorium in the basement of the building, with live tweets popping up on the overhead screen. Open discussion, creativity, and freedom of thought was the order of the evening — I was overjoyed! We shouted out our potential topics and organized ourselves on loosely-related themes. I chose to participate in the session on crowdsourcing in digital projects and was a discussion leader for the session on “web x.x and diversity and community.”

I didn’t take notes. For the first time in my career, my ubiquitous notebook sits devoid of scribbled entries, doodles, or quotes. Perhaps it’s because I found it faster to type than to write…so most of my remarks, in reverse chronological order, can be seen via tweets:

• panel: completed! have to say, definitely more enjoyable than research forum #thatcamp10:59 PM Aug 11th from web 
• advocacy helps ppl know why archivists are impt and attracts new archivists to the field #thatcamp10:55 PM Aug 11th from web 
• how far does ownership go? original object and representations of that object #thatcamp10:52 PM Aug 11th from web 
• archives were something that archivists do to everybody else #thatcamp10:50 PM Aug 11th from web 
• academic libraries can teach public libraries to teach community archives about preservation etc #thatcamp10:45 PM Aug 11th from web 
• community finding aids show what resources are in your area #thatcamp10:43 PM Aug 11th from web 
• ask community archives what THEY need to preserve their records (ppl know what is important) #thatcamp10:35 PM Aug 11th from web 
• http://archivesandidentitie… promotes community archives autonomy #thatcamp includes best practice guide for archivists10:31 PM Aug 11th from web 
• digital inhumanities, digital imperialism = digitizing content in third world by subscription-based corporations #thatcamp10:27 PM Aug 11th from web 
• communities want control over their own records #thatcamp10:08 PM Aug 11th from web 
• digital inequalities = digital divide (new term) #thatcamp who has access?10:07 PM Aug 11th from web 
• make that atom… #thatcamp #mefail10:00 PM Aug 11th from web 
• “oh, this is WINDOWS…” #thatcamp9:53 PM Aug 11th from web 
• Texas Heritage Online #thatcamp http://www.texasheritageonl… to search digital resources throughout TX9:49 PM Aug 11th from web 
• archives reference blog #thatcamp http://itech.dickinson.edu/…9:44 PM Aug 11th from web 
• potential to use worldcat to map an item’s holding locations #thatcamp9:41 PM Aug 11th from web 
• mark matienzo Exhibit mapping library collections #thatcamp9:39 PM Aug 11th from web 
• distributed biography now available and open to the public #thatcamp9:38 PM Aug 11th from web 
• demo of Distributed Biography #thatcamp http://distributedbiography… shared stories about a person’s life9:36 PM Aug 11th from web 
• demo of the Learning Record #thatcamp http://bit.ly/A1Owi9:34 PM Aug 11th from web 
• Julie Brumfield diaries #thatcamp http://bit.ly/dhxqI9:28 PM Aug 11th from web 
• dork shorts up next #thatcamp9:23 PM Aug 11th from web 
• crowdsourcing rocks! if we can make it work #thatcamp9:19 PM Aug 11th from web 
• the brooklyn posse is a game to tag museum objects #thatcamp9:04 PM Aug 11th from web 
• tagging for yourself is more important #thatcamp8:55 PM Aug 11th from web 
• familysearch offers “crash course in paleography,” “double keying” by their volunteers to ensure more accurate contributions #thatcamp8:40 PM Aug 11th from web 
• familysearch.org has great resources to push their resources out there, shared transcription by volunteers #thatcamp8:37 PM Aug 11th from web 
• at crowdsourcing session. lots of interesting folks here #thatcamp8:29 PM Aug 11th from web 
• looks like i’ll be part of the group discussing web x.x and community/diversity #thatcamp8:19 PM Aug 11th from web 
• scheduling central at #thatcamp8:18 PM Aug 11th from web 
• On bus. U Texas here we come! #thatcamp6:48 PM Aug 11th from Twitterrific 
• Just got an Evian spray to the face by @ jgreen316:37 PM Aug 11th from Twitterrific 
• THATCamp group at 5th and Congress waiting for bus. #thatcamp6:36 PM Aug 11th from Twitterrific

Perhaps the best thing about THATCamp was being given the opportunity to speak freely about new concepts with intelligent, creative folks in a non-competitive, relatively unstructured environment. No one had to submit a proposal a year in advance (many of these projects and ideas will have morphed multiple times within a few months). I relished the chance to meet some of the emerging contributors to my field and have conversations with my colleagues without the constraints of a formal panel. I am so grateful to have been there and cannot wait to see what concepts and innovations come out of future THATCamps!

Following the initial shock of actually being selected to participate in the forum, I realized that there was much I wanted to say and very little time (10 minutes to be exact) to say it. I attempted to explore the process of creating a successful collaborative partnership, using the Collaboration Continuum created by Gunter Waibel in the now-famous report “Beyond the Silos of the LAMs.” While the OCLC report was meant as a high-level analysis of primarily intra-insititutional collaboration, I felt that the continuum could be applied to many local-level projects and relationships between libraries, archives, and museums.

For example, Digital Forsyth is a county-wide collaborative digitization project bringing together LAMs for a common goal. The technical and grantwriting expertise of Wake Forest University was key to the creation of the project, while Forsyth County Public Library, Old Salem Museum and Gardens, and Winston-Salem State University provided the content depth. All of this was done without the smaller institutions feeling obligated to donate their materials to Wake Forest. As a result, the DF website has become the new archive of visual history of Forsyth County, undefined by physical or institutional boundaries.

I believe that these boundaries can be blurred, indeed erased, by the formation of digital archives/libraries/museums. Through the creation of topical/geographic digital LAMs, we can permit greater access and findability to the researcher/patron/end-user. This carries great significance for community-based archives, who can keep their records in cultural and geographic context. Communities and individuals can re-define their context artificially and create new archives without diminishing or erasing historical/evidential/documentary/cultural value.

By including records and collections in subject-based archives (like the Walt Whitman Archive) or union catalogs/federated searches (like ArchiveGrid or OAIster), multiple points of access — and description — can be conceived. Some archivists ponder the interest of non-archivists in such a project. I think “non-archivists,” particularly those coming from community-based archives, would welcome the opportunity for autonomy and laying claim to their records online.

Problems arise when we consider the lack of physical preservation and digitization resources available to these community-based archives. That’s where larger institutions come into the picture: to collaborate “for the greater good.” I think the state of North Carolina is headed in a very positive direction with the Traveling Archivist program and the NC Digital Heritage Center (see previous post), both of which focus on smaller, community-based memory institutions. Smaller institutions can then take the initiative to make contact with larger institutions and be responsible for their community’s history being represented (if they so choose).

I guess my ramblings demonstrate the largeness of my topic, and the overall squishiness of my argument. I believe collaboration can be much more than a buzzword. Between the large and small repositories I can see convergence, which the Collaboration Continuum notes as the high-investment, high-risk, high-benefit result of a successful partnership. Through it, both actors are responsible for their roles and become intertwined in a mutually-beneficial relationship and at least one “common function.”

I plan to post a paper exploring my topic in a bit more detail for the forum proceedings later this month. I hope to make better sense of all this by then!

• Over 850 institutions were visited
• 761 institutions responded to the survey
• 16% have no web presence
• 72% have no disaster response plan (including my department)
• 59% describe their storage facilities as inadequate
• 25% are entirely volunteer-run

The resulting institutional directory created by NC ECHO serves as a clearinghouse of information about these statewide cultural heritage institutions. For some, it is their only web presence. Another conclusion made during the presentation: digitization is the fastest, best way to preserve the cultural heritage of the state.

(I also attended Session 202 and Session 210 on Thursday.)

On Friday I attended Session 408 entitled “Advocacy, Education, and Money: How State Historical Records Advisory Boards Can Help.” Sarah Koonts, Head of the Collections Management Branch of the North Carolina State Archives, spoke about our state’s SHRAB and some of its advocacy initiatives. She pointed out in her presentation that while NC ECHO is IMLS-funded, the NC SHRAB does not have any full-time staff.

As part of the SHRAB’s funding from a SNAP (?) grant, the Traveling Archivist Program was developed. By offering best practices, demonstrations, and consultation about preservation, the Traveling Archivist will provide valuable guidance to small cultural heritage institutions in North Carolina. I will be applying for the first round of the program, which is due on September 30, on behalf of my library. It is limited to 40 institutions between the two rounds of the program.

Since this is focused primarily on physical preservation of primary resources, what about digital preservation? NC ECHO’s role appears to have been defined early on as the place for digitization initiatives, but it seems that it has shifted in recent years to help identify institutions and create an information clearinghouse.

Perhaps in relation, UNC-Chapel Hill recently announced this position as part of a new North Carolina Digital Heritage Center, to be housed as part of the North Carolina Collection. The NC Digital Heritage Center will “provide digitization and hosting services for cultural heritage materials held by libraries, archives, historical societies, and other institutions in the state of North Carolina.” That’s right, they are going to be a digitization center for the state!

While at SAA, I spoke briefly with NC archivists and speakers about the possible relationship between the Traveling Archivist Program (physical preservation) and the NC Digital Heritage Center (digital preservation). Some archivists had not heard of either program; others had not seemed to consider the fact that these programs were being developed simultaneously. They are both incredibly valuable programs and demonstrate a renewed focus on archival advocacy and education for community-based repositories.

One question I forgot to ask: do either of these projects have to to with the IMLS statewide planning grant? One was awarded in 2009 to North Carolina entitled “North Carolina Connecting to Collections” as a collaboration between the NC Department of Cultural Resources (which encompasses NC ECHO and the SHRAB), the North Carolina Museums Council, the North Carolina Preservation Consortium, and the Federation of North Carolina Historical Societies to “identify, coordinate, and assess collections preservation and disaster preparedness activities in the state’s cultural heritage community.” Any ideas?

(I also attended Session 411 on Friday.)

In the meantime, I will be following closely the development of these programs since they are near and dear to my librarchivist heart.

The Research Forum was filled with ups and downs, innovations and regurgitations. The day was broken down into topical sessions, and each speaker got 10 minutes to reveal the main idea of his or her research or project. I enjoyed Paul Conway’s presentation on “visualists” and what he calls the “end of image cataloging,” going beyond the search to user navigation. There were a number of speakers who discussed supercomputing and high-level information architecture, which I must admit was over my head and somewhat out of my area of interest.

My favorite part of the day was the poster session. I hope it can be bigger, longer, and perhaps separated topically next year. Among other great posters, I got to speak with a representative from Denver Public Library, whose poster focused on the Alliance Digital Repository, a collaboration of Denver-area libraries. The project was IMLS-funded and started out with an optimistic, “we’re family” vibe. It ended up with a lot of money spent and little in the way of true collaboration, including the absence of any DAM system. His final words of advice: create contracts of understanding and write everything down when collaborating.

I presented near the end of the Research Forum during the session on “Formulating Community Practice.” I will follow up to this post with a fuller description of my presentation. As the only representative from a public or community-based organization, needless to say I was humbled seeing my name alongside representatives from OCLC, UNC-Chapel Hill, and others. I was not sure, given my topic, that I should have been selected to speak. Perhaps it was the relatively small scope of my project, or perhaps it had to do with my ability to explain the challenges of my project. It is my hope that I can speak more intelligently about the process of empowering and collaborating with community-based organizations in future years.

I also got to participate in THATCamp Austin, which I’ll post about shortly.

On Wednesday I took the ACA Certified Archivist exam. I will have more to say about that experience in a few weeks when I find out the results! All I can say right now is that I was the first to finish the exam that morning, which could be a very bad or a very good thing.

My current job is the result of volunteering and a sprinkle of very part-time work. When I moved to NC immediately after finishing library school out West, I knew I had a lot of work to do to become part of this state’s network of special collections librarians and archivists.

After coming in second for a number of exciting and very interesting jobs but remaining unemployed for the first month or two, I decided to take matters into my own hands. When I wasn’t job searching full time, I would volunteer at a local library to strengthen and develop my skills. I ended up working 4 hours a week as a metadata technician for Digital Forsyth and volunteering 6 hours a week at my local branch of the public library doing circulation and a bit of reference.

It turns out that both “jobs” tied to special collections, since Digital Forsyth is a collaborative project between a number of institutions in Forsyth County including the public library and Wake Forest. When a job suddenly opened up at the public library in the local history room, I knew I had the connections and experience to get at least an interview.

The rest is history. This isn’t a story of how “lucky” I was to land the perfect job, nor a tale describing the value of being overworked and unpaid. I know that if I had not put myself out there for free, even for a few hours a week, I would not have been able to get to know folks with whom I would end up working.

If you are unemployed, I suggest giving away your skills for free at a facility that needs you and cannot currently pay you. You will soon become irreplaceable and, at minimum, instantly attractive to potential employers.

My Emerging Leaders group’s final presentation in Chicago went really well. Following a long workshop about leadership, we were given the chance to put together our poster boards and prepare ourselves for the small rush of ALA elites on their way to witness our leadership experiments. I took to calling it a science fair.

After the poster session, I was asked to present my group’s project at an informal gathering of our sponsoring committee, the Joint Committee on Archives, Libraries, and Museums (aka CALM). Our project was defined as “ALA/SAA/AAM Combined Committee on Archives, Libraries and Museums (CALM) is seeking to extend its impact in speaking on broad issues of access, preservation, and advocacy for the value of archives of all types,” which we refined with mentor Christian Dupont. The group was really excited that we updated and simplified the CALM wiki and created a delicious page as a source for convergence literature, both web and print. Best of all, I was able to sit in as a guest during the meeting, where I was able to participate in a rather passionate discussion about Preservation Week, Archives Month, MayDay, and the preservation education needs of community-based archives. I also brought my group’s suggestion that CALM consider future projects for EL’s such as marketing LAM issues through 2.0 technologies (my colleagues suggested creating a podcast with guest speakers). The committee was very appreciative of our work.

Other than that, I was able to attend some great sessions on preservation and special collections. In the Exhibits area I was able to get my copy signed of So You Want To Be a Librarian by my friend and colleague Lauren Pressley. Of course, my first trip would not have been complete without a trip to Millennium Park and the Bean, a meal of Chicago deep-dish pizza pie, and a high-rise view of downtown. Good times!

The presentation was valuable to me as a new librarian/archivist, especially as Diane addressed the need to network and not be afraid to ask potential grantfunders what they want to see in a grantee. She also highlighted the diversity of potential funding sources and emphasized the need to sell the concept, the impact, or “why bother?” of your project — not how you will do the work when/if you get the grant.

While I am still in the “cold call” phase of fundraising, I have come to appreciate the value of regional resources. The North Carolina Room lacks secure space for its special collections and archival materials, has no archival boxes or other storage, and these materials definitely have not been processed and described. Essentially, I realized, I would be starting an archival program from scratch.

With the blessing of our administration, I applied for a small grant to support the construction of a locking cage for our department through the North Carolina Preservation Consortium. I emphasized our stakeholders and what would happen if we did not get this grant, as well as steps I would want to take after gaining a secure storage area (boxes, etc). I researched many vendors for the most affordable price and kept the final estimate under the maximum grant amount ($2000). The result: last week I got notice that the grant application had been approved!

Our local genealogy society and historical society often have fundraisers to help purchase books they feel would be of use to the local history and genealogy collection in the North Carolina Room. This year, however, I asked my supervisor if we might be able to request funds for archival boxes and folders to process and house some of our genealogical manuscripts and special collections. We humbly requested $1000 altogether for the purchase of these supplies and were quickly approved by both organizations.

Also, this afternoon I found out that we have been awarded the IMLS Connecting to Collections Bookshelf, which includes books to help educate our staff about the care of special collections. It might be considered a “mini-grant” but it is another form of funding that we would not have had otherwise.

Traditional, large sources of funding such as LSTA provide incredible resources to libraries, museums, and archives doing large and impressive projects. Smaller grants provided by nontraditional, smaller, regional funders can help us take steps toward a legitimate archival program and resources to provide access to our community’s history.

As described by Swiss Army Librarian and iLibrarian, these 2.0 subject guides are being created using resources like del.icio.us and Squidoo — for free.  See aforementioned posts for examples, including MIT Libraries. These and other free social bookmarking services allow libraries to create subject guides that are familiar to many young users. One drawback: potential for lost bookmarks if website fails (be sure to back up regularly!)

Because our department does not have resources for subscription-based services, I created a del.icio.us page for the North Carolina Room. Using some of our most popular resources for local history, genealogy, law, and government, I was able to categorize and describe some of the excellent resources available to our patrons. We now have over 130 resources that can be accessed by browsing or searching the page and we have linked our del.icio.us to our website-as-blog (see the homepage — we’ve called it “New Links” to avoid intimidating patrons with unfamiliar terms).

A relatively recent article in Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research by Edward M. Corrado describes the benefits and drawbacks of using social bookmarking to create up-to-the-minute reference subject guides. Corrado emphasizes the potential for collaboration between librarians and students, as well as between librarians and other librarians. For us, the benefits are clear: to make available quickly our “staff favorites” and frequently used reference sources.

My department has a long history of collecting. Our most recent department head was famous for coming to the local history room at least once a month with a bag or two filled with genealogy manuscripts, rare books, and general curiosities — only to have them placed in our storage closet.

This type of acquisition-based system is not new or unfamiliar to many archivists. Nearly every special collections department has its stored collections, its undocumented acquisitions, its “what is that?” The good news is that processing archivists work hard to inventory and create finding aids for these record groups and objects.

Sometime in the last decade, our department acquired the entire contents of Wake Forest University’s vertical file collection. In approximately 14 banker’s boxes, our library suddenly acquired about 40 years worth of newspaper clippings, brochures, and other ephemera, arranged by topic. Our department has its own sizable vertical file collection that is frequently used to supplement research into old issues of the Winston-Salem Journal and other local newspapers (none of which are indexed).

I have to admit, both the WFU and our own vertical files seemed a bit primitive. “You mean…someone had to go through the newspaper and clip these articles out of the newspaper, then file them by topic?” That, along with the fact that our microfilmed newspapers were not indexed (let alone digitized), seemed hard to believe, if not archivally unsound. Both sets of clippings can be found pasted or Scotch-taped to chipboard or construction paper, but some include photocopies of the original clippings. At least they stopped clipping in the early 1990s, when the Journal started getting indexed online.

It was suggested that perhaps we interfile the clippings from Wake Forest with those of our own…but without knowing what already had been clipped, we would be duplicating our work…and with no more filing cabinets to use, expanding our collection by no fewer than a five thousand clippings seemed impossible. My solution? I created an Access database where our library page, my colleagues, and I could index the title, date, topic (as given), publication and page number for each publication — then toss the originals.

So far we have around 500 records in the database. I am not sure if this is the best solution but it is certainly an affordable one. A speaker at ALA Midwinter in Denver accosted a group interested in local history and genealogy about the benefits of going straight to digitization and OCR — and was unyielding in her argument even when a small-town librarian suggested indexing her clipping files.

Of course, digitizing our newspapers and OCR-ing them is my ultimate goal. North Carolina is working to create an historical newspapers program and I am paying careful attention to it. My goal is to learn how to make our database available for searching on our website…at least until we have full-text out there.

Are vertical files useful today? They can be — just ask the woman who came in a few weeks ago and found a photo of herself under “School Integration” in Winston-Salem. Should we strive to digitize and create full-text searching for our newspapers? Absolutely. Let’s begin by getting our collections out of storage, into finding aids and databases, and into the hands of researchers.

Through a survey of Emerging Leaders who have already completed their one-year experience, Leeder extracts some important feedback about the composition and future of the Emerging Leaders (EL) program. In particular, she touches on the frustration of meeting head-on the large bureaucracy that is ALA and the disappointment some ELs experienced when receiving their project assignments.

As a 2009 Emerging Leader, I was not permitted to submit my thoughts for the survey, but greatly appreciated the feedback from the ELs that did reply. Like many ELs, I was proud and excited to have been selected for the program. I was looking forward to meeting special collections librarians in particular and was hoping for an RBMS or CALM assignment. I strongly believe that my acceptance into the program is what helped me obtain the job I have today (and has helped support my efforts to gain institutional funding to attend ALA, no small feat in today’s economy).

While working temporarily as a metadata technician for the Digital Forsyth project, I was able to talk with some librarians in the area about the EL program. I actually met a 2008 EL working in a library near mine before I attended Midwinter and got my project assignment. Her perspective mirrors many of the results found in the survey and was valuable in helping me adjust my concept of what the EL program would be like.

First of all, the Emerging Leaders program is an excellent idea and is a wonderful way to network and bring positive experience to one’s resume. Many of us in the 2009 class felt a bit lost among a large group of 100 and I know a few individuals that were not happy with their project assignment. Projects (see some of our projects on the wiki) vary widely in scope and depth.

I was given the assignment to continue a project from last year’s EL class — to work on the CALM wiki and help promote the mission of the Joint Committee on Archives, Libraries, and Museums. Our group, affectionately called “Nirvana CALM,” consists of a public special collections librarian, two librarian/archivists, an academic special collections librarian, a special collections cataloger, and our mentor Christian DuPont (the ALA co-chair of CALM and former RBMS preconference chair). At first meeting, I was curious to see what our geographically diverse group could accomplish and how much freedom we would be given.

My concerns were soon quieted as our group began discussing what we might be able to accomplish beyond a basic update of the wiki once it migrated to the new ALA wiki system. We started talking seriously about ways to bring relevant information to librarians, archivists, curators, and other LAM professionals by way of a useful and easy-to-navigate wiki. One group member with technical experience helped create wiki pages while each of us brought our own perspectives in terms of content. Our mentor was active and responsive every step of the way, participating in group conference calls and bringing our suggestions to the CALM leadership and membership.

Throughout the project, communication, collaboration, and clarity have been of utmost importance. As we explored ways to present research and online resources, I suggested we create a del.icio.us page for CALM in order to represent dynamic online content as well as links to OCLC records for printed resources. Our cataloger created a list of categories and each of us contributed content.

The resulting wiki homepage (currently called the alternative main page) demonstrates our group’s ability to work independently and in collaboration with each other and with the larger CALM organization through our mentor. Our project will be completed in July after presenting during a poster session at ALA in Chicago and will consider publishing about our experience in the near future once we receive feedback from our colleagues and mentors.

While my experience is unfinished, already I can see that I was fortunate to have been assigned an interesting project and involved mentor. Our large, bureaucratic organization cannot be changed overnight but through the ongoing efforts of its members who go beyond the limits of their assignments and ask lots of questions. Perhaps more inspiration by movers and shakers, as suggested by survey respondents, will improve morale. I think that there are a number of things that could improve the EL experience, such as smaller class size, a selection process for mentors and representative projects, and perhaps an opportunity for potential ELs to suggest projects that could be offered by sections/divisions/committees.

Perhaps also, as Leeder suggests, we should “require the organizers of Emerging Leaders, and the ELs by extension, to become more aggressive in seeking out opportunities in which ELs might share their creative ideas with those in ALA who are best positioned to consider and respond to them.” I think as the program grows, ELs will move into positions where they will be responsible for changing the program — and hopefully they will remember the frustrations and challenges of being at the bottom of this large and complex totem pole.

The local history and genealogy department (where I was hired) had little more than an HTML page with in-page links describing our collections. When I asked about the possibility of updating our department’s webpage, I was told that getting any design injected into the website would be nearly impossible. Our department, like many others, had a static HTML document that listed popular reference links for librarians at the ref desk.

So I spoke to my coworkers about the possibility of creating a blog for our department, where we could share news, events, new acquisitions, and more. Most of my colleagues were lukewarm to the idea considering how many other “fancy new technologies” had come and gone; however, I promised this one would be more fun to use.

When I settled in on WordPress, I used a template to create what I thought would be a traditional repository blog. I quickly realized, however, that with the addition of pages, images, and other features, this could be much more. I started experimenting with pages describing the collections, as well as contact and request information. I could post PDFs, links, pages, images, news…why, it was basically a website!

After making the posts page secondary to my main page, I was able to create a “home page” for our new blog-as-website, the North Carolina Room. Because we are hosted by WordPress, we have search engine optimization so we are easily found in a Google (and other engine) search. I played around with our widgets and discovered how I could create a browse-able category list and search text box so that users can browse and search our blog’s content.

As for our reference links, I created a Del.icio.us for our department and added it as a link in our blog (another post will address Del.icio.us). I started finding other libraries that had created their web presence by taking advantage of free and/or open source web 2.0 applications like blogs and wikis, as well as a CiL session that focused on “Blogs as Websites”!

At this point, my coworkers and library administration were under the impression that I was creating a basic blog for the North Carolina Room. How could I get approval to create an entirely separate page that was inconsistent with the sterile county government “design”? I decided that the design would have to speak for itself. I sent an email to my supervisor and the library administrative board explaining the basic blog and mentioned that it included “additional information about our department, similar to a website.”

I sent the message and waited. About an hour later, a few administrators responded with glowing praise, citing the clean and appealing interface, the ease of browse and search, and the information given that was lacking in our former site. Pure joy — I was approved! The link was added to our existing department page through the county’s site by one of our government programmers and has since become essentially our new department website.

In this situation, it turns out that asking for a little was the best way to get a lot. Had I known about advanced design for blogs and creating a blog-as-website beforehand, I doubt that I would have been approved. I asked for a blog for a trial period and emerged with a department web presence to be proud of. We do use the website as a traditional blog, adding news and events — even our most technology-averse colleague gave it a try — but it is also a source of identity and creativity for our department.

I am not a web designer…but I used existing FREE tools to make something useful and beautiful for my department. So can you!

I’ve been in the stacks and in the locked cage; in the reading room and the cold storage room. I have worked as a library student worker, an intern, a research fellow, an archivist, and a librarian. I want to help people discover and rediscover primary source materials, special collections, and local history.

Beginning a blog is like beginning a record group of personal manuscripts that will someday be archived. When an archivist receives a manuscript record group, she can see the way that the records began, how they were or were not organized, and how it may have made sense (or nonsense) to the creator. I have tried to predict how this blog will work and be categorized but we will see how it evolves over time.

Here’s to the beginning!