Archives Found

[sorry for the dreadful pun; I just couldn't restrain myself.]

This is an excerpt from a post that I’ve added to the (closed) course discussion board for LIS 2223: Archival Access, Advocacy, and Ethics. I’ve talked about PAHR before on the blog, but I think that it’s important to continue discussing and supporting this and other archival advocacy efforts.

PAHR is a bill, introduced in the House of Representatives, authorizing the Archivist of the United States to provide grant funding for preservation and records projects at the state level. Last summer at the SAA meeting in Austin, PAHR advocacy was a hot topic in many of the roundtables and several sessions.

While this site is somewhat outdated, you can read about the bill and funding allocation, as well as talking points, background information, and a list of sponsors by state.

Why is PAHR important? As discussed yesterday in class, funding is important to continuing the mission/vision of archives. Visibility and building a coalition of support may be even more important, and while the money that this bill provides will certainly be welcomed by the recipients; the lasting legacy of this particular could be laying the foundation for future support.
I’d like to encourage you to read the bill on the PAHR site and then tell me if you agree or disagree, and explain your position.

PAHR site: http://www.archivists.org/pahr/index.asp

GovTrack: H.R.2256

Library of Congress summary: H.R.2256

Some links that might be of interest:

SAA 2009 session #210: Money, Money, Money: Lessons from Successful Advocates for Archives Funding: http://saa.archivists.org/Scripts/4Disapi.dll/4DCGI/events/eventdetail.html?Action=Events_Detail&InvID_W=1254

Recent developments noted on ArchivesNext by Kathleen Roe (but not yet added to PAHR site): Truly fantastic news about PAHR

PAHR Facebook group

I’m preparing to spend 1.5 days as a participant at THATCamp Columbus, and I’m really excited about the possibilities. Some of you may recall that I was also a participant in THATCamp Austin back in August, and I came away from that experience with some solid ideas and some good starting points for future exploration.

A partial description from the website of the Ohio Humanities Council:

THATcamp (The Humanities And Technology Camp) Columbus, a collaborative effort of the Ohio Humanities Council and the Center for Public History and Digital Humanities at Cleveland State University, is a user-generated “unconference” on digital humanities inspired by the Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University.    We’ve already received a lot of support from the Digital Humanities community, so we’re expecting this to be an exciting and entertaining event.

Looking back, I see that I never posted a review of my experiences at THATCamp Austin. Lo siento. While a full review may not be in the cards, I can say that I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of interest in the topic of crowdsourcing and archives/cultural heritage. As it turned out, Ben Brumfield and I ended up chatting with a decent-sized crowd in the large auditorium during the first session. Ben’s working on a neat volunteer transcription project called From the Page that he had previously demoed at THATCamp 2008. The Austin version of THATCamp was short, and Ben’s talked about some of the other challenges elsewhere. On the plus side, I found that this was a fantastic opportunity to meet/mingle with digital humanities folks that I’d wanted to meet for awhile, and while there were some familiar faces, I think this was a great way for a lot of newer, digitally minded archivists and programmers to share and receive ideas. There was a lot of positive energy generated even in that short evening, and because of the tie-in with the Society of American Archivists annual meeting, I had the chance to talk with some (though not all) of the THATCampers during the rest of the conference week. I’m hoping that something similar can be organized for the Washington DC meeting this summer.

I’ll be back to talk about THATCamp Columbus after it’s over! *fingers crossed*

The State Library of Massachusetts, for now– but for how long? Governor Deval Patrick (for whom I voted in 2006) is now threatening to close the library because of state budget issues. If you disagree with this, sign the petition here and let the governor’s office know that this is a bad idea. You can read the Boston Globe article about the $600 million budget gap and impending layoffs here.

A big thumbs up to Massachusetts Library Association members who rallied on Boston Common at the State House yesterday to support libraries. What are you doing to show your support for libraries and archives in your state? Have you contacted your legislator about PAHR (Preserving the American Historical Record) yet? Don’t just be a patron of your favorite institutions– be a supporter. Make sure that your voice has been heard by your legislators in support of libraries and archives.

Thanks to ArchivesNext for bringing this story to our attention.

Tree outside of Heinz Chapel, Pittsburgh

On this gorgeous and unusually warm Friday, I’m looking out at the beautiful leaves on campus from the top floor of the library and thinking about some writing that I’d like to finish this weekend. I’ve been finding a lot of good projects and links lately, and thought I’d share a few with you here:

Call for Papers- DH2010 – Digital Humanities conference at Kings College, London- the theme is “cultural expression, old and new.” Deadline for paper abstracts is Nov 15; conference is in early July 2010.

THATCamp Columbus- regional Digital Humanities unconference based on the popular annual THATCamp at George Mason University. They’re taking proposals now for the January 2010 conference that will be held at Columbus State. I participated in THATCamp Austin this summer, and had so much fun that I’d like to go to Columbus, too– I found it to be a great place to generate discussion and ideas.

Digital Humanities Quarterly- lots of interesting articles in this open-access, peer-reviewed journal, and I’ve been catching up on my reading.

Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology- This is an interesting place to look at the ways in which technology can shape discussion, knowledge and scholarship.

I’m also following the folks at the fall MARAC conference on Twitter– you can too! #marac

Have you found any good resources that relate to the study/use of “digital humanities” that you’d like to share?

Please post ‘em here!

What are your plans for Saturday, October 17th?

If your answer was anything other than “of course I’ll be celebrating Home Movie Day!” you have plenty of time to change your mind. Rake the leaves during the week, set up Tivo to capture the college football games, grab the popcorn and head over to your local Home Movie Day.

What is Home Movie Day? Started in 2002 by a film-loving bunch of archivists and moving image folks, HMD is a sort of ad-hoc amateur film fest, and a celebration of home movies at the local level. You can read more about it here.

Coincidentally, October is also Archives Month. Have you thought about hosting, or perhaps providing film-friendly expertise for your local Home Movie Day? This could be a great opportunity for outreach, and for connecting with your community. Do you have any home movies in your collection that would be of interest during HMD? (Incidentally, this could also serve as a yearly reminder to check the home movies and other films in your collection for any new deterioration or issues).

Anyway, you have almost three weeks until HMD. That could be enough time to secure a projector and a room, haul out the A-D strips, get the word out to the community, and start on the popcorn. Or you could start planning ahead for next year.

Related links:

August 2003 NPR story on Home Movie Day- Lost and Found Sound: Exploring Home Movies and Ephemeral Films

Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) and Film Forever (the AMIA Home Film Preservation Guide)

The Orphan Film Symposium

Living Room Cinema: Films from Home Movie Day

National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF)

The 75th International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) conference is being held in Milan, Italy from August 23-37, 2009.The theme of the 2009 conference is “Libraries create futures. Building on cultural heritage.”

Unfamiliar with IFLA? Here’s a little bit about the organization:

The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. It is the global voice of the library and information profession.

Founded in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1927 at an international conference, we celebrated our 75th birthday at our conference in Glasgow, Scotland in 2002. We now have 1600 Members in approximately 150 countries around the world. IFLA was registered in the Netherlands in 1971.

Read more about IFLA here.

Preconference/satellite events coming up:

IFLA Preconference 2009: Digital Information for Democracy: Information, Access, and Preservation (August 19; Rome, Italy)

Moving in, Moving up, Moving on: Strategies for Regenerating the Library and Information Profession (August 18-20; Bologna, Italy)

Conservation and preservation of library material in a cultural-heritage oriented context (August 31-September 1; Rome, Italy)

You may find a full list of satellite meetings associated with IFLA 2009 here.

There are a LOT of interesting-looking sessions. Here are a few conference events that may be of particular interest:

Session 92: Statistics and Evaluation, Information Technology and Preservation and Conservation

Statistics for cultural heritage

• Statistics in preservation as a basis for positive action
  IRMHILD SCHÄFER (Bavarian State Library, Munich, Germany)
• Statistical tools for the evaluation of preservation needs
  ALISON WALKER and JULIA FOSTER (British Library, London, UK)
• The project NUMERIC: statistics for the digitisation of the European cultural heritage
  ROSWITHA POLL (Münster, Germany)
• Digital cultural heritage in the Netherlands: collecting statistics on production investments, and use
  TRILCE NAVARRETE HERNÁNDEZ and  FRANK HUYSMANS (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
• Measuring usage of cultural heritage documents; The German project Open Access Statistics
  MATTHIAS SCHULZE (University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany)
• Metrics and strategies for Web Heritage management and preservation
  EMMANUELLE BERMÈS and GILDAS ILLIEN (National Library of France, Paris, France)
• The DISCmap project: Digitisation of Special Collections: mapping, assessment, prioritisation
  MILENA DOBREVA (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK) et al.
• Museum statatistical data in Germany and Europe
  MONIKA HAGEDORN-SAUPE and AXEL ERMERT (Institute for Museum Research, Berlin, Germany)

Session 163- Rare Books and Manuscripts, Preservation and Conservation and Library History

Dispersed cultural collections. Preservation, reconstruction and access

• Virtual reunification, virtual preservation and enhance conservation at the British Library
  HELEN SHENTON (British Library, London, UK)
• Virtual reunification as the future of ‘codices dispersi’: Practices and standards developed by e-codices Virtual Library of Switzerland [Français]
  ANNE MARIE AUSTENFELD (Mediävistisches Institut der Universitsät Freiburg, Freiburg, Switzerland)
• Discovering and studying the ancient handwritten cultural heritage
  ORNELLA FOGLIENI and GILIOLA BARBERO (Regione Lombardia, Milan, Italy)
• The library of the Cistercian Abbey of Clairvaux at the time of Pierre de Virey (1472)
  LOUIS BURLE (Médiathèque de l’agglomération Troyenne, Troyes, France)
• Deconstruction and reconstruction: detecting and interpreting sophisticated copies
  MARGARET LANE FORD (Christie’s, London, UK)
• Dispersed musical treasures. The music autographs of Beethoven and Bach at the Berlin State Library [Deutsch]
  BARBARA SCHNEIDER-KEMPF (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, Germany)
• ‘Returning home’: migration and repatriation of Latvian cultural objects and collections
  INESE A. SMITH (Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK)

Session 193- Information Technology

New repositories: architectures interoperability and data exchange

• Not (just) a repository, nor (just) a digital library, nor (just) a portal: a portrait of Europeana as an API [Français]
  CESARE CONCORDIA (CNR-ISTI, Pisa, Italy), STEFAN GRADMANN (Humboldt- Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany) and  SJOERD SIEBINGA (Europeana Development, The Hague, Netherlands)
• Video active – European television heritage online
  JOHAN OOMEN (Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, The Netherlands),  VASSILIS TZOUVARAS (National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece) and MARCO RENDINA (Instituto Luce, Italy)
• A trust P2P network for the access to open archive resources
  EMANUELE BELLINI and PAOLO NESI (University of Florence, Florence, Italy)
• Persistent identifier distributed system for digital libraries
  MAURIZIO LUNGHI, EMANUELE BELLINI, MAURIZIO LANCIA, BRUNELLA SEBASTIANI, MASSIMILIANO SACCONE, ROBERTO PUCCINELLI  and  MARCO SPASIANO (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Rome, Italy)

You may find the full IFLA 2009 conference program here.

Want to keep up with news coming from Milan? On Twitter, follow @IFLA_HQ and watch for #ifla09

Think this all sounds pretty interesting? IFLA 2010 will be in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Additional links:

• Conference programs from IFLA 2008- Quebec, Canada and IFLA 2007- Durban, South Africa.

• IFLA Rare Books and Manuscripts SectionBlog by senior IFLA policy advisor, Stuart Hamilton

• 2007 and 2008 highlights from 025.431: The Dewey Blog

We found out in mid-June that we were selected as a recipient of the IMLS Connecting to Collections Bookshelf in the final round of awards. Since then, I’ve been itching to receive the materials from the American Association of State & Local History (AASLH) so that I could review them and put together a short presentation for the department.

The intent of the Bookshelf, as stated (in part) by the press release:

To help raise the conservation IQ of museums, libraries, and archives, IMLS, in cooperation with the American Association of State and Local History (AASLH), is offering 2000 free copies of the Connecting to Collections Bookshelf, a core set of books, DVDs, online resources, and an annotated bibliography that are essential for the care of collections.

Over at Spellbound Blog, Jeanne provides a great overview of the contents of the Bookshelf here, and points out that some of these resources are freely available online. For example, the Guide to Online Resources is divided into six sections, such as Preparing and Responding to Emergencies, and then further broken down into the categories of Prepare and Respond. Having dealt with a collection-related environmental disaster and written a disaster plan over the past year, I think that being able to find all of this information in one easy place is a boon to any archivist, librarian, curator, or director. While having a plan in place prior to disaster is important, no plan will cover every contingency– and having these resources at your fingertips could be very useful. A group of resources for discovering funding, the Increase Support for Collections section breaks down into three parts: Funding, Promoting, and Informing the Public.  Think there’s something missing? You can email the IMLS to suggest other resources for inclusion on the site.

The intent of the Bookshelf is to help smaller institutions establish better preservation/conservation practices. While we’re a larger state institution (and a regional repository), I do spend a lot of my of time working with individuals and local programs that really need a helping hand when it comes to basic preservation practices. Because this is the largest city (and largest archive/library) within a six hour drive, we’re a resource for many small historical societies, town archives, and local genealogical researchers. My hope is that the Bookshelf can be utilized in this area as a source of preservation knowledge and as a starting point for some small local workshops and outreach programs.

Look for more on the books and other materials once they appear on my doorstep.

Those of you who visit the site (versus reading along via feed reader) may notice a few changes. I completed several major WordPress upgrades on Sunday (from 2.2.3 to 2.8.1– gulp!), and hopefully that will fix some of the attendant issues that have been plaguing Archives Found headquarters. The layout, blogroll, links and theme here haven’t changed for awhile, and I’ll probably be monkeying around with that over the next few days. Please let me know if you’re having trouble with leaving comments, or with anything else on the site– you can send me an email (archivist at archivesfound.com).

As a result of my post on the certified archivist exam, I’ve been receiving some email about study groups for the CA exam in August. I’m not taking the exam this year (I’m already a CA), but for those who want to study, I understand that there are forums over at the ACA website for that purpose. If you’d like to link up with someone, that’s probably the best place to do so. There are fourteen test sites this year, and so I’d guess that there are a lot of potential “study buddies” out there.

Something I’d like to mention on the personal front– I’ll be leaving my archivist job at the end of August, and starting in the doctoral program at Pitt in the fall.  Never fear, dear readers– I’m certain that I will still have things to talk about here. In fact, as I’ve started to clear out my inbox, I’ve found that I have lots and lots to talk about– as soon as I have time. Fingers crossed for at least one new post this week, and for a few more prior to SAA- Austin. Thanks for reading along!

 Update: According to the Columbus Dispatch, Ohio lawmakers have passed an interim budget that will last through July 7. This means that you have more time to make calls, send emails, and rally supporters for this cause. Get to work!

The Ohio Historical Society (a nonprofit org that serves as the state archives of Ohio) is now facing a massive potential cut in state funding to the tune of 45%– from $13.5 million to $7.5 million over the next two years. This will reduce the OHS to the level of state funding that they held in 1986.

Some of the consequences of this year’s OHS budget cuts include:

• Eliminate teacher training and educational programs that leverage federal funding
• Eliminate National History Day in Ohio, a national program which originated in Ohio
• Eliminate the Local History Office that serves 800 local history organizations
• Eliminate the Civil War Sesquicentennial (2011-2015) initiative
• Eliminate the Ohio Historical Markers program
• Severely restrict OHS services throughout the state
• Reduce our ability to generate nonstate revenues (i.e., federal grants, private revenue)
• Reduce access to historic sites and museums
• Reduce our ability to recruit local organizations to manage sites
• Reduce assistance and resources to sites management organizations

The Ohio Historical Society has been struggling with funding issues for a long time– you may recall that I talked about this back in February; matters have not improved. Since then, they have tried mandatory furloughs for employees, local fundraising, and sustained, tireless efforts at raising the awareness of legislators and Ohioans. Want to know what I think? All Ohioans– past, present, and future have a stake; and thus, a responsibility to get involved. How to get involved, you ask?

• Talk to your colleagues, your students, your patrons, your friends and family. Relate your personal and professional stories about Ohio history and genealogy. Have you used the Ohio Death Certificate Index or Ohio military rosters in your research? Have you used resources from the Ohio Memory project in your classroom?
• Have you been to the Serpent Mound? Watched a vintage “base ball” game in Ohio Village? Visited the Neil Armstrong Air & Space Museum, the Ulysses S. Grant Boyhood Home, the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center, Fort Meigs, or the National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center? Share your experiences, and urge others to do the same.
• Contact the governor and your legislators. Tell them that cutting funding for Ohio cultural heritage should not be an option. In fact, do it even if you don’t live in Ohio. Let ‘em know that preserving history is important.
• Spread the word via social network– send a letter to the editor, post it on your Facebook, Twitter, and wherever else. In fact, go to Governor Strickland’s Facebook page and post, too. Spread awareness in a firm, factual way, and try to do it before the budget vote tomorrow in Columbus- Tuesday, June 30.

On a personal note- I have already sent my emails and made my calls. Though I no longer live in Ohio, I proudly hold a bachelor’s degree from the history department at The Ohio State University. I have visited many of the historical sites in Ohio, and believe that preserving Ohio history is important not only to Ohioans, but to the nation and to the world. Even if you do not have a personal connection to this situation, I hope that we can agree that preserving, protecting, and providing access to state historical records is of vital importance. Please join me in contacting Ohio legislators and asking them to reconsider these drastic cuts..

Additional links:

Save Ohio Libraries

Save Ohio History

Ohio Library Council

This year, I planned a full day of disaster and salvage-type activities for all staff, but due to scheduling conflicts it will not happen until the end of May. Unfortunately, that means that I don’t get to participate in all of the cool MayDay-type stuff that seems to be going on elsewhere– here are some of the 2009 participants. Take a look at past MayDay festivities from 2007 and 2008. Tell Heritage Preservation about your May Day festivities and you could win a disaster-themed prize here.

Did you see any really neat May Day stuff that I didn’t mention? Please post and tell me about it!