Archives Found

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*

Fifteen museums and cultural institutions (including the Smithsonian American Art Museum) are participating in Wikipedia Loves Art , a scavenger hunt/content-building contest that looks like a whole lot of fun. Check out the Flickr group and rules here.

Some of the prizes that looked most toothsome to me:

Indianapolis Museum of Art

The photographer with the most points (who shot at IMA) will win a fabulous prize package that includes a FREE iPod Touch, a fabulous IMA Blog t-shirt and a limited edition IMA Blog Rubik’s Cube.

Museum of Modern Art

Private after-hours tour for up to 10 people guided by an art historian.

Smithsonian American Art Museum

The winner(s) will receive a boxed set of books from our “Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum” series. In addition they will receive a special American Art Museum tote with an imprinted design based on our Kogod Courtyard roof, a tie featuring our building, a boxed set of museum note cards, and a copy of our publication Temple of Invention, about our historic building.

What are you waiting for? Get out there with your camera, and don’t forget to include me when you win that free membership or iPod!  (Thanks to Jeff Gates over at the Smithsonian Eye-Level Blog for this one!)

A (somewhat) similar local project is happening on Saturday night in Columbus, Ohio at Gallery Hop in the Short North. Several shops will be holding a photo scavenger hunt using Twitter, with gift certificate prizes. I didn’t find any information about what they’ll do with the pictures at the end, but it’s still a neat way to get patrons participating. Follow the Tweets here.

These are pretty low-budget ways to get tech-savvy folks involved that might otherwise never set foot (virtually or otherwise) in your establishment. Could you make this work for your institution, too?

With the news today that The Christian Science Monitor is moving away from their traditional print-based platform to an online-only daily version (and a weekly print magazine), I’m wondering how archives and libraries who currently receive this and similar paper publications are planning to keep these digital representations long-term. I know that there are other small publications out there that have gone to a web-only presence– how are the articles being stored for long-term access and use? Are they being stored at all for research use? (I’m not thinking just of the CSMonitor here, but of local, small papers without a national readership).  How is the information organized (content management system, I’m guessing) and is it commercially available (and viable) for other institutions who wish to purchase or license  access to materials? Do you know of small (or large) papers that have gone this route with success? Are they charging an arm and a leg for access to their stored material?

Announcement by The Christian Science Monitor

As I suspect many others are doing, I’m still trying to catch up on sleep and work backlog from my week in San Francisco. I’m hoping to post more about sessions and roundtables later, but for now,  some highlights from the Preservation Section meeting on Friday (8/29).

Announcements and Updates from consortiums and funding agencies:

Ann Russell, Executive Director, NEDCC, talked about their recent initiatives: dPlan, the online Preservation 101 course, and a digital preservation toolkit.  All of these tools could be useful for planning and understanding the scope of various collection-related issues, particularly at smaller and less-funded institutions.

Peter Wosh, SAA Publications director, spoke about a proposal for the development of a preservation manual in the same vein as the SAA Archival Fundamentals series.  There was some discussion regarding single author vs. multiple chapters/authors under a single editor, with the conclusion that either model would work for this type of manual. Contact Peter if you’re interested in working on this project. Additionally, a document that was originally intended for archivists looking at building/renovation projects is available in draft form/PDF on the SAA website. Link here.

Kathleen Williams, Executive Director, NHPRC, discussed the current funding situation. Basically, funding for NHPRC must be reauthorized every five years by Congress. It has been approved by the House, and was supposed to be introduced in the Senate sometime after Labor Day. However, being an election year, it’s possible that funding will fall under a continuing resolution (with the previous funding amount) in order to operate while everyone is out there on the stump. While I was looking for the above legislation, I found a bill introduced in the House to strike a commemorative coin for the 75th anniversary of NARA and NHPRC in 2010– HR. 6300. It’s interesting to realize how young our National Archives really is, particularly in comparison to those of other countries.

After all of the announcements, there was a panel titled “The Drive to Digitize,” which was followed by some discussion. My notes are a bit scratchy at this point, so I’m hoping that others will help fill in any gaps.

Thomas Clareson, PALINET:

-stated that priority to preserve that is driving digitization, and that he felt rumors of the demise of preservation funding in favor of digitization grants were exaggerated

-Trends helping cause: IMLS focusing more on preservation- possibly as a result of the 2005 Heritage Health Index; implementation money

- Concern: current (dormant) status of stabilization grants

-Best way to advocate for more funding is to use currently available $.  Use LoC list of preservation-friendly funding institutions, LSTA library state funding for preservation

Kaye Lanning Minchew, Troup County Archives, GA (funding recipient)

-Discussed digitization project originally slated for access purposes that turned into a preservation project.

Susan Malbin, IMLS:

-Talked about the custodianship of digital surrogates, post-grant project, and the importance of outlining future plans for these in the grantwriting process.

-Mentioned National Leadership & Laura Bush grants (deadline 12/15)

Kathleen Williams, NHPRC:

-Discussed drivers for dunding decisions

-Projects: preservation (archives and manuscripts) and documentary projects; trying to meet goals of preservation and access

-Make case that digitization needs to fall within preservation continuum, not vacuum

Joel Wurl, NEH:

-Digitization at core of institutional debate over preservation and access

-Anecdotally, digital funding has had some impact on preservation funding; not much increase in total agency funding

-Attempting to ensure future availability of resources> challenge: how to best harness interest/resources?

-Caution in thinking of granting agencies as drivers rather than listeners/facilitators

One of the things that I find myself thinking and talking about a lot is the future of archives, of the research process, and of the different levels of access that continue to evolve with the internet. I recently stumbled across the blog of Dan Cohen, and this post from April really grabbed me. Dan is talking about a discussion  at UNC-Chapel Hill where a group of historians shared their thoughts about research and digitizing the Southern Historical Collection. A snippet:

In other words, in the age of Google and advanced search tools and techniques, most historians just want to do their research they way they’ve always done it, by taking one letter out of the box at a time. One historian told of a critical moment in her archival work, when she noticed a single word in a letter that touched off the thought that became her first book.

So in Chapel Hill I was the pirate with the strange garb and ways of behaving, and this is a good lesson for all boosters of digital methods within the humanities. We need to recognize that the digital humanities represent a scary, rule-breaking, swashbuckling movement for many historians and other scholars. We must remember that these scholars have had—for generations and still in today’s graduate schools—a very clear path for how they do their work, publish, and get rewarded. Visit archive; do careful reading; find examples in documents; conceptualize and analyze; write monograph; get tenure.

Read the full post here.