Society of NC Archivists meeting: Morehead City

Most of this post is duplicated on the Professional Development blog at my institution.

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.

Forming iDEALS for tomorrow’s information professionals

On Monday, I participated in the first Information, Diversity, Engagement, Access and Libraries (iDEAL) Summit in the Department of Library and Information Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The innovative summit was the brainchild of new department chair Dr. Clara Chu, the event was meant to create a “community approach to discussing and identifying strategies to address information, diversity, engagement, access and libraries (iDEAL) in our education, research, practice and community building.”

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.