The Anarchivist

Post-Blogging Post

2008-11-08T13:07:00.001-05:00

Rob Jensen came to the blogging session afterwards to explain that he and others at the MARAC registration desk were reading the live blogging Arian Ravanbaksh, John LeGloahec, and I were doing at the session, even leaving a comment on one. That's live blogging.

archivity furthers

Blogging Blogging: Q&A

2008-11-08T12:58:00.001-05:00

Crowne Plaza, Room 1104, Silver Spring, Maryland

Questions about the session focus primarily on how to manage their own blogging.

Kate notes that bloggers will have to keep preservation in mind, since the service provider does not.

There was a question about whether people are addressing the issue of reuse of blog comments by the institutions with the blog.

Another asks if researcers might be worried about the reference blog, since they might be proprietary about their research and not want others to use it. Jim notes that the researcher are not told about the blog but neither are their names or research projects named.

Question: Any problem with having a blog on a collection related to a living person. Elizabeth Hull notes that they have not had such problems, even from High Morton's family.

In answer to another question, Jim notes that they are working to convert their old reference files to the new system but that this is not a priority.

archivity furthers

Blogging Blogging: Gerencser

2008-11-08T12:45:00.001-05:00

Crowne Plaza, Room 1104, Silver Spring, Maryland

One blogging problem in this session I just downladed a blogging app, which works reasonably well but doesn't save drafts, so I just lost an almost complete posting because I switched to another program on the iPhone for a second. Hence no posting on Elizabeth Hull's presentation.

Jim Gerencser is nose discussing thee Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections reference blog. He is talking about how to manage data related to remote reference requests better than over the prior paper process.

There new solution was for the results of the reference transaction to be posted on the blog. One advantage of this is that a user might find their way to Dickinson College while searching for the same information. As Jim says, "Google is God nowadays." Another advantage of this blog is to allow the results of the reference event to be easily searchable by staff re-searching for the same information.

(The two laptop bloggers have been shut down by lost battery power, but I go on thumbing against the iPhone, borne forward ceaselessly into the future.)

Jim shows us the blog postings, which retain the confidentiality of the researcher. They are always careful to include proper nouns for the valuable use with search engines. Blog postings include links to finding aids and other resources and they use tags to allow a user to find all the postings on the same topic. Commenting is allowed, but they have never received a comment and don't expect much use of commenting. Interestingly, users who could not find the finding aid have found the blog. These blog entries are quite simple and to the point, reducing the language primarily to searchable essentials.

The system also tracks the specific fees charged and researcher name (although these are not posted to the blog), allowing the to run statistics, such as those identifying the general topic (genealogy, local history, etc.) of the requests. They use Drupal to manage this blog.

Refeence stories are cuatomizable, findable, searchable, linkable, taggable, and obtainable. They hope in the future to have scanned images of retrieved records included in the system, just as they currently have detailed information on location of the material.

archivity furthers

Blogging Blogging: Theimer

2008-11-08T11:38:00.002-05:00

At MARAC blogging on an iPhone about a session where Kate Theimer is mentioning me. Kate talks about types of archival blogging: processing blog, institutional news blog, and personal opinion blog. She discusses the simple technology for the blogger and the features and functionality you can choose for a blog. Her opening discusses some basics about bringing traffic to a blog: announcements elsewhere, getting on a thematic aggregator (like ArchivesBlogs), and linking to other blogs. Kate notes that she gets comments even from Europe and that she has a book deal even because of the blog. She notes that blogging is publishing, a very public venue, which a blogger need to keep in mind. She notes that some bloggers include much personal information, but that is a personal choice. Her point appears to be to advise the beginning or potential blogger about archives.

She ends by "pretending" to like the three of us (LeGloahec, Ravanbaksh, and me) because we are livebligging the session.

archivity furthers

Of Archives and Poetry Redux

2008-09-04T20:23:00.002-04:00

Tom Beckett and I have continued our conversation about poetry and archives, and I've decided to post that part of our conversation in the interest of completeness:

Tom Beckett: I worked on The Difficulties for 10 years. That magazine, that project, was literally a part of daily life for 10 years. That’s a pretty substantial commitment of energy, time and money. There were a few years of figurative hangover as the intoxication of that involvement faded, as well as a subsequent sobering up to the realization that many people I’d been in touch with weren’t interested in communicating with me now that I was no longer doing a magazine.

The 1990s were rough years for me. There were financial issues, family issues. I was having problems with depression. No one seemed to be interested in my writing.

I sold my archive to Yale in November of 1997. Months before that I had been invited to lunch by Alex Gildzen and Brad Westbrook, both of whom then worked in Special Collections at Kent State University Library. They made a pitch for me to donate my papers to Kent State. I refused, saying that I would do so only if they built a larger collection around it. I knew Kent State University’s poetry holdings and knew that there was very little material by the writers most important to me. As much as I would have liked to work with Alex and Brad, the context of KSU’s library just didn’t make sense as a repository for my papers.

At one point I sent a letter to Bob Bertholf at SUNY Buffalo asking if his institution might be interested in purchasing the material and named a cash figure which was on the high side, no doubt—a feeler. I thought his response was sort of condescending, but then I always had that feeling when hearing from Dr. Bob.

Finally, I wrote to Yale and told them roughly what and how much I had. I said, and this was really low balling a figure, that they could have it all for $7500 and postage. They accepted immediately. I bought bankers boxes and shipped it all off. After I received payment I had no further interaction with Yale.

$7500 is the most money I’ve ever had one time. I used it to buy my first brand new, internet-capable, computer, some office furniture, and to settle a couple of debts.

I sold my archive because I needed the money, because I couldn’t take care of the material, and because I needed to exorcise the experience of having done The Difficulties and move on to whatever the next phase of my creative life might me. And I had a feeling that that computer, that connection to the internet, might have something to do with whatever was going to happen next.

I also sold the archive because, after years of laboring in obscurity, I felt somewhat hostage to it, and wanted it out of our household

I’m guessing, Geof, that you’re probably somewhat horrified by the way I dealt away my “archive.” I thought that Yale, with its resources and staff, would probably handle the materials responsibly. Even if they didn’t understand the context(s) within which it had been created. I also felt an emotional connection with Yale since it is the repository of Gertrude Stein’s papers.

Geof Huth: I’m not horrified at all with how you managed your papers. You actually seem to have made sound decisions the entire way. You wanted your records to live in a place that gave them some context, which is something that archivists look for all the time: records have more meaning in context with other records that were created along with them, and they have more value if maintained somewhere that includes other records that put them in historical context. The University at Buffalo’s collection would have been a reasonable home for these papers, allowing them the greater context of all the other poetry and poetry collections there. You reduced your asking price when you asked Yale, based on your response to Bertholf, and then you assured your records a home in a respected repository with a serious focus on poetry. Even Stein counts as context in this case, since so much of what she did informed the entire language poetry movement. Your asking price was probably a little low—since Yale accepted it without reviewing the records in much detail—but repositories buy very few manuscript collections, so you did well.

Dealing with one’s papers is always an emotional issue because personal papers are tied up with an individual’s identity and aspirations. These papers can document success or failure, capture the ambition of the person who created them, and tell us something about who that person was. When we surrender our papers to an archives, we do so because our lives are going in a different direction, because we are ready to relinquish part of our lives to memory, or simply because we need to make space in our homes. Our papers are the secondary embodiment of ourselves, and we treat them as we do with that in mind. When you decided to destroy some of your blogs or drafts of your poems, you did so knowing you were destroying a tiny record of yourself, a part of yourself. When you decided to sell your papers to Yale, you decided what part of your life was worth saving, from your point of view, even if you did not want to liver with that part of your life anymore. And all of it is good. We cannot judge such personal decisions from afar. We might disagree with people’s decisions about their personal papers, but we have to accept them. These decisions are, in the end, objective fact, the firm hand of reality, squeezing tight.

archivity furthers

Of Archives and Poetry

2008-09-03T00:20:00.004-04:00

As I approach the night when I'll begin to recall again the events of SAA 2009, I have decided to post a few words I've posted elsewhere, words that intermix two strands of my life (archives and poetry), and words that begin to examine a layperson's experiences with archives and archivists:

Today, Tom Beckett posted his response to my last question I sent him in our yearlong interview of each other. What follows below is my answer to his request: “Talk, if you would Geof, about the importance of archives to you, personally.”

The reason I am interested in archives is because, without them, what happens is what you say has happened to you: “That history has pretty much faded from the front of my brain.” Archives are concrete and permanent systems of memory, the best (though imperfect) replacements for the memories of human beings, which fade over time and disappear with the death of the memory’s host.

I used to care nothing for archives. Instead, I was interested in perfection. So as I moved from place to place, I would discard almost everything I made at the place I was leaving. When you move from continent to continent, there’s a great desire within you to reduce your life to its essentials, so every time I moved I would destroy whatever writings or art of mine I thought unimportant. I destroyed my failed retelling of “The Three Little Pigs” (which I wrote during my few weeks in second grade in Millbrae, California), my school records from Ontario, the commonplace books and school newspaper articles I wrote in Bolivia, the humorous stories I wrote in Ghana, my diaries from Tennessee. Each of these I came to find unnecessary because the writing was no longer as good as I had wanted it to be, or the work was already done and needed no memorialization. I regret all those destructions because I’ve lost those memories, and those records. I’m left with fragmented recollections that but murmur a past I want to hear clearly.

So what should you think about The Difficulties Archive? (though I’m surprised to see Yale use the work “Archive” to describe this collection. We would usually call this “The Difficulties, Records” or, maybe “The Difficulties, Archives,” but we almost never use “Archive” in this manner). You should think that it is a privilege to have someone think enough of your creation (The Difficulties and the community it supported) to accept the responsibility to preserve it and make it accessible. You should be pleased that these records will endure past your time on this planet and continue to document an important sliver of American poetic history. You should be happy that the Beinecke, one of the most prestigious archives in the country, has identified your records as being valuable enough to include in its Collection of American Literature. You should understand that, whether you were paid for this collection or not, you received from this attention some little taste of immortality.

After checking online for this collection I discovered that the “Difficulties Archive, ca. 1977-1997” consists of ten boxes of materials, including correspondence, production files, manuscripts, and copies of the magazine and other printed materials. The accession number for this collection (19971120-a) appears to indicate that this collection arrived on 20 November 2007 and was cataloged five days later. The preliminary catalog record for this collection notes the names of five correspondents: Bob Gregory, Jessica Grim, Ted Pearson, Jane Somerville, and John Wellman. This I found a little strange, since my choice for correspondents to highlight—based on fame and length of correspondence—would be Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, David Bromige, Robert Creeley, Lyn Hejinian, Susan Howe, Leslie Scalapino, and Ron Silliman. It seems that the person doing the preliminary box and folder list didn’t know much about late twentieth-century American poetry, since the list includes mention of Larry Eigder and Pete Gavick, among other unknowns.

I was surprised to find a listing for “‘Geoff Huth’ poetry journals and papers pertaining to them.” I seem to have slipped, even if often slightly misspelled, into archives all across the country. It is as if I’m a virus slowly spreading, preparing to become an epidemic.

And that is the purpose of archives: to keep the virus of art, history, information alive, to infect the brains of our successors with knowledge otherwise unknowable.

Tom, so far during this interview you’ve merely mentioned your work on The Difficulties, yet this was a signature creation in your career in poetry—to which I personally would add your blogging (which transformed your writing and persona), Vanishing Points of Resemblance, and your selected poems, Unprotected Texts. Tell me more about working on The Difficulties. Why did you begin it? How did you get started? What were the joys and frustrations of that work? What did you see as the project that it was? What did this experience do for you personally? And why did you bring it to a close?

Also, tell me about the archives you created. What was in it? Why didn’t you destroy it as you have periodically destroyed “manuscripts, notebooks, computer files, blogs”? How were you contacted about your archives? And what was that experience of working with archivists like? As an archivist, I’m quite interested in knowing how an archivist worked with someone I assume knew little about the world of archives beforehand.

archivity furthers

SAA 2008: Day 3

2008-08-29T23:59:00.002-04:00

InterContinental Mark Hopkins, Room 625, San Francisco, California

Once again, I must demure. There is no way for me to catch up tonight, or to give any adequate review of the day's events. Not yet.

But let me give just a few thoughts on Mark Greene's presidential address. First, great introduction. I wrote down some of Dennis Meissner's roast-like introduction to Mark Greene, and I'll report on some of his choice comments soon enough.

Second, Mark Greene focused as we might have expected he would: on a preliminary assessment of a values statement for archivists. His style of writing and reading aloud is a bit heavy (including numerous quotations from the literature), but his main points about our values were generally sound. I have quibbles, and I'll get to those, and I would have included some different values, and this initial attempt of his is a bit rough. But what Mark did was present what some of the main issues are for us, and on the way he pointed out how we have failed in our quest to be who we are, something I notice frequently enough. Many of his points were ones I've thought of myself, so I had quite a large amount of agreement with what he said, and made an effort to congratulate him after the speech. Rightly so, the speech received a hearty round of applause.

More on all of this once I have the time.

archivity furthers

SAA 2008: Day 2

2008-08-28T23:59:00.000-04:00

InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco, San Francisco, California

Too many activities tonight to allow me time to recall my day, but I'll start catching up tomorrow.

archivity furthers

SAA, Day Two

2008-08-28T03:53:00.007-04:00

Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Nob Hill, Room 625, One Nob Hill, 999 California Street, San Francisco, California

I moved to San Francisco today from my base in Burlingame. The Society of American Archivists' conference begins with some vehemence today, so I chose this as the day to move into town. My major role today, and my only official one, was to make the SAA 2009 Program Committee's announcements in a couple of meetings.

Local Government Records Roundtable

The first meeting where I gave my shpiel was the Local Government Records Roundtable. The message was simple, and I tried to encourage the local government archivists to think of sending in session proposals, since there will be a bit of a focus on government archives, considering that this will be a joint meeting with the Council of State Archivists (CoSA).

I attend this roundtable meeting every year, and I am always struck by how many non-local-government archivists, such as myself, are in the audience. A major role in my job is providing support to local government records programs across the state of New York, so I have an abiding interest in local government archives. And there are other archivists from State Archives that show up at these meetings for precisely the same reason as mine. What is interesting about this is that we almost outnumber the local government archivists, and this is a yearly occurrence. Also, there were a number of local government archivists from nearby, as often happens. Many local government archivists have trouble finding funding to attend a conference across the state, but are able to attend conferences nearby. But this leads to a weaker sense of belonging and a small pool of local government archivists to serve SAA. From my point of view, this is a problem in need of a solution.

Records Management Roundtable

The Local Government Roundtable ended early, so I attended the last have of the Records Management Roundtable (again, records management is a big part of my job responsibilities). Outside the session room, I met Russell James, who heads up this roundtable and had done much to energize the group. It is remarkable what one person with drive and passion can do, and Russell is one such person.

I did miss most of this roundtable meeting, but I arrived in the middle a presentation by my friend David George Shongo, who was talking about the archives and records management program he had developed for the Seneca Nation over the past five years. David's stories about his accomplishments with this program are always interesting because they highlight both the continuing problems of the archivist and the lone arranger, but with a little dollop of added interest because of the cultural issues added to that. For instance, for reasons I cannot completely recall, many of the records of the nation are located in two spots, in duplicate--not to serve as vital records backup but to address concerns of different members in the tribe for access to the records.

When I entered the room, David was talking about fingerprints, about how most of us see our fingerprints but think nothing of them, but that he sees his fingerprints and realizes that the creator filled him with human energy and as that energy surged through his body it swirled around in his fingertips and served as a record of that embodiment of life force. He explained that that is why our hands, our most creative physical parts, are so important: because they can make things, because they are the center of our energy.

I see David in New York, but also at conferences. Last year, at SAA, I was standing with him while Elizabeth Adkins was talking about the need for diversity in the profession. I looked around the room and noted that (from my vantage point) I could see only white people except for him, and we talked about that for a bit. We saw it as an issue, as something to work on, and David gave me a copy of the "Protocols for Native American Archival Materials" to read. This past May, I saw David at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference in Chautauqua, New York, and he opened the meeting. Outfitted in traditional Seneca dress, he opened the meeting with a few words in English and many in Seneca. Although probably no-one in the audience could understand him, it was a powerful reminder of the cultural heritage of New York, one little seen but not at all disappeared.

David went on to explain how his operation worked, always interspersing his explanation about access and other archival activities with interesting additions, a Seneca flavor. He noted that he sometimes sings a song in Seneca to help himself find documents that have gone missing--though he also noted that he rarely has to sing that song. He noted that most of his work is focused on paper records, but that his executive body wants him to scan everything--until they learn of the price of doing that. But he noted that the tribe sees itself as always doing everything from the creator. He calls his transfer documentation the "crossing over the fire" (for reasons I didn't catch, but again this is a reference of cultural significance to the Seneca.

Finally, David's talk was about culture, and of importance to all of us. He referred to himself as "a caretaker of old words and old customs." Note the second part of that phrase. He noted how he, a person of the MTV generation, must learn to balance cultures: the native with the Western. And he noted that he has found it important to see the different departments he works with as different clans and to take the individual cultures of those clans into account while working with them.

Lone Arrangers Roundtable

I spent only a little time with the Lone Arrangers Roundtable today, and most of what I did was make a call for session proposals for next year. Once again, I made particular note of how they could fit their proposals into the theme for the conference, "Sustainable Archives." From what I could see of this group, they are being quite ably led, and I was happy to see how most of the meeting was dedicated to small group activities--real taking among real people. After this meeting, a number of them went out to dinner together, which seems like a great idea for other roundtables to emulate.

Baseball at AT&T Park

Next, I went to baseball. This was complicated by my having to find my tickets (still in the possession of Nancy Melley) and my father (taking the train in from Burlingame). I had never been to AT&T Park before, even though I was born 15 miles south of here. I had been to Candlestick Park, though not in many years. I have to say that I loved this park. It's right on the water, with a great view of the Bay Bridge and the bay itself. It is fairly spacious inside with a promenade along the edge of the stadium that leadsfrom first base to center field.

Those of us in attendance tonight were there because of the beneficence of John LeGloahec, a joyful NARtian, who has been organizing trips to ballgames during SAA meetings for many years. John could not be with us tonight, but he was missed. And for him I present this picture that welcomes his own "JAL Tours" (though I can't remember was JAL stands for).

One of the traditions of these tours is the handing out of awards, which gets longer every year. This year, I received only one award. Not a great showing. Without John in attendance, Scott took over the honors.

Everyone in attendance had a great time at the ballpark, and the crab sandwiches behind centerfield were great. Get the Crazy Crab Sandwich, if you have to choose between the two options.

archivity furthers

The End of June and Everything After

2008-07-01T12:31:00.006-04:00

Poster that Welcomed Tom Hyry Back to Yale (30 June 2008)
The Great Dane Pub & Brewing Company, Dane County Regional Airport, Madison, Wisconsin

A sidetrip to West Lima, Wisconsin, has kept me in Wisconsin for a few days longer than everyone else who participated in the Archives Leadership Institute, but the effects of the institute continue. Tom Hyry sent me his greetings, along with the sign above that greeted him on his return to work. The now onymous commenter Erik Nordberg also sent word. Rosemary Pleva Flynn noted that I switched two people's names around in the caption of one of the photos I posted, so I will correct that soon. Donna McCrea sent me a couple of emails from Montana, supported my idea for the third word of our leadership institute "motto." (I'm tentatively going with "Extensibility Nimbility Intertwingularity.") And Jane Pearlmutter informed all of us that she has set up an online space for us in Learn@UW, her university's online courseware.

That last bit is most important, but so are all the connections we've made. As a group, we have felt a responsibility to make something more out of this opportunity. Our ultimate goal is not ourselves individually but all of us collectively, the profession as a whole. We have no set plans, but we need to continue our thinking together and figure out what of value we as a concentrated group of archivists might do for the profession. We do this not because we see ourselves as a chosen people, but because we have been privileged by this opportunity and this privilege requires a giving back. We seem, at least, to believe that together, even though our ideas do not always move in one unified direction. As our process of considering what we can valuably do carries forward, I'll make some notes about that progress, though I'll also keep in mind the needs we might have to consider ideas in private until we believe we've refined them sufficiently for a wider public. It may certainly be that we never do anything flashy, that we merely codify ways in which we as individuals can give a little back to the profession.

And now that I post my motto for this blog, I wonder if "archivity" might need to be part of our motto.

archivity furthers

Archives Leadership Institute, Day Eight

2008-06-30T23:27:00.001-04:00

Dreamtime Village, West Lima, Wisconsin

Day 8: 28 June 2008

This is the last day.

Managing Change

Peter Gottlieb opened with a discussion of change. He identified two kinds of change: incremental and crisis. Then he discussed his own crisis of change, having to do with a simultaneous change in the culture of the Wisconsin Historical Society along with a huge fiscal crisis, which together created a perfect storm of crisis change. The details he gave of the story highlighted how difficult managing change can be. One important point he made was that he made sure to inform people about what was going on throughout this crisis. He noted that sharing information always helps organizations, even thought it reduces one’s choices for action.

He described the roles of a leader regarding change as to increase staff’s capacity to adapt to change and to give hope and inspiration to staff. He then quoted from the film, The Shawshank Redemption: “Hope is a good think, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” He ended by urging us to make time and space for grieving and to encourage the heart to deal with change.

Change Management

Next up was Fynnette Eaton, talking about change management. She discussed dealing with resistance to change, the obstacles to change management and its goals, and the hallmarks of effective change—but I want to focus on what she opened with: the phases of transition. She claimed these phases were ending (which is often seen as a loss and a goodbye), followed by the neutral zone (a chaotic time where no-one knows quite what is going on, and ending with a beginning (the new chapter). She noted, as I will now, that the beginning is the last part, which I found a valuable point to stress.

An Ending

Today was a short day, which was a relief, as everyone was tired. We had worn ourselves out by now, and we needed not a rest but a bit of coasting. We spent our last session evaluating the institute and suggesting changes for next year, and we wish those who follow us much luck.

Lunch

A few of our classmates had to leave before lunch, but most of us stayed, leaving piecemeal from this last meal together. As each of us left, we waved and hugged and said goodbye and noted that we’d be together again sometime. And so we might. Only time—and we know this—will tell.

We have plans for those of us who will be there to meet at SAA in San Francisco this August, and we will soon be working on a little change management project of our own, as we band together to move forward with our plans for ourselves and the profession.

Sometime this week I hope to post a few ending thoughts on the institute, not by recounting what happened during our week together but by considering it and evaluating it.

A Final View of Lake Mendota, Madison, Wisconsin (28 Jun 2008)
Thought for the Day

An old saying of mine appropriate for the day: Change is good, but folding money is better.

archivity furthers

Archives Leadership Institute, Day Seven

2008-06-29T23:13:00.002-04:00

Dreamtime Village, West Lima, Wisconsin

Day 7: 27 June 2008

Waking up has become not difficult but labored this morning, after so many days of so little sleep, and others are feeling tired, too. This has been an exhausting week. Yet we move through the days well enough.

Mentoring and Teaming

The morning opened with Christine Weideman talking to us about mentoring, and we spent some time defining what a mentor is and the skills of a mentor. This was followed by a talk about team building, led by Fynnette Eaton.

The most interesting part of the morning was the small mentoring session we held. We were presented with seven students of the library school, each of whom had described their interests and their needs, and we divided ourselves (quite evenly) among those. Rosemary Pleva Flynn, Sammie Morris, Fynnette Eaton, and I talked to a young woman who was interested in electronic records and records management. We asked her questions about what she was doing and gave her plenty of advice and direction. Most of all, though, we made sure she retained the passion she had for this line of work. I slipped into my speech about how we need to work on electronic records even if we end up failing, because the challenge of electronic records is providing us with a chance to be great. I even came up with a new saying: “Dealing with electronic records is not smooth sailing, but like sailing over rocks.” During my discussion of records management, I used another one of my sayings, which Rosemary and Fynnette asked me to post here: “Records management is only tangentially about the management of people; it is primarily concerned with the management of people.” For my collection of such sayings, check here.

Can a Professional Association Diversify a Profession?

Most of our class waiting the whole week to find out what the diversity case study was going to be. In our handouts for the institute, there was simply a question (provided as the heading to this section) without the normal apparatus of a case study. Those of us not on Team 5 had little or not information on this case study, and there was acute curiosity about the reason for this lack of information. So when we faced Team 5 after lunch, the case study we found was expectedly unexpected.

With much grace, Tom opened the session by noting that this topic might make people a bit uncomfortable, and he asked everyone to be respectful. He then noted the question that faced his team (“Can a professional association diversify a profession?”) before noting, dramatically, that his team decided the answer was, “NO.” He noted that the question we had to answer was, “What can a professional association do to diversity a profession?” He gave a history of their work on this case study, which included discussions with Karen Jefferson, Nancy Beaumont, and Peter Gottlieb. He noted that discussing the issue of race can be difficult as he showed us a picture of an elephant and noted that race is the “elephant in the room.”

Taronda Spencer followed with a history of the slow progress of the Society of American Archivists’ diversity efforts. Neil Dahlstrom continued this story, noting that SAA had made diversity one of its three priorities in its 2006/2007 strategic plan. He explained the outcomes envisioned by this plan (which are available on SAA’s website) and SAA President Elizabeth Adkin’s speech on diversity, which outlined strategies to highlight and stress the issue. He noted that reports on the issue of diversity were due to SAA Council today (June 27th).

Amy Cooper Cary spoke to us next, opening with “Let’s take the elephant out of the room, but it still stalks among us. She said that her team focused on diversity in terms of race and ethnicity, and she noted that it can be difficult to have a true cross-cultural dialog. She explained that her team had decided to use the term “minorities” to discuss those people not represented by the white anglo majority.

Sammie Morries opened up with a long list of opportunities we had to address diversity. She ended with the idea of developing a toolkit that archivists could use to encourage diverse candidates to join the profession. I noted that it would be better to teach people how to use this toolkit to support their efforts, since human contact is what we will need to make a diversity initiative work and since people will learn better from flesh-and-blood humans who are talking to them.

Gina Vergara-Buatista then pushed us farther into the conversation, asking us about diversity initiatives in regional archival associations. After a strange pause from the audience, I answered the question in terms of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference, and we were off. There were many ideas handed out, and I was a frequent contributor to this conversation (having somehow lived a life that gave me plenty of ideas on this topic). We discussed hiring practices, cultivating minority archivists, looking for personal opportunities to make a change, and encouraging interest in the profession via impassioned training on the subject of archives.

Neil closed the session by saying that the team hoped to heighten our awareness and keep us engaged. He noted, “We’re all facilitators, and we’re all advocates.”

This session was the big session of the day, and maybe of the entire institute. The team did a great job presenting the material and facilitating the discussion, and we were aglow with a sense of some accomplishment by the end of it all.

Archives Leadership Institute Team 5: Neil Dahlstrom, Tom Hyry, Amy Cooper Cary, Taronda Spencer, Sammie Morris, and Gina Vergara-Bautista, Madison, Wisconsin (27 Jun 2008)

Professional Associations

Nancy Beaumont, the executive director of SAA (and a weeklong observer of the institute) gave a presentation and guided a discussion on professional associations for archivists. She noted that only a small percentage of people (10 to 20%) volunteer to work in professional and other associations, and we even discussed the most common Myers-Briggs results for archivists. We spent much of our time, however, talking about specific issues related to SAA and about the issue of responding to archivists who volunteered for roles in their professional associations.

The Tom Hyry Chronicles

Tom Hyry Holding Water (27 Jun 2008)
The seventh day of our institute marked the last time I took a picture of Tom Hyry holding up a beverage in salute to all of us. It’s hard not to appreciate someone who can participate in such a funny activity so many times in one week.

Nighttime

We ended our day together. All of us—including Nancy Beaumont, Lucy Barber (of the NHPRC), and Lydia Reid (the project evaluator for the Institute)—went out to dinner at Gino’s. I couldn’t stay at my table at all, but had to move from table to table to talk to everyone and to ask them to help me come up with the third word. Here was my issue: I decided to try to design a T-shirt for the institute, since the T-shirt we received was simply a generic archives T-shirt some of us already owned. I decided that it would make sense to add to the back of the T-shirt, as some kind of motto, a few words of significance to this institute: intertwingularity (a word I introduced everyone to) and nimbility (a group neologism designed to fit with intertwingularity, but I had no third word. People came up with many many possibilities

(
community
cohortivity [community translated into a word to go with intertwingularity]
bone folder [a joke about one of our classmate’s ignorance of this term]
fetchers and keepers [the two kinds of archivists in one repository we were told about]
Madibility [Madison (Wisc.) + ability]
passionist [feeding off mine and others’ frequent calls for passion as a moving force]
mingularity [mingling + intertwingularity]
passionista [working off of passionist
jumpsuit [a joke about the power of identical jumpsuits to bring teams of people together]
passionivity [and attempt to turn passionist into an –ity word]
teamability
possibility
fetchability
keepability
consensibility [consensus + ability]
)

but none seemed quite right. The most votes went to passionista (11), followed by five for cohortivity, and one to three for five other words.

At some point, I decided that we needed to leave the restaurant (primarily because I was antsy), so I encouraged us all out of the restaurant and onto the street. One better than half of us (14) walked to the capitol then took a bar crawl all the way down State Street and ending at Kollege Klub, which sits kitty-corner from our hotel. We visited eight bars in all, and I had at least half a glass of beer in each bar, quite an accomplishment for someone who never drinks beer. (I believe that I’ve drunk more beer at this institute than the rest of my life combined.) The beer had absolutely no effect on me, which I found interesting, and almost unnerving. But we had a great time. Each bar was radically different from the one before it. Moving to a new bar was like visiting a new planet. We generally had terrible lagers (like Pabst Blue Ribbon), but we talked constantly, we hit cut nails into a stump with a sledge hammer at one bar, we sat out on the Terrace, we texted joke messages to a big video screen at another bar, we lost Scott Goodine at the last bar, we failed miserably (time and time again) to coordinate beer purchases and ended up buying more beer than we really needed, and we had a great time. We came to this place as strangers and became friends, tied together by our experiences here and in our professional life beforehand.

Peter Gottlieb’s advice that we spend time together at bars paid dividends after all.

Thought for the Day

Remember: If you don’t write the strategic plan and put it on the shelf, the shelf will be empty.

archivity furthers

Delaying Two Days

2008-06-28T23:37:00.003-04:00

My apologies for those keeping up with my recounting of the Archives Leadership Institute, but seven nights of staying up until two in the morning have had their effect on me, and I keep discovering that I am asleep at the keyboard, so I'll finish off this review of the week's activities once I have a good long night's sleep.

archivity furthers

Delayed: Archives Leadership Institute, Day Seven

2008-06-28T02:17:00.001-04:00

A late night has delayed the recounting of the seventh day of the Archives Leadership Institute. Come back later for the story.

archivity furthers

Photographs a Day or More Late

2008-06-27T02:14:00.005-04:00

The Lowell Inn and Conference Center, Room 501, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin

This small posting merely provides photographic evidence for previous days' entries. For the posting on the events of June 26th, see just below this posting.

Two of these photographs are of the teams that presented case studies on Monday and Tuesday respectively, and the third photograph is a surprise.

Archives Leadership Institute Team 1: Rosemary Pleva Flynn, Janet Carleton, Claudia Holguin, Jeff Kintop, and Bill Carpenter, Madison, Wisconsin (26 Jun 2008)

Archives Leadership Institute Team 2: Erik Nordberg, Erika Castaño, Heather Lawton, Tanya Zanish-Belcher, and Geof Huth, Madison, Wisconsin (26 Jun 2008)
(photo by Jill Severn

Tom Hyry's Calves, Langdon Street, Madison, Wisconsin (26 Jun 2008)

archivity furthers

Archives Leadership Institute, Day Six

2008-06-26T23:52:00.005-04:00

The Lowell Inn and Conference Center, Room 501, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin

In the interests of sleep, I’ll try to keep this posting brief.

Twenty-Four-Hour Relief

We opened the meeting by discussing the “24-hour exercise” we discussed in our teams yesterday. In the scenario, a poorly managed private historical site documenting a famous architect was deciding whether to sell off pieces of the collection to make money to float the institution. Our scenario assumed that the archivist had just 24 hours to begin the process to solve this problem. One representative from each team sat at the front of the room and gave short presentations on what they would do, which included contacted sympathetic members of the board and other supporters, bringing this story to the media, and various ways of risking one’s job in order to protect these records.

The Coalition of the Collaborators

Next up were Ellsworth Brown and Kathy Pletcher, who spoke about ways to ensure good collaborations. Brown discussed a number of pertinent issues in collaborations: size (how disparate sizes of collaborators might affect the relationship), missions (which will guide how an organization acts), trust (an essential element), leadership (a necessary component especially if cultures need changing), communication (both informal and formal), open books (so the two parties can check each others’ finances), candor (to include good communication), vision (to direct the collaboration), mutual credit (being sure that each collaborator receives equal billing), and courage (since collaboration is not natural to many people). Kathy Pletcher building on what Brown said, noting that collaborations require a strong leader (with credibility, knowledge and connections) to move projects along and a good governance structure. One sentence Brown said in a sentence resonated with me: A concentrated vision statement “is not dumbing down the statement, but reaching common ground.”

The Art of Grants

Lucy Barber, of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, gave a presentation about grants writing, with particular attention paid to grant applications to the NHPRC itself.

Case Study # 3: Papers from the Teachers’ Union of Ten Gallon, Texas

Archives Leadership Institute Team 4
Jane Rosario, Mary Caldera, Tara Laver, Sara Holmes, and Scott Goodine, Madison, Wisconsin (26 Jun 2008)
This case study concerned the records of a teachers’ union held by a university. A reporter had legally gained access to information used to embarrass the union, which became upset and talked to the university about the release of this information. This issue involved the adequacy of policies, privacy issues, and contractual issues. A good quotation from Erik Nordberg: Sensitive is only sensitive when it’s been used to hurt you.” We carried on a good conversation about this issue and covered a large number of issues in a short time.

Wisconsin Historical

We ended the official part of the day at the Wisconsin Historical Society, where we held a few brief discussions with various staff. Jacqie [sic] Ferry talked to us about a study she has been conducting on the value of the Society’s finding aids to its users. This talk gave us some valuable ideas on how user studies might be carried out (theirs included an observation of users using the finding aids, a followup discussion with a focus group consisting of most of these users, and an online survey). Harry Miller explained the interesting details of the Society’s Area Research Network, a system of thirteen cooperating repositories and which provide care and access to the Society’s records across the state. The system also includes the interesting feature of the equivalent of inter-library loan for records in the system. I can’t say how well this system works, but I can report that this system is the favorite of my father, who is a dedicated and expert genealogist who carries out research across the country. Michael Edmonds explained to us that the Society is both a state agency and a membership group, he described the Society’s various divisions (which cover the gamut of cultural-historical activities), and he gave details about some of the Society’s digital projects.

Fear the Duck

And then it was baseball. Only six of us attended tonight’s baseball game at the Mallard, where the Madison Mallards handily beat the Brainerd (Minnesota) Blue Thunder 10 to 2. For ten dollars apiece, we watched some fun baseball, just a smidge below minor league, received two hotdogs and two cups of beer (Miller Lite). We supported the home team, tried to win any of the prizes being flung at us, whooped when we had to whoop, and had great fun.

Erik Nordberg Showing His Mallard Pride, The Mallard, Madison, Wisconsin (26 Jun 2008)
Top Row: Erik Nordberg and Scott Goodine; Bottom Row: Jeff Kintop, Rosemary Pleva Flynn, and Tanya Zanish-Belcher; The Mallard, Madison, Wisconsin (26 Jun 2008)
A Mallards Baseball Game, The Mallard, Madison, Wisconsin (26 Jun 2008)

In Case You Were Worried

Tom Hyry and a Glass of Water, Madison, Wisconsin (26 Jun 2008)
In case you were worried that I’d forget the day’s picture of Tom Hyry with a beverage raised in salute, don’t be. Here’s Tom, enjoying a glass of water at the restaurant Kabul, where he lunched with Erika Castaño and me.

archivity furthers

Archives Leadership Institute, Day Five

2008-06-25T23:59:00.006-04:00

The Lowell Inn and Conference Center, Room 501, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin

Funding Archives

We began the morning listening to Don Moynihan present “The Politics of Budgeting and Finance.” He opened noting that the country is not officially in a recession but that state agencies are already affected as if there is already a recession. He explained that states responded to the 1990 recession primarily with revenue enhancements (increased taxes and fees), that states responded to the 2001 recession primarily with budget cuts, and that budget cuts appear to be the most likely solution for this coming recession and that they will probably last for at least three years. One chart he presented showed the shortfalls this year between what states estimated for revenue while putting together their budgets and what they now believe they will collect in revenues. As an example, New York State is expected to be $4.9 billion below projections.

Moynihan then turned the discussion to us, asking us how we fight for our budgets in a tight budget environment. I answered with a slightly drawn-out story about the steps my Archives took to deal with two significant budget issues: insufficient funds to fund our current state agency services program (including the records center) and insufficient storage in the records center for the records of all state agencies. I explained that we developed a business plan that laid out all of our costs, including the costs of managing the annual costs of paying back a bond for an expansion to the records center, and that we proved that our solution would be the cheapest one for the state as a whole. This two-year argument to our budget office ended with our winning permission to raise our fee for records storage for the first time in twenty years and for us to gain permission to construct a $12.85 million addition to the records center, one which will effectively double the storage capacity of the building.

During our discussions about budget matters, I was amazed to realize that the issues always returned to people and relationships. Everything is about people, probably especially when it is about money.

24 Hours to Exercise

After our budget discussion, we broke into our official teams, read over a case study concerning a seriously mismanaged historical site that also included related archives, and we talked about solutions the archivist could put in place to address this crisis within twenty-four hours. Today, our team was on, even more than we were for our case study, and we quickly developed a number of ideas, discarded a few, and prepared a fairly good presentation for tomorrow. Eric Nordberg will be our voice tomorrow, and it should go pretty well.

What $32 Million Can Buy

When we returned in the afternoon, Karen Jefferson talked to us about the acquisition of the Martin Luther King, Jr., papers—that subset of them that had been held by the family for decades. The story of their purchase by the City of Atlanta for $32 million, the transportation of the thirty-two boxes to Atlanta, the transfer of the records to Morehouse College, the press frenzy about all of this, and the management of the records by the Atlanta University Center, is an interesting one indeed. We discussed this quite a bit and learned some interesting things. Karen Jefferson is now seeing more people who want to sell their records to her archives, which has no money for acquisitions. Some supporters do want to provide financial support to the library, but they want their money to go only to help the King papers. No-one can use these records now, not until they have been fully processed. And fundraising for the final portion of the $32 million is ongoing.

Norman Mailer’s Mistress

Jane Pearlmutter, who set up this institute, met with us today and we carried out a brief exercise wherein we discussed the acquisition by Harvard of the papers of Norman Mailer’s mistress, Carole Mallory. With the tiny bit of information available, Jane noted that many people had asked her if Harvard even knew if this woman was Mailer’s mistress—and the records authentic. I noted that the papers might include correspondence from Mailer that might authenticate the relationship and, secondarily, the records. And the big point to me was totally different: Were these records—a few letters and some writings by Mallory about her sex life with Mailer—actually valuable enough to acquire by purchase?

Case Study 3: ChoicePoint

Archives Leadership Institute Team 3: Heather Briston, Donna McCrea, Pamela Wright, Jill Severn, Charles Greifenstein, Jennifer Davis McDaid, Madison, Wisconsin (25 Jun 2008)
Team 3 did a remarkably great job with their case study, which concerned the unauthorized release of sensitive data and the selling of inaccurate data that led to people not being hired for jobs. Team 3 set up the case study with a very brief, but more than adequate, introduction to the story, then they divided us up into categories of people involved in the case and had each of us discuss the case from our point of view and then report.

Archives Leadership Institute Team 3’s Notes from Their Case Study, Madison, Wisconsin (25 Jun 2008)
(Note the dog and sad face added by Jennifer Davis McDaid to her extremely neat notes.)
Everyone seemed to have a great time with this exercise, we learned quite a bit from each other, and we had massive amounts of fun. I was on a team with Tom Hyry and Rosemary Pleva Flynn, and we had great fun in our role of victims of this large corporation. There was much laughter during the presentations and the discussion afterwards led to the parallels between ChoicePoint’s situation and that that exists, at least potentially, in an archives. Mary Caldera noted that “Archives are most like ChoicePoint in how they use data,” which was a sky-cracking revelation: that archives hold and manage sensitive data, provide it to others, and sometimes do not have perfect controls in place for doing so. Scott Goodine ended the discussion with a great closing, and a point I’ve made often enough: “Ultimately, it’s about risk, and archivists aren’t comfortable with risk, but they have to get over it.”

I Bet He Knows What Mellon-Funded Metadata Harvesting Is

Fourteen of us went out to dinner together and had a raucous time filled with laughter that doubled Taronda Spencer and Erika Castaño over for a couple of minutes. We made jokes about the name for a group of archivists. Top candidates: “a straggle of archivists” (yes, straggle), and “an intertwingle of archivists.” During all of this, we continued to talk about work, including HIPAA and bone folders (which shows that we covered quite a range of topics). Tom Hyry, unfortunately for him, hadn’t heard of the term “bone folder” again, which led to much teasing. Someone, though I can’t recall whom, said “He spelled ‘Yale’ with a 6” (a reference to both the place of Tom’s employment and The Simpsons). And Erik Nordberg made the statement of the night when he said of Tom, “I bet he knows what Mellon-funded metadata harvesting is.” It was hard to keep drinks from squirting out our noses during all of our frivolity.

We also discussed a number of unusual team names: The Fighting Okra, The Model Towners, The Hurley Midgets. And this made us suggest names for ourselves: The Betas, The Bone Folders, and ***** (a secret name, and this series of asterisks is a reference to another secret name).

Imbibing CiderBeer

After dinner, our group split into two, one going back to the hotel and one going to a couple of bars to talk (though three of us generally avoided the beer). At the last bar, we had a few great discussions about films, and I was quite pleased that Jeff Kintop was there to recall the film Vanishing Point much better than I had. Thinking about Vanishing Point reminded me of my review of Tom Beckett’s long chapbook of poetry Vanishing Points of Resemblance and of my review of that book, which merged a discussion of the poems in the book with the movie of a similar name and a number of other seemingly unrelated thoughts. But they all came together in that review because they belonged there, because they were (as I explained to my friends) intertwingled. And I decided that little piece of intertwingularity in the form of a review of poetry might be a good example of that concept in action for us.

Finally, What the People Want

Tom Hyry, Madison, Wisconsin (25 Jun 2008)
Yes, another picture of Tom Hyry, holding yet another beverage. Stay tuned tomorrow for more Tom Hyry photos. I have recently come into possession a few pictures of Tom’s calves, but I am not sure I should loose these onto the world.

archivity furthers

Archives Leadership Institute, Day Four

2008-06-24T23:50:00.007-04:00

The Lowell Inn and Conference Center, Room 501, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin

Strategic Planning and the Broken Dream of Nirvana

We began the day as we ended it: with Maureen Sullivan. But our focus started with strategic planning. We had general consensus that strategic planning was essential, and that strategic planning often fails at the point of planning. We started with the idea of how to operationalize a plan, how to keep it off the shelf and in people’s minds as a living document guiding their lives.

Since archives are rarely independent institutions, we also talked about how to deal with the fact that our parent institution’s mission might not coincide with our own—and how to integrate ours within that larger mission statement. Neil Dahlstrom, one of the many people here with a cornucopia of interesting ideas, pointed out that redefining ourselves, even our records, can be one step in this direction. He suggested that we not talk about our archives as records but as evidence or proof—which are more valuable concepts in his world. He recommended that we do not try to project the archives on others, but position it to become integral to the institution as a matter of survival. Given the smallness of most archives in most institutions, this is probably a sound commonsense idea.

This point engendered quite a bit of discussion about how the archives is always somehow separate from the rest of the institutions, a point that might be true but which can be simply a trick of categorization as well. I argued that we were good at drawing distinctions between others and us, rather than in finding connections. I noted that we continue to see our uniqueness (which in some ways is our values), but that insisting on this uniqueness will ensure that we remain isolated and disempowered. I noted that I could see my own program area in the State Archives as isolated from the Archives, then from our larger Office of Cultural Education, and then from the State Education Department, which is our parent institution—but I don’t do that. I argued, maybe unconvincingly, that archivists and librarians are trains to make distinctions and separations—which is a major goal of cataloging, and even of processing. I argued for seeing the intertwingularity of all things, their deeply unavoidable intermingling and intertwining, and doing so allows us to see connections, just as allowing the messy anti-conventions of folksonomic naming allows people to see the connections between things and use natural language—as opposed to the unnatural controlled vocabularies we believe in. I was left with one thought I didn’t tell anyone, the motto to Howards End:

Only Connect
We moved back into a discussion of strategic planning, in which Maureen gave us good hints on how to ensure its success: Make sure any consultant you hire helps you manage the process, not write the plan. Make sure your plan has a good implementation plan within it, and manage that implementation. Include a contingency component in your plan, so that you can rethink the plan as situations change. Make sure your plan includes what it removes from your work: if there are activities that you don’t do well or that you wouldn’t start doing if you weren’t already doing it, then eliminate it.

Finally, Maureen told us that we have the basis for a community of practice among us, so she encouraged us to maintain this community and to work on yesterday’s idea of developing a learning community.

Legislative Advocacy and Why a Handshake is Better than a Form Letter

Next up was an advocacy panel that included Wisconsin State Representative Spencer Black, Tony Driessen (a lawyer), and Robert Martin (who, among other things, used to head up IMLS).

Black spoke first talking to us about how people try to influence legislators, and suggesting ways we could do this better. He noted that archives will never be at the top of the list of issues to address since we are not coming from a powerful interest group or representing an issue that tugs on the heartstrings. He suggested always working with your local representative, to be sure to follow up from any initial contact, and he suggested that the more personal our contact, the better.

Tony Driessen began with this unforgettable comment: “This is all about relationships. If you remember anything, that’s it.” He noted that librarians (so, he assumed, archivists as well) are among the smartest people he deals with but that they are like deer in the headlights in political situations. He explained for us, in order of importance, the four issues that guide advocacy:

1. Constituency: If we’re a constituent, we matter.

2. Political Action: If we can help the legislator with her or her election or in other ways, the legislator will pay attention to us.

3. Merit: He noted that merit of any issue doesn’t matter of much, that at best it is an afterthought to help justify something a legislator has already decided viscerally.

4. Ethics: He noted that we need to lobby ethically and honestly.

One great quote from him, which I’ve never been able to say as well as he did: “We’re not uniquely human because we’re rational; we’re uniquely human because we’re emotional.” Finally, he told us to always run through all of our arguments with a legislator because what we might think is the weakest argument might be the only one that matters to the legislator. And he told us never to assume anyone was either our friend or our enemy.

Robert Martin’s great quotation was “Instead of advocating for archives, we must be purveyors of solutions to problems,” thus extending our discussion about redefining ourselves to serve the purposes of others and fulfill our own goals. He spent much of his time discussing the history of the Preserving the American Historical Record (PAHR) bill and how it was modeled on a very old legislative solution first tried in the library community. Martin gave many hints about advocacy, such as listening to legislators’ speeches and using that to figure out how to tie our message to their passions. One interesting cautionary note was this: “Archives don’t have any enemies; we just don’t have many friends.”

Rethinking a Mission and Presenting a Case Study

For lunch, my case study team set up the room for our presentation. We moved the tables at the front of the room away, so that we could move around, we prepared the whiteboard for our notes, and we added huge sticky notes with other sets of notes to the side wall. When our time came, we spoke briefly, either outlining part of the case study or asking the audience questions, and we carried out a quick series of multiple subunits of the presentation in just under an hour. Near perfect timing. The audience participation was good, and I thought it was quite successful. Our team included Tanya Zanish-Belcher, Erika Castaño, Erik Nordberg, and Heather Lawton, all of whom were on game today. (This part of my report is short, since it’s a bit partisan, and I might not end up praising any other team this much—though that won’t mean they were not as good!)

Media Relations and Your Foot in Relation to Your Mouth

David F. Giroux of the University of Wisconsin System gave a remarkably tight, funny, informative, and memorable talk about media relations—a piece of training so dead-on perfect it took my breath away. He gave enormous numbers of hints on how to talk to the media, and based his entire talk on the Five C’s to Success:

Courtesy: Treat the media as if they were your customers.

Confidence: Be prepared for an interview and know more about your subject than anyone else.

Clarity: Deliver your message concisely, with illustrations, and multiple times.

Conviction: Be credible and show enthusiasm for your topic.

Control: Know where you want the conversation to go and direct it that way.

This synopsis gives a good outline of the talk, but nothing of the depth of knowledge, the humor, or the compassion of Giroux.

The Archives Leadership Institute and Big Deep Breaths before the Plunge into the Future

At the end of the day, the entire group of us, led by Rosemary Pleva Flynn, discussed what we could do to maintain our “community of practice” after this all ends on Saturday. We discussed many ideas but made no firm plans. We suggested meeting again as a group, or subgroups, at conferences; speaking at conferences about leadership and our experiences; setting up a listserv to allow us to communicate; developing products that we could then distribute to the profession. We’ll see where this goes. I suggested, as I like to, the big scary idea: using any skills we’ve learned here, essentially, to plan for the profession, to consider the cultural changes that would help the profession and then pushing those changes. I did not, I’ll note, answer the questions about what those changes would be, because that will take real concentrated thought. But I believe the group needs to leave here not focused on ourselves individually but the profession and our interests as a whole.

The Brewpub and the Ivy Growing to Heaven

State Capitol Building, Madison, Wisconsin (24 Jun 2008)
For dinner, the entire class walked across town to the Great Dane Brewpub and sat in its courtyard beside a tall wall covered with ivy, and we talked, sometimes about the institute, sometimes about our presentation, sometimes about getting drunk on crème de menthe at age twelve, sometimes about poetry, sometimes about the Society of American Archivists, and sometimes about beer, which was available in large quantities. In short, it was like sitting down to dinner with 27 archivists, which indeed it was.

Tom Hyry, Madison, Wisconsin (24 Jun 2008)
In response to hundreds of anticipated (but not yet received) requests for more pictures of Tom Hyry, I present this one. Please note that I’ve been able to keep him away from the mojitos, but not from the beer. I hear it’s just too refreshing. If anyone besides Tom gives me permission to post their picture (without turning away as I shoot the picture), I’ll post photos of others here.

At this point, we are half-way through the Archives Leadership Institute.

archivity furthers

Archives Leadership Institute, Day Three

2008-06-23T23:20:00.002-04:00

The Lowell Inn and Conference Center, Room 501, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin

By the third day of the Archives Leadership Institute, we are in the swing of things. People know each other, we are becoming used to the pattern of activity (listen, converse, eat; listen, converse, eat). Our minds are relaxed but alert, eager for the challenge of our own thoughts and ready to make something of this experience.

Politics

This morning opened with an interesting talk-cum-conversation with Dennis L. Dresang entitled “The Public Sector Today: National Trends and Issues.” Focused primarily on issues relating to partisanship and the hegemony of politics over statesmanship, the talk opened with a discussion of trends leading to greater social alienation. One statistic will highlight this point well enough: In 1970, 60% of families usually ate dinner together; in 2000, that number had dropped to 22%. People’s isolation from each other, even when living in the same house, has been exacerbated by technology: the plethora of television sets in a single home lead to people watching TV simultaneously but alone, separate from the other members of their families; computers had led to people carrying out much of their communication with others electronically, remotely, voicelessly.

Dresang’s major point, though, he seemed to have summarized in one sentence: “The US is no longer the ideal democracy in the world: our democracy has really been compromised by the need for money” (which need he equated with the need to pay for political consultants and airtime on TV). Dresang sees the extreme partisanship in this country as an illness in the body politic, one that has led to such remarkable situations as legislators finding themselves pitted against their constituents in favor of their parties.

We carried out a lively discussion with Dresang, enjoying his insights and manner, but in the end he didn’t tie his points back to our worlds. We might be less sanguine even than before about the country’s hope to get itself out of the great de-tax and spend financial hole we’ve dug for ourselves and the war that continues to dig that hole, but we needed to talk more about how these national trends affect us as archivists at the state and local levels.

Politics and Records

Of course, to some degree, this question was answered for us by the first group of us to present at case study to the class. This team—consisting of Bill Carpenter, Rosemary Pleva Flynn, Claudia Holguin, Jeff Kintop, and Janet Carleton—gave a presentation entitled “It Was Dark and Stormy Night: A Saga of the Transfer of Gubernatorial Papers.” (An aside: The title, sans subtitle, is the opening line to a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, one of the worst famous writers in English, and one I’ll never forgive for convincing Charles Dickens to change the ending of Great Expectations into meaningless pablum.)

The case they discussed was that of Virgnia Governor Gilmore’s transfer of his records to the Library of Virginia, incompletely, erratically, and with plenty of evidence of the kind of “records cleansing” that is common with the records of politicians and political organizations. The team discussed the problems with Virginia’s governor’s records law and how to work with a governor (and, by extension, any executive officer) to ensure the preservation and proper management of the records produced by that office. This story became a small controversy in Virginia and was probably, by its mere status as controversy, one of the reasons that the records of the next governor were quickly accessioned and made available after his term ended. One of the significant learnings of the team was that “archivists in a lead role need more than standard archival training,” that they need to know about politics, business administration, the law, and many other facts of life to do their jobs well.

Riding Sidesaddle on a Blog

During the course of our wide ranging conversation, we found ourselves discussing the need for a more vibrant professional literature, and someone questioned the reliability of blogs and other new media, and the suitability of these to meet our informational needs. The counter to this is a pet peeve of mine. My argument, said with maybe a bit too much brio, was that we believe in truth, we believe that truth is possible and that it reveals itself to us, we act as if unreliability of information is a new thing, or uncommon. In reality, we are daily gathering information from individuals and somehow figuring out how to evaluate its veracity (even if we make mistakes), but that we never sit around making the point that people in general are unreliable. We are an old-media profession that has to embrace new media because the old world is dying. It is dying. Our systems of reliability are coming to an end, and we will now have to live in a world that might scare us a bit. I ended with a line I wrote down verbatim: “We must live our lives as if everyone is always lying to us and we always know the truth.”

Leadership

After lunch, we returned to listen to Maureen Sullivan discuss “Leadership in the Archival Profession,” where she asked us to ask ourselves, How can we as archivists be intentional in our professional development?

But she also did a remarkable act. She took a phrase from the first team’s case study presentation and turned it back to us:

Archivists in a Lead Role Need More than Standard Archival Training

We need to know . . .
We need to be able to . . .

With those words to guide us, she gave us five minutes to answer this question, and all I could come up in that time (was it really five minutes?) was

How to inspire people
How to cut away what we don’t need
How to focus on the essential work
How to form coalitions
How to imagine a future different from the present
How to respond to opportunities and challenges almost instantaneously

Then Sullivan made us break into groups of three people we had not worked with before, which proved impossible for at least a couple of us, and we discussed this issue further. Then the whole group spoke and came up with a wide range of interesting and perceptive answers to this question:

List of Leadership Competencies, Pyle Center, Madison, Wisconsin (23 Jun 2008)
(Click image to increase size)
Our discussions during this section of the day were hard and fast. We had ideas, the concepts dealt with our real work, we had stories about our work to illustrate our points. Our minds were churning like the water on Lake Mendota the first day we arrived.

A couple of notes from the board:

5 Leadership Practices

Challenge the Process
Inspire Shared Vision
Enable Others to Act
Model the Way
Encourage the Heart

and

Notes on Leadership and Motivation, Pyle Center, Madison, Wisconsin (23 Jun 2008)
We did also carry out a brief exercise about ourselves individually as leaders. We were moving fast at this point, and my notes to myself are almost scribbled from the speed of their construction. We had to judge ourselves as leaders, which we really cannot adequately do, since we can never step far enough away from ourselves to see, but answering questions about ourselves still can lead to insights, and I was reasonably pleased by the answers I decided I could give.

We’ll see Maureen Sullivan again tomorrow to continue our lively discussion.

Reception at Lake Mendota

The View from the Reception for the Archives Leadership Institute, Pyle Center, Madison, Wisconsin (23 Jun 2008)
At 4:20, immediately after our session with Sullivan, we walked to a reception at the library school, where we had a fairly spectacular view of Lake Mendota, enjoyed a little more conversation with ourselves and local archivists and historians, and where we stayed until about 6 pm.

Tom Hyry, Pyle Center, Madison, Wisconsin (23 Jun 2008)
My thanks to Tom Hyry, who gave me permission to post a picture of him to this blog. Why is this important to me? Because this institute is all about people and about being confident to be the people we are or to find our ways to be the people we need to be. And this picture captures Tom, at least for me. He’s smart, funny, outgoing, kind, and he can take a joke about spelling “Yale” with a 6.

Team 2 Begins

I have to admit that I foreshortened my time at the reception by finishing my reading of the case study my team must give tomorrow. Afterwards, I chatted with folks, and enjoyed myself, but we headed out to a working dinner soon after I was done.

We devised a simple, yet I think effective, presentation for tomorrow, because there’s almost no presentation to it. Our goal will be to replicate what we enjoy most about this institute: discussion. We are learning by talking and listening to others in conversation, in a living swirl of words shared and traded freely. And I expect our presentation will allow that. And I’ve been pushing for us not to overprepare, so that we can be fresh and ready, so we don’t know everything that will happen, and so we won’t spend too much time where we don’t need to.

After our interesting discussion into a plan for tomorrow, we just chatted about our profession, though I have to admit I mostly listened (because that’s how I like to learn). What I discovered was that this team I’m in is made up of some of the best archival minds I’ve run across. They are thinking about the profession (and their jobs) all the time, they are finding solutions, they are making the world work and pulling the profession forward—and it’s this kind of positive evidence of what we can do and are doing as a profession (to tackle electronic records, to manage wrenching reorganizations, even to handle the unavoidable conflicts of our work day) reminds me why I always hold out hope.

archivity furthers

Archives Leadership Institute, Day Two

2008-06-22T23:33:00.001-04:00

The Lowell Inn and Conference Center, Room 501, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin

This second day of the Archives Leadership Institute was still a fairly easy one, beginning at 10 am with a tour of the remarkable campus of the University of Wisconsin—Madison. At noon, we had lunch together, along with a speech on leadership by Max Evans, the former executive director of the NHPRC (during whose tenure this week was conceived). Max spent most of his speech quoting people about leadership and covered such topics as the need for passion and to communicate that passion, the importance of planning over plans, the need take risks and reinvent ourselves as needed, the need to embrace the future with audacity and modesty. He also—and I mention this since the topic of poetry came up often enough among those I was talking to today—quoted someone who seemed to be paraphrased a couple of famous lines from William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” (which did seem to contradict other points of Max’s):

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

After lunch, Ciaran Trace walked us through a discussion of what our shared values are, though she did this by showing us what we participants in this institute were like: 72% are female, and 28% are male; 33% from the Midwest, 14.8% from the Mid-Atlantic, 22.2% from the West, and 11% from the Northeast; universities represented the largest percentage of us. In our applications to this institute we listed outreach and advocacy, electronic records, recruiting and training, and technology for access as the top issues and challenges facing the profession.

Susan E Davis walked us through a relatively recent sea change in the profession: the development of MARC/AMC and, therefore, clear and controlled bibliographic controls for archival materials. She noted this as a change in the body of the core knowledge of the profession that brought regularity to our descriptive practices. This major change was lead by the Research Libraries Group with the Society of American Archives (SAA), a few archival institutions and a cadre of committed individuals who saw a need for this change. What interested her, and me, was how this group of people became leaders in the profession. They were all at about the same point in their careers. As they worked on this project, they bonded, forming a community of practice. They shared a belief in the need for this change. And their influence via their position on MARC AMC became “reputational influence”; they made names for themselves via this process of change they midwifed. Finally, many of these people became de jure leaders in the profession: fellows and council members of SAA. Interesting in this discussion was the question whether this model of practice could be used to predict and direct future change, the development of future leaders. Could this institute, in effect, serve a similar role as that very focused professional project of the past?

Helmut Knies gave an engaging talk about leadership, and one of the most interesting parts was his list of the values useful for leaders:

Mastery of skills
Loyalty to an institution
Dedication to one’s staff
Diligence, steadfastness, and reliability
Willingness to tell the truth

He noted also how the moment in time, in history, that our chance comes up can make all of the difference between success and failure. And that a good leader has to be able to reinvent him- or herself for the moment (thereby repeating a point Max had made earlier). One of his final points is one I make often enough myself: We have to use doubt and self-criticism as a driver of change.

After these talks, we carried out a mapping exercise to show the forces that could help and hinder the development of an electronic records programs in five separate types of repositories: state and federal agencies, public universities, private universities, corporations, and non-profits. We had but a short time to prepare our “maps” and our comments, yet I was still impressed by how well the teams did and how good the presentations were. One group of us will be tested even more so tomorrow when they present their case study.

After our day ended (a bit after 4 pm), we returned to our hotel and waited outside as firefighters searched for the reason the fire alarm had gone off. Groups of us then went to dinner, including a group of nine people representing most of our formal groups 2 and 5. Our dinner was fine, our conversation entertaining, and we followed Peter Gottlieb’s advice afterwards by going to a bar and talking some more, followed by a trip to an ice-cream store.

I had a scoop of Fat Elvis ice cream on a waffle cone: banana ice cream, swirled with peanut butter, and studded with chocolate chips. I’ve now designated this my third favorite flavor of ice cream, after ginger and red bean.

archivity furthers

Archives Leadership Institute, Day One

2008-06-21T23:43:00.002-04:00

The Lowell Inn and Conference Center, Room 501, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin

I am spending the first of seven nights in Madison, Wisconsin, so I can take part in the first class of the Archives Leadership Institute, which has been funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). This class of twenty-five archivists was chosen from a set of 102 archivists from across the country and from archives of all types. The organizers of this institute describe it in this way: “The goal of the project is to examine the leadership needs of the archives profession and to prepare participants to influence policy and effect change on behalf of the profession (and ultimately, on behalf the public served now and in the future.) The program is directed primarily at mid-level to senior staff and archivists who aspire to leadership roles in their organizations and/or professional associations.”

In my statement of interest, I explained my interest in attending this institute:

I have managed my career not simply as a means to improve my state in the world, but most importantly to effect positive change in the profession of archives and in the public’s view of that profession. Since the very beginning of my career, I have been deeply involved in professional associations, taking leadership positions in all those I have joined. My interest in professional organizations is one element of my interest in continuing education, which I see as an essential part of any archivist’s life. I see this institute as an important piece of my own education as a professional. I have participated in a more general year-long leadership academy at the New York State Education Department (my parent institution), but what I need is training aimed at my particular needs in my new position, where I now must ensure continued funding for a multi-million dollar program, advocate for the needs of my state and my program to the state legislature and others, and work with a wide range of stakeholders to ensure my institution accomplishes great changes in the next few years. I also must run one part of my program literally as a business, so I must learn how best to mix the skills of an archivist, an entrepreneur, and even a bureaucrat into a productive whole.

What really matters now, what matters for the next week, is how this group does. We are, as a number of speakers noted at tonight’s dinner, the first members of such an institute, so how we function together, how we think through issues, how we learn from each other, and even how we continue to work together once we leave the pleasant isthmus that Madison rest upon will tell us how well this bold experiment will work. The experiment is figuring out how to develop a group of motivated archivists to become change agents for the profession as a whole. I see room for improvement in the profession—in terms of how it sees itself, how it promotes its interests, how it explains the profundity of its mission to others—and this week will be the start of thinking about that.

The members of this class sifted into Madison over the course of the day, and a few didn’t make it in time for dinner (given the vagaries of air travel nowadays). We introduced ourselves briefly, we learned a little about each other, but the real work hasn’t started yet. We will be reading Susan E. Davis’ article “Electronic Records Planning in ‘Collecting’ Repositories” tonight (or, well, maybe, tomorrow morning), as part of our preparations.

And what did the speakers have to say? Peter Gottlieb, an attendee at Camp Pitt and incoming president of the Society of American Archivists, emphasized one critical part of this experience to us: the bars. He noted that we might leave here and forget what we specifically learned in sessions, though it will be ingrained in the way we function somehow—but we will remember the people, if we take the time to do it. So he encouraged us to hang out together, to learn what we could from each other, to bond, to maintain relationships after we leave—and to try Babcock Ice Cream and to enjoy, as we did tonight, the famed bratwurst and brownies of this area.

Kathleen Williams, the new executive director of the NHPRC, noted that we attendees probably had “some feeling of guinea-pigness” and that we would be the first of many institutes such as this one in the future. Using a number of sports metaphors based on her daughter’s soccer experiences, she noted that we were here trying to improve our “professional game.” And that is perfectly so.

Tonight’s dinner took place in a glass-walled room facing Lake Mendota, the light was beautiful on the water, and the time seemed just right for this all.

archivity furthers

Qué SARA SARA

2008-06-20T22:02:00.007-04:00

Nine years ago, the New York State Archives had just experienced a wrenching reorganization that moved huge groups of people together and apart into different configurations. One significant outcome of this change was that that part of the Archives once focused entirely on providing services to local governments and that part doing the same for state agencies became one and merged their sometimes duplicated functions. These two groups of people had lived under the same umbrella of the New York State Archives but had developed noticeably different culturally and had differing shared experiences. The two groups even had differing pronunciations of the acronym for the name that we then shared (SARA, for the New York State Archives and Records Administration). As part of an annual meeting of this group of staff people, I had the responsibility of leading a discussion of our differences and similarities. The following occasionally hermetic essay on language and culture comprised the handout I gave out at this session. I ran across it again today and decided, since this blog is often quiet, that a slightly weird and hopefully amusing posting on the topic of archives as institutions consisting of people might make for an interesting read.

Qué SARA SARA

A few brief and random thoughts on the connection between language and culture, with special attention paid to the situation in the New York State Archives and Records Administration

Geof Huth
Government Records Services Annual Retreat
Lake Placid, New York
21 July 1999

In every life, there are thousands of different events and traditions that help to develop our prejudices and form our individual ways of thinking. One of these is language. Though the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is no longer fully accepted by linguists, it posits this belief: that language actually influences culture, that the limitations of language in any one culture affect the ways in which the members of that culture can react to and understand the situations that impinge on their consciousness.

Language, n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another’s treasure. {Ambrose Bierce. The Devil’s Dictionary.}

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis A view about the relationship between language and thought, proposed by Edward Sapir and his pupil Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941). It combines two principles: that language determines the way we think (linguistic determinism); and that the distinctions encoded in one language are not found in any other language (linguistic relativity). The existence of successful translations argues against the strong form of the hypothesis; but some conceptual differences between speakers of different languages can be shown, and there is clear evidence that language does influence the way we perceive, remember, and perform mental tasks. {David Crystal. An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Language & Languages. Blackwell: Oxford, 1992.}

Glimpsing the Bicameral Mind of SARA

This hypothesis has great significance in our own cultural outpost, GRS of SARA of OCE of SED of NYS. (Note how that last sentence is meaningless to more than 99% of the rest of the world and you will immediately see how language affects understanding, which is one of the important activities in any human culture.) When most of us began work at the New York State Archives and Records Administration (SARA), it functioned under a bicameral model. We had External Programs (most of which was Local Government Records Services) and State Agency Services (which probably had a different formal name, but this the best my External Programs consciousness can muster). We functioned almost entirely separately of one another, developing separate ways of serving customers, separate biases on how to manage training events, and separate series of technical publications. This dichotomized relationship seems, to me, to be best demonstrated by the simple fact that we even pronounced the mighty acronym of our organization (“SARA”) differently. External programs—here come my biases—pronounced the word as most people would pronounce it, just as the female name Sarah. You might claim that this pronunciation was, therefore, an example of External Program’s matter-of-fact, hands-on, at-home-with-the-people pragmatism. You might claim that. On the other hand, much of State Agency Services (especially BRAD) pronounced the word in a surprising way: SAH-ruh. The pronunciation is exotic to my ears. Where did this pronunciation come from? For the answer to that, we must remember that the New York State Archives and Records Administration named itself (and, to a certain degree, emulated) the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). And NARA pronounced its acronym as “NAH-ruh,” possibly to avoid the connotations of the word “nary” which it otherwise would sound too much like. So “SARA,” for many in State Agency Services, rhymed with “NARA.” You might claim that this pronunciation was, therefore, an example of State Agency Services’ interest in aligning itself with a forward-thinking federal agency and of its own forward-thinking demeanor.

bicameral: schizophrenic; unNebraskan {6307 8228. Lexicon of Governmental
Records Services.}
Possible pronunciations of “SARA”:
“SEH-ruh” (used by External Programs)
“SAH-ruh” (used by State Agency Services)
“Suh-RAH” (a feeble pun, proposed by many as a compromise)

Language and Common Experience

Language itself is an important common experience. When you are with someone who speaks your language, your chances of communicating well are much improved. Then speak to someone from your own country, someone of your own age, someone from your hometown, then someone from your family, and your ability to communicate will, with each step, improve. The more you have in common with someone, the better you can communicate with that person. Take yourself, for instance. How often do you not understanding what you’re saying? Then talk to an old man from Tangier Island in Chesapeake Bay, where the inhabitants developed and maintained an archaic-sounding version of English that is peculiar to them and difficult for us to understand in terms of vocabulary and pronunciation and grammar. Families develop such individualized manners of speaking as well, and in the joint families of External Programs and State Agency Services, we developed independent terms for independent ideas. These bare words may conjure up jokes and experiences for some of us, but not for all. They are maps to our separate existences.

Words with meaning to former members of External Programs

Blue Team: that group of people with the most power in a
given organization {6307 8228. Lexicon of Governmental Records
Services.}

Gold Team: any group of four unhappy people {6307 8228.
Lexicon of Governmental Records Services.}

Larry-Go-Round: (obsolete as of 1997) a special event
where a number of people involved in an undertaking review and criticize the
undertaking for people who have no intention of making any changes {6307 8228. Lexicon of Governmental Records Services.}

LGROIN: Local Government Records Officers Information
Networked, renamed TIP or
NYSLGTI {6307 8228. Lexicon of Governmental Records Services.}

oreo: a Regional Advisory Officer {6307 8228. Lexicon
of Governmental Records Services.}

overarching: underthought yet overwrought {6307 8228. Lexicon of Governmental Records Services.}

PERU: Andean country that is not Bolivia, Chile or
Ecuador {6307 8228. Lexicon of Governmental Records Services.}

reboant: (n) a robotic ant hired to repossess
property; (v) to boant again; (adj) reverberating loudly {6307 8228. Lexicon
of Governmental Records Services.}

Red Team: Gold Team bloodied with oversight {6307 8228. Lexicon of Governmental Records Services.}

WDTM: (abbr) what does this mean? {6307 8228. Lexicon of Governmental Records Services.}

The Different Meanings and Forms We Adhere to Words

Let’s admit it right off. Words are unnatural; any meaning they have is not automatic or universal or changeless. Expect many of the terms you use today to be meaningless in the
future, for all kinds of reasons. When was the last time you saw a Tudor or a Fordor car? Or bought isinglass? Or used the word yclept or sennight? But right now we in Government Records Services use words in different ways; we see the world from slightly different perspectives. Let’s take one example: the terms “local government” and “state agency.” Since the marriage of the two halves of SARA and the formation of the entity called GRS, we have had to figure out how to refer to our two main customer sets in writing or during presentations. Here are the choices:

1. mention only the set you’re most familiar with, “local governments”
2. mention only the set you’re most familiar with, “state agencies”
3. say “local governments and state agencies”
4. say “state agencies and local governments”

Guess who chooses the odd numbered choices as opposed to who chooses the even numbered ones. I’ve paid attention, and the answer is telling and expected. Hey, I consciously choose “local governments and state agencies,” rationalizing that, since local governments are most of our customers, this makes sense. But some people have proposed a fifth choice, one designed to bring our customers together as a group just as we have been brought together as a group:

5. say “agencies”

In this solution, “agencies” is meant to be a generic term that can encompass both the 4300+ local governments in New York State and New York state agencies. But note how “New York” is used differently in the sentence above. What does that show? My own bias, reflecting the bias of local governments in the state: that local governments are apart from, not a part of, the State of New York, but that state agencies are precisely part of the State of New York. To local governments, this fact is over-believed, so much so that they sometimes expect people in SARA to know everything about the dealings of the Thruway Authority or the Department of Health. But we don’t see the monolithic entity, The State, because we are part of that entity and we see more clearly its parts.

Other Words That Illuminate Old Differences

Just as a brief exercise (not as a way to encourage us to see ourselves as apart from one another), what are some words or phrases that we continue to use differently?

future: {6307 8228. Lexicon of Governmental Records Services.

Words that Bring us Together
So let’s be positive for a second. We have many more similarities than differences, and we can clearly see them in language. Below are a number of words defined for us. And the ungainly jokes within them should make sense to all of us. Because we have had experiences together, for one. But also because we share the same technical vocabulary. We have been working in different regions of the same world, but these regions abut one another and the same river nourishes both, so most people can’t tell us apart.

administrivia: a striving towards perfection {6307 8228. Lexicon of Governmental Records Services.}

The Anti-Chris: Bob Arnold {6307 8228. Lexicon of
Governmental Records Services.}

arrangement: 1. the particular order of a particular set
of records, including alphabetical, chronological, numerical, and zetayauchial
2. a special “understanding” between an archivist and someone not the
archivist’s spouse {6307 8228. Lexicon of Governmental Records
Services.}

cultural revolution: mold on a CD-ROM {6307
8228. Lexicon of Governmental Records Services.}

electronic records: those records that give you a
slight shock when you touch them after rubbing your feet against a carpet {6307
8228. Lexicon of Governmental Records Services.}

expectations: pipe dreams {6307 8228. Lexicon of
Governmental Records Services.}

fieldmouse: an RAO {Andy Raymond}

format: the medium, shape, disposition and makeup of a
particular record, used in such phrases as “16 RPM is my favorite format of
record” {6307 8228. Lexicon of Governmental Records Services.}

grant reviewer: someone who has seen a grant
more than once {6307 8228. Lexicon of Governmental Records Services.}

Internet: a telecommunications system hooking together
networked computers over the globe for the purposes of slowing productivity,
thought by many Americans to be a plot by the mainland Chinese to achieve world
domination; the infogluteus maximus supergorgeway {6307 8228. Lexicon of
Governmental Records Services.}

outdexing: an information management technique
akin to indexing, where access to a single word in a document is made by
developing a detailed guide to that word in that particular context (these
guides are frequently at least 10,000 times the size of the original word);
exegesis {6307 8228. Lexicon of Governmental Records Services.}

quality control: any system devised to contain
the rampant spread of quality {6307 8228. Lexicon of Governmental Records
Services.}

robox: a modern paper-containing receptacle that places
itself on a shelf in a records center once it becomes full of inactive records
and that leaves the shelf and disposes its contents as these become obsolete
{6307 8228. Lexicon of Governmental Records Services.}

ROWM: a read once, write many disk; a modern computer
storage medium that allows a user to write information to it any number of times
but to read that information only once {6307 8228. Lexicon of Governmental
Records Services.}

turnkey system: (common misspelling of turkey system) a
computer system that never quite runs right, no matter how long you fiddle with
it {6307 8228. Lexicon of Governmental Records Services.}

Hopes for Our Future

Keep in mind that peoples, down through the ages, have found themselves facing each other, with no language in common. At first, they speak meaningless syllables to one another in frustration. Then they add gestures to this conversational mix. Eventually, the verbal and gestural cues merge together into clumps of recognized meaning, and the two peoples begin to speak a pidgin. With the members of the next generation, this pidgin is transformed into a fully functioning language, a mix of the two languages that we call a creole.
And we’re at least speaking a pidgin together now.

creole A pidgin language which has become the mother tongue of a speech community. {David Crystal. An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Language & Languages. Blackwell: Oxford, 1992.}

pidgin A language with a markedly reduced grammatical structure, lexicon, and stylistic range. The native language of no one, it emerges when members of two mutually unintelligible speech communities attempt to communicate. {David Crystal. An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Language & Languages. Blackwell: Oxford, 1992.}

Our thanks to 6307 8228 for allowing us to quote from LGRS.

And remember what W.B. Yeats wrote: “How can we know the meaning from the word?”

archivity furthers

Access=ability

2008-04-26T17:51:00.002-04:00

On Friday, in a discussion about a state law that considered the need for accessibility to records, I noted the plethora of issues that related to accessibility in some way: availability of records, the mere ability to read a record (that is, to open an electronic record), disaster planning, preservation, and on and on, ending with this summary statement:

Accessibility is hampered by nonexistence.

archivity furthers

Of Archivists and Documentation

2008-04-11T14:06:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, in an interview, someone asked me why I created and made available so much information about recent surgery of mine. I eventually discussed the idea of life as art performance, but I began with these two sentences:

We are archivists. We must live documented lives.

archivity furthers

The Retention of Email (Final Answer)

2008-03-12T23:41:00.002-04:00

On March 4th, while corresponding with a journalist who was asking the age-old question, "How long should email be kept?" I came up with my most succinct answer ever. The answer remains the same, but I squeezed it into a small enough space that it might actually make sense to people:

The issue of retention of email is a bit complicated. Email itself doesn't have one specific retention period. Instead, the length of time to keep an email depends on its content. Think of it this way, we don't have one retention period for records printed on letter sized sheets of paper; we have various retentions based on the content of the records. Email is like paper, just a carrier for information.

archivity furthers