#aca2014

[uzamakinaruta]

Anime Con Arkansas needs volunteers for 2015

HELLO ALL!!!! I am on the look out for awesome people to join me as volunteers for next year's Anime Con Arkansas!!!! We had an amazing first year. And to make it bigger and better we need your help. So send ACA a message and joins us for amazing con.

[allanamayer]

Here are my presentation slides (with annotations!) from ACA2014, on the topic of spreading the archival gospel to the masses. (On a one-hundred-percent-related topic, to whom should I migrate from GoDaddy?)

[allanamayer]

Pre-post-wrapup

I'm stuck in the Van airport for three hours, so I guess we can start closing some more of these ACA2014 tabs .... Here's my top tweets from the conference (why does the "more" button on twitter only lead to "embed"? Why not just make it an "embed" button?):

Do conservatives prefer museums to archives because it's easier to spin the meaning of an artefact than a record? #aca2014 #archives

— Mike Jones (@mikejonesmelb) June 26, 2014

How do archivists deal w new & emerging communities that make up society in 21stC? Does this have an impact on arc description? #aca2014

— Mike Jones (@mikejonesmelb) June 26, 2014

Allard: digital archives can knit communities together, but must have nuanced access control, esp. for marginalized communities #aca2014

— accesstomemory (@accesstomemory) June 28, 2014

(relevant to my interests 4realz)

ACA tweets = really reinforcing my sense that as a community Canada's archivists are markedly more politically astute than its librarians.

— Myron G (@Bibliocracy) June 28, 2014

(yuuuuuuuuuuup)

#aca2014 Dancy: Archivists engage in "undue diligence." We're more conservative than copyright law strictly requires.

— Alexandra Wieland (@viadiversi) June 27, 2014

(Dancy, prepare to get cited)

Thanks to everyone who came to our session- here are my slides re digital records accessioning http://t.co/VurGoIknVW #aca2014

— Sarah Romkey (@ArchivesSarah) June 28, 2014

(this was really good, Sarah!)

Eastwood (paraphrasing another): teaching management 2 students is like teaching psychology 2 someone who's never met a human being #aca2014

— ACA (@archivistsdotca) June 27, 2014

(but then he went on to say Mintzberg school of management theory is useful ....... )

[allanamayer]

Linkdump ow my brain hurts

http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2014/06/web-archiving-and-preserving-the-performing-arts-in-the-digital-age/ http://www.eyelevelgallery.ca/exhibitions/archive https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/archivefacebook/ http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/06/23/toronto_library_board_to_consider_creating_a_toronto_music_library.html http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/06/25/the_star_donates_more_than_one_million_archive_photos_to_toronto_public_library.html http://fileformats.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/tools/ http://book.freeyourmetadata.org/ https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/47260 http://rkroundtable.org/2012/12/14/reinventing-archival-methods-report-whats-next/ http://prezi.com/nixmhb4lzzy7/one-foot-in-the-door/

[allanamayer]

ACA2014 day three thought-dump

The opening plenary today was a bunch of pop-culture imagery, mainly misuse of the word "archive." It wasn't nearly as funny as MY examples .... /side-eye

Risk and Reward:

Quantifying, visualizing risks and their impacts does tend to rely a bit on brainstorming sessions and not so much on research. If you forget a certain risk or mis-conceptualize it, you're no better off.

William Kilbride tweeted that small, fragile archives need digital preservation most, but can access it least.

"METADATA IS PART OF THE ORGANIZATION, NOT PART OF THE TECHNOLOGY" - Elizabeth Walker. If I had a twitter I would tweet the heck out of this.

"Let's get internships and practicums both from LIS schools AND from computer science schools." - Walker again. Boom! Yummy.

"... and formats are obsolete-ing. .... I made a new word." - sorry, that was too cute.

So I'm thinking of starting something like an NMC Horizons report for archives technology. Specifically, cool ideas that co-opt existing or near-future tech to do neat archival things. I'm not going to be very realistic (I've never been a good predictor of new trends) but it will be a nice way to talk starry-eyes ideas together.

Kathy Ivany told a great anecdote about giving a presentation about the scariness of digital preservation to some higher-ups. Someone asked "why are you telling us this? We don't know anything about this." Kathy replied that she needed them to acknowledge the problems so that they could prioritize resources on solutions, and the audience member immediately moved to prioritize the issue. Boom!

I think maybe we should also perform a quick survey of institutions to see who (if anyone) has ever hired a CS student to do archives / digital archives, or just talked to people with CS backgrounds in the IT department. Do CS grads just liaise and negotiate, or do they get direct exposure to our work? I chose LIS over CS because I felt like I could self-train on most tech stuff, but needed the theory and scholarly work in information. Now, I want to stop my own CS training until I can work to bring all AS students up to at least my level (hint: rudimentary HTML training isn't enough).

... and then my brain basically shut down for the day. I was heartened by some mention in Laura Millar's closing plenary of archives as freelancers and consultants (re: "guns-for-hire" tweet from Thursday) and the ways in which we can incorporate "pro-bono" archiving with citizen groups into our habits and careers.

Millar: it is not about us! It is about the records and evidence. To communities: don't help us, help us to help you #aca2014

— Hannah (@hannahwiseman) June 28, 2014

Millar: funding cuts is not our crisis. Our crisis is a chaotic digital world crashing into itself, destroying trust, authenticity. #aca2014

— ACA (@archivistsdotca) June 28, 2014

#aca2014 We can't do it alone. We need to raise public awareness & get others to work on our behalf. We need to get early adopters

— Sweeney139 (@Sweeney139) June 28, 2014

#aca2014 Millar: We cannot wait for records creators, we have to go to them. We cannot do this on our own, we must enlist society to help us

— Sweeney139 (@Sweeney139) June 28, 2014

Millar: we need to engage actively and persistently with our communities if we are to survive #aca2014

— Hannah (@hannahwiseman) June 28, 2014

Millar: our records will travel the landscape, free-range with their integrity and context intact. #aca2014

— ACA (@archivistsdotca) June 28, 2014

#aca2014 Late 19th & early 20th c we had a vision of collecting both govt & private records together. Can it continue?

— Sweeney139 (@Sweeney139) June 28, 2014

in conclusion, I will strongly consider getting a twitter account before my next conference. Since I'm the only one using the hashtag on tumblr, it seems, I'll need a way to support and discuss people's online capture of events I miss (and the ones I'm at, too ....).

[allanamayer]

more narcissism

Sorry, I'm new at this.

#aca2014 Allana Mayer loves 100 year old ideas ~ archival description but maybe we should get more into technology applied to access- ouch

— Sweeney139 (@Sweeney139) June 26, 2014

.@chloe_po yes! We need more archival guns-for-hire roaming the land and helping to build understanding and capability #aca2014

— Mike Jones (@mikejonesmelb) June 26, 2014

@datalibsam @mikejonesmelb This is HAPPENING! They will call us... the A-team fodder for the guns! Rolls off the tongue.

— Chloe Powell (@chloe_po) June 27, 2014

#aca2014 Allana Mayer - "archives have a PR problem"

— Rodney Carter (@rgscarter) June 26, 2014

[allanamayer]

narcissism alert

just discovered that live-tweeting at conferences sometimes actually mentions things that you say:

#aca2014 "We should listen to what weirdos are doing" Amateurs like fan-fiction lovers find creative uses of new technology new approaches

— Sweeney139 (@Sweeney139) June 26, 2014

RT @rgscarter: #aca2014 Mayer via Craig Thompson - pay attention to what the weird people are doing #archives

— Mike Jones (@mikejonesmelb) June 26, 2014

#aca2014 Mayer - wants to tap in to existing urge to preserve that exists outside archival world - archivists have role to assist

— Rodney Carter (@rgscarter) June 26, 2014

Allana Mayer: let's not depend on social media accounts. Better to work with communities already there ex: Body Modification Easy #aca2014

— Chloe Powell (@chloe_po) June 26, 2014

Mayer - Archives as "Dark & foreboding" #aca2014 (w/ an @archivesnext shoutout) pic.twitter.com/y4Hbs2sZbu

— Rodney Carter (@rgscarter) June 26, 2014

#aca2014 Allana Mayer - archives has a PR problem - from the "show and tell" archivist to dumpster diving for non-selected matls

— Jeremy Heil (@thearchivist13) June 26, 2014

#aca2014 Alanna Mayer Citizen Archivist not rogue archivist saving stuff people are trying to get rid of or NARA using people for data entry

— Sweeney139 (@Sweeney139) June 26, 2014

(PS: It was Clive Thompson, and the source material is here.)

[allanamayer]

ACA2014 thought-dump

I've been so scattered around this conference, between presenting yesterday and taking time out for a phone interview today, that I haven't been my useful verbose liveblogging self. Let's see if I can recap what's happened so far. Thursday: - an opening plenary reporting on the Canadian Archives Summit and how everyone wishes someone else would found a Digital Public Library of Canada. I'll just be over in the corner with a sign-up sheet, if anyone wants to get this thing going. - a great session on the future of the archival bond online - how multiple contexts and linkages and linear narratives can coexist and be represented. It was something I think we've all articulated to ourselves but not thought about in practice. My presentation dealt primarily with how to impose archival context and description upon otherwise scattered, user-defined collections online, although I'm not sure how well all of that came across. - (my thing, which I'm still sort of rehearsing in my head post-facto, trying to better articulate things I skimmed in the presentation) (someone came up to me afterwards and said we should offer an Archiving 101 MOOC. I'm thinking it over.) - there's a page in my notes that says "WHAT IF: an international digital image registry .......... WHAT IF: Unicorns, though." (then I went home and won some beer in the hostel pub trivia.) Friday: - the opening plenary was a mess of objectionable ideas, the main one being that Mintzberg-style management theories are useful for MLIS students. They're not. The project management class at McGill is a hot mess, and it's all because it teaches the wrong kind of soft skills for our discipline. I've always believed (and you can call me on the stereotyping if you wish) that the same skills that make for a good information professional (organization, meticulousness, systems thinking that allows for seeing a big picture as well as fine details) is going to obviously transfer well to good managemet. What we lack are some interpersonal skills, psych 101, articulation, communication, and the kinds of negotation and compromise skills that take place in any board-governed or government-funded institution: advocacy, articulating the value of archives, outreach and public presence. If there's anything an MLIS management class should teach, it's feedback and metrics, how to ask for help from the rest of the community, how to write a great report, grant proposals and fundraising tactics, proving our value and making ourselves sustainable. I think most libraries and archives are run really well (for the resources they have). Maybe calculated-risk-taking should be a lecture (or two). My favourite part of this morning's plenary was actually my mishearing something: Catherine said "understanding how information flows" as part of a description in good thinking for archivists. I heard "how information floats." I'm pretty I'm more accurate than her -- think of the first page of Google search results as information that floats to the surface, obscuring what lies underneath. - copyright session, particularly on orphaned works, digitization, media-sharing, and the fear of the unknown. Film is literally disintegrating faster than we can clear rights for it. Which means it can be an unattractive acquisition if it means you spend more money on preservation and cataloguing than it's worth if someone issues you a copyright claim over it. The first speaker brought up the great point that sometimes we digitize and put online stuff that then makes for better publicity and marketing for the artist than if we'd just left it alone. Everyone wins when we take copyright risks! She also mentioned that the scope of expected copyright use (as written in the usage legislation) is usually much larger than actual use (i.e. big media v. small documentaries and film festivals). "Well-intentioned" is the new "good faith" and "due diligence." Someone in the audience mentioned watermarking images as a good way to stop bad infringement, which I think is kind of problematic in the wake of the guidelines I posted on this blog previously about waiving your rights as the digitizing institution to claim property over the copies of public-domain materials. That's it so far; I had to step out of the afternoon sessions because of brain-overload. Hopefully this blurb will help clear that up.