Simmons GSLIS: Dispatches from the Field

Greetings!

While I was at SAA last week, David Dwiggins and I discussed posting to this blog, and I'm happy to submit some thoughts as a guest blogger. Due to spotty internet access in DC, I saved my posting for the return to Boston. For the sake of organization (and just to confuse everyone, really), I'm going to backdate some of these posts so that they fall with the rest of David's SAA posts.

A few words about me: I'm a GSLIS student, archives concentrator, and I started the program last fall. While I had some archives experience before coming to Simmons, I have gained a lot from both the internships and from the coursework, and I am really excited by the idea of joining the profession soon. I currently work part-time in the textual processing unit for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, and I am the president of the Simmons student chapter of SAA (SCOSAA).

Because SCOSAA was selected for a graduate student poster presentation at the conference, I spent some time organizing the content and gathering photos of students and faculty for the display. The poster was large (28 x 44), and because it needed to be printed on a plotter, presented some difficulties. I definitely had an adventure during my grand tours of Boston and DC Kinkos stores-- but it all worked out. I'll post the finished product here, as well as in the GSLIS lounge if possible.

Our presentation slot was on Thursday evening, and many people stopped by to comment and ask questions about Simmons and the student group, including several prospective students. During that same time period, recent Simmons graduate Krista Ferrante presented her own poster session on Digital Object Identifiers, which was extremely interesting. She had quite a crowd, and Richard Pearce Moses (SAA President) even stopped by to talk with her!

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Moldy Book
Originally uploaded by D-.

This session featured Ann Wakefield of the New Orleans Notarial Archives, Lee Hampton of the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, and Hank Holmes of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. The trio described their experiences dealing with the aftermath of last year’s devastating Hurricanes (especially Katrina).

Wakefield described difficulties returning to her facility (they had to negotiate a “hold harmless” agreement with the building’s owner before he would allow them to return.) When they were able to assess the state of facilities, they discovered extensive damage and many wet records. She noted the problems caused by water even on records that had been professionally freeze dried. The biggest problem was water soluble inks, which were commonly used on the legal documents held by the archive. In some cases, signatures have been entirely washed away. (Luckily, the state held backup microfilm copies of the documents.)

Hank Holmes described his trips to southern Misssissippi to salvage collections at small facilities located around the state. Challenges included being unable to access buildings because of damage, lack of supplies, electricity, running water, and workspace, and extensive damage and mold growth in many facilities. (He took the inset photo of a record book covered with mold.) They were able to make use of donated freezer space from a grocery company to freeze wet materials in Jackson, and later got a grant for a freezer truck which allowed them to travel around the state loading wet records. He noted another challenge in some areas was the lack of street signs – they had been swept away by the storm surge.

Hampton’s facilities fared relatively well. There was some water seepage in the main building, and an offsite storage facility flooded, but not to the level where records were stored. He also noted that Tulane was able to quickly contract with a company to provide generators and emergency air conditioning, which likely helped saved collections from mold growth. He noted the problems faced because Archivists were not considered official “first responders,” and were thus unable to get back into the city to assess the state of collections. To help preserve cultural heritage in the future, he proposed working on this for the future.

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Original Aladdin Lunchbox Art
Originally uploaded by D-.

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As a history student, I found this to be an utterly fascinating session. It was led by Roy Rosenzweig and Dan Cohen, both of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. The two presenters are co-authors of Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving and Presenting the Past on the Web.

I missed the first few minutes or so of the presentation, but I got enough out of the rest to more than make up for it. The session discussed some of the projects undertaken by the CHNM such as the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank, the 9/11 Digital Archive, Firefox Scholar and the Syllabus Finder.

They pointed out the new opportunities for historical research presented as large digital collections become available. For example, Dan talked about how he had extracted all items in the center's September 11 digital repository that mentioned 9 AM, then geocoded them and plotted them using Google Maps. This allows viewers to pan around Lower Manhattan and click on pushpins to see and hear the experiences of people just after the planes crashed into the twin towers.

As another example, he discussed taking mentions of CNN, Fox News, the radio, and prayer and plotting them on a map of the United States using Google Earth. And of using the massive collection of syllabi gathered through the center's syllabus finder to study which books are being used in history courses in the US. (And noted that if teachers are consistently assigning outside reading in, say, African-American history, this may be an indication that textbook authors are not covering the topic adequately in core texts.)

Dan lamented the fact that the APIs that enable this type of novel research are currently being offered mostly by private companies, and he called on librarians and archivists to learn from the example and open up their digital collections for this type of quantitative research.

Dan has a blog where he commonly discusses these topics and also promised to post a primer on creating Google Earth KML files from archival datasets. Cool stuff!

I also once again took a ton of notes at this session, which you can find after the jump. They're a great read!

Continue reading "Possibilities and Problems of Digital History and Digital Collections" »

Posted by David Dwiggins at 06:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Despite all the verbiage in the name, this was one of the best sessions I attended at the SAA conference, because it focused so clearly on a real need in the profession and offered a tangible and practical solution. The session centered on Archon a brand new software project that has just been released by Chris Prom, Scott Schwartz, and Chris Richel at UIUC. The system is designed as an affordable and relatively simple option for automating very archives (hence the "lone arrangers" focus in the session title), but I think perhaps the creators are being modest -- it has features that even some larger organizations could take advantage of.

The system runs on a PHP5 and MySQL platform -- which can both be installed on a variety of operating systems. It allows for the heirarchical cataloging of archival collections (down to the item level if you wish), and has capabilities to both import and export standard formats such as EAD and MARC. It also provides a public frontend to the archival database, and even allows attachment of digital files for use as a digital library.

I can see immediate applications for this software, and I'm hoping to get it up and running at Simmons for use in archival classes. (Even if the software had no other capabilities, the ability to easily create EAD files using a form is extremely useful.)

The only thing that gave me pause on this was the license under which UIUC has chosen to release it. Rather than using a "true" open source license like the GPL, they have released it under an Academic and Research Use License (PDF) which prevents use by any commercial entity, and seems to include some other restrictions. (Apparently the GPL was rejected because UIUC could "lose control" of the software.) This is unfortunate, since if this software lives up to its promise, it deserves to attract a wide following of users and developers. The more proprietary restrictions UIUC puts on the software, the less likely this is to happen.

It's also unfortunate that the software requires PHP5, since many servers still run older editions of PHP4 and the need to upgrade may make the software less accessible for some users. But this is surmountable, and after talking to Chris Rishel I understand why he did it.

The panel included views from two other early testers of the software: Deborra Richardson of the National Museum of American History, and Pamela Nye, an archival consultant. (Nye is pregnant and was unable to appear in person, but she sent a Powerpoint and some remarks.) Neither of the two reviewers was able to get the software running first hand -- one due to technical problems and one due to organizational issues. However, it seems like these problems are not really related to the core product itself. Both had tested the functionality on the UIUC system, and seemed to think it offered a great deal of potential.

While talking with program attendees after the conference, I also became aware of a parallel development effort being sponsored by the International Council on Archives. It sounds like the two teams are tackling many of the same problems -- there may be opportunities for collaboration in the future.

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Archivists in the Movies
Originally uploaded by D-.

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Book Scanner
Originally uploaded by D-.

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Probably the most spirited session of the day was the standing-room-only panel on government secrecy, chaired by Tom Connors and featuring Rick Blum, Ira Chinoy, and Tom Blanton.

Blanton is with the National Security Archive, a repository at George Washington University that gathers and disseminates declassified materials. He is a thoughtful and passionate critic of excessive government secrecy, and his thoughts helped clarify how the current culture of secrecy came to be.

Chinoy made me wish I was back in journalism school. Although I became aware of Computer Assisted Reporting after attending a NICAR conference, I never took a formal class in it during my four years at Syracuse. Chinoy not only teaches such a class, but he requires his students to identify a database held by the state of Maryland that should be public record, and then attempt to get it from the state. Having provided technical expertise for reporters making this sort of request while I was at The Tennessean, I am very aware of the many ways government officials can find to stymie information requests. Having students do this sort of thing increases awareness of the importance of open government -- both among students and among state government officials. Chinoy says his favorite thing is when students get so fed up with the fact that the information is being witheld that they pursue it after the end of the semester -- one student kept going for nine months until he finally wheedled the database out of the state.

Look below for another voluminous set of notes...

Continue reading "Secrecy vs Access: Government Information in the George W Bush Era" »

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DSpace
Originally uploaded by D-.

Two of the panelists were from MIT, which originally designed the system in conjunction with Hewlett-Packard. The third was from the Kansas State Historical Society, which is using DSpace to store an archive of digital reports submitted to the state legislature. (See KSpace)

The system has the benefit of being free, open source software, but it also has a reputation of requiring a great deal of IT support to maintain. The MIT folks emphasized that the policy decisions are much harder than making the IT work. But then again, we don't all have the resources of MIT. Veatch (from Kansas) said that having an IT person leave had made it difficult to make progress on the project because of the skill level needed to do customization and modifcation.

Overall, this was a useful introduction to the system. I was aware of DSpace prior to this, but the session gave me a better understanding of how it's being used in the real world. I'd like to try getting a copy up and running on a server in the Tech Lab back at GSLIS so that we can play around with it a bit. Hmm, maybe a project for this fall...

As before, see below for another impressionistic transcript...

Continue reading "Making Technology Work: DSpace and its implementations" »

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This morning, I attended a session entitled “Yizkor books, Weblogs and Ethnic Cleansing: Grassroots Documentation and New Technologies,” presented by Rosemary Horowitz of Appalachian State University and Andràs Riedlmayer of Harvard University. The session was moderated by Stephen Naron,

The session focused on “Yuzkor books” and other ways in which communities decimated by genocide and massive displacement have come together to preserve a historical record of their communities.

Horowitz focused her presentation primarily on “A Tale of One City: Piotrkow Trybunalski,” a Yuzkor book edited by Ben Giladi. Riedlmayer expanded on this, and also discussed the websites that were created by survivors of the ethnic cleansing campaigns that took place in Serbia in the 1990s. (example)These websites present a special problem for historians and archivists because they are so ephemeral. If somone forgets to pay the hosting bill, valuable historical documentation may be lost forever.

Follow the link below for detailed notes from the session...

Continue reading "Yizkor books, Weblogs and Ethnic Cleansing: Grassroots Documentation and New Technologies" »

Posted by David Dwiggins at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So far this blog has focused mainly on the international initiatives being pursued by Simmons. Stay tuned for more of that – expect additional posts from the group currently working in Kosovo, and several of us will be traveling to Nicaragua starting next week. But we’re also expanding the focus of the blog to address other happenings related to libraries, information science, archives, and other related disciplines.

So to start this off, for the next few days I’ll be blogging from the Society of American Archivists conference currently underway in steamy, sticky 100-degree heat in Washington, DC. There may also be some other surprise guest bloggers -- stay tuned!

A bit about me: I’m currently a student in the Archives/History dual degree program at Simmons, and I also work as part of the GSLIS Technology Group at Simmons as the Dean’s Fellow for Technology Support. I started at Simmons in January – prior to that I was Systems Editor and Library Manager at the Tennessean newspaper in Nashville, Tenn. That’s where I first picked up the library and archives bug, which I later nurtured by attending the Modern Archives Institute at NARA’s College Park facility. Coming to Simmons in January was the next logical step – I’m enjoying the chance to study something I’m truly interested in.

I arrived in DC late last night after a mad dash for the Manchester airport involving bikes, cas and buses. After spending the night at my parents’ house in nearby Maryland, I hopped on the subway this morning and headed down to DuPont Circle, the closest Metro stop to the Hilton. (It’s supposedly only four blocks away, but it felt a lot further in the heat!)

Now I'm getting ready for the first sessions -- stay tuned for details. (Note that I'll be posting on a time delay, since there's a lack of Internet at the conference hotel.)

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On Wednesday evening, SAA held a reception at the new Public Vaults exhibit of the National Archives. While one highlight/amusement was definitely the idea of drinking juice and eating cookies in the Rotunda, mere feet from the charters of freedom, the entire museum experience was interesting and interactive. Walking through the exhibit, I felt as though I was discovering new information (which was probably the intent), and I saw lots of archivists touching things and using the interactive displays. One of my favorite parts of the exhibit was an enlarged cartoon depicting the life cycle of a record, which was actually really funny. I really wish that I had taken a picture-- serious bonus points to anyone who can find it for me!

The company that designed the interactive display sections (Second Story) has some demos online that might be of interest-- National Archives Public Vaults Exhibit (use QuickTime to view). In particular, I found the immigration records display to be very interesting, but I did see a lot of archivists watching early videos of presidents (think George Bush at the age of 5), as well as video of amusing presidential anecdotes, which seemed a bit like a blooper reel.

I think that after the Rotunda, I saw the most archivists hanging out in the gift shop. Nothing like having a bunch of archivists in town to get the cash registers ringing at the National Archives-- there were a lot of souvenir t-shirts and coffee mugs leaving the building.

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