The Anarchivist

Preparing for a Daylong Workshop in Cheyenne, Wyoming

2011-10-06T23:18:00.002-04:00

Still Life at a Home in Cheyenne, Wyoming (6 October 2011)

SpringHill Suites, Room 109, Cheyenne, Wyoming

Today, I flew to Chicago and then I flew to Denver, and from Denver I drove to Cheyenne, Wyoming, under a sky that really did seem bigger than the same sky as seen from the eastern part of the country. The reason for this trip is to give a workshop on electronic records tomorrow to 136 people from Wyoming and Colorado. This will be my biggest in-person workshop ever, and by a long shot (I did have an audience of 1,000 once for a webinar, but this is people in one place).

I spent an enjoyable evening tonight with members of the board of the local ARMA chapter, and tomorrow will be my presentation in celebration of Archives Day in Wyoming. I'm hoping to have the energy tomorrow night to report on what happened, because I think it's interesting to see what happens when one of us archivists flies around the country to talk about what we do.

Members of the Cheyenne ARMA Chapter with Geof Huth

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MARA Colloquium: What My Career Has Taught Me

2011-01-31T20:33:00.002-05:00

DATE: Tuesday, February 1, 2011
TIME: 5:30-6:30 (PST) – 8:30-9:30 (EST)
WHERE: Live from Schenectady, NY, via Elluminate

URL:
https://nexus.sjsu.edu:443/join_meeting.html?meetingId=1267553020900

PASSWORD: mara

Deciding to join the field of archives and records management is a strange one, a rare career choice, but one filled with many interesting challenges and fruitful rewards. Geof Huth will discuss his own career, how he chose to enter the field, and how he took advantage of opportunities to create a rewarding career but one not at all like the one he had imagined for himself. He will discuss what newcomers to the field need to think about and be prepared to do to find their own surprising careers.

With two decades’ experience in the field, Geof Huth is an authority on best practices in records management in government. He currently serves as the Director of the New York State Archives’ Government Records Services, ensuring the development and delivery of quality records management and archives services to local governments and state agencies across the state. These include direct advisory services, records center services, retention scheduling, and publication and workshop development. He speaks frequently around the country and the state about records management and archives.

Apart from his archives and records management interests and responsibilities, Geof is well known as a ‘visual poet.’ Check out his dbqp: visualizing poetics blog: http://dbqp.blogspot.com/

RSVP: Although virtual seating is unlimited, I’d appreciate an estimate of the number of participants. Please respond to Dr. Pat Franks at patricia.franks@sjsu.edu if you plan to join us.

ELLUMINATE: If you have not used Elluminate before, a student guide is available to help you prepare: http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/software/elluminate/students/

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Five Questions for Geof Huth

2009-10-07T23:54:00.002-04:00

I'll be giving a little talk next month at the fortieth anniversary conference of the Society of Georgia Archivists, and SGA asked a few of the speakers at the conference to answer a handful of questions about archives, for publication on their blog.

I've ignored this dear blog of my own for so long, since other responsibilities and interests have eaten away my time, that I thought I should repeat these questions here, in the hope that doing so might encourage me to do a little more thinking about archives in this space. Whether this tactic works or not to motivate me, I had a good time answering these questions:

How did you become an archivist?

At some point early in adulthood, I had a couple of degrees in English clutched in my fist and no interest in making the next step and earning a PhD in the field. I found myself in need of a career, so I faced a decision that thousands of people have had to make over the course of human history: Do I become an archivist or a lexicographer? My interest in lexicography, which continues to this day, grew out of my interest in language and the magical way in which discrete sets sounds or markings could carry so much meaning. My interest in archives grew out of my early work as a genealogist, where the only valuable research—I soon came to discover—came from using actual records. Of course, both fields have an abiding focus on detail and thoroughness, which helped make my decision more difficult.

But my life experiences made my ultimate decision simple. One day in a small town in rural France, I stumbled across a critical church book, a book I didn’t know existed in a town I had not planned to visit, and that changed me. The process of finding the book was happenstance. My father and I had stopped at a church to ask directions to the next town, and the priest there suggested we look through his books. The book itself was tossed in a cabinet filled with books and papers askew, and the ink was flaking off its pages, leading me to wonder how much longer the volume would last.

I became an archivist because I decided that this field held more opportunity than lexicography did, and that proved to be a correct conclusion. But I really became an archivist because I decided that people needed something better than happenstance to find a record, because I realized that records needed to be cared for if we wanted them to last and be used into the future, and because archives is a humanistic enterprise: We keep records not for the records themselves, but for the people who need them. Although central to our imagination, records are almost ancillary to our mission because those records have value only to the degree that people need them, to the extent that the records serve humanity, in big and small ways.

So I am an archivist because I’m passionate about the interplay between the record as a continuing embodiment of humanness and the humans whose lives and work and passions can be supported by those records.

What's changed the most since you became an archivist?

I am just old enough so that my training for my MLS included only cursory coverage of electronic records. In 1988, there were still a few people at school who did not have computers of their own, and people were a little unsure about what this electronic world was going to be and how it was going to affect our lives. So although there have been many changes to the profession since I became an archivist—a greater reliance on standards, a healthy broadening of the archival profession, and clear progress towards greater professionalism—the biggest change is that huge and often sleeping giant in our midst: electronic records and our crying need to manage them well. The question of “forever,” the question of permanence haunts us deeply with electronic records, and we still feel incapable of dealing with electronic records.

And that self-doubt shows. Most of us struggle to deal with electronic records. A few hope to avoid them altogether. Many probably believe that electronic records do not have the allure, the ineffable attraction of paper records or, better yet, records on parchment—yet these all are merely signs of human activity, each filled with the same blood and life that any other record of the same type holds. If anything will define our era of archives, if anything has the greatest potential to leave our tender throats exposed to the sharp blade of criticism, it is how we address this huge necessary change in our work. This is our greatest challenge, and one that we have to be up to. We cannot lose this battle. The signs everywhere demonstrate that we are experiencing a digital sea change at this very moment. Digital photography far outstrips traditional photography. A current blockbuster best seller is selling better on Amazon.com as an e-book than in paper. And most of the recorded information in the world is born digital and often dies without ever touching paper. If we don’t teach ourselves how to manage electronic records, we will be incapable of fulfilling our broad mission to document human activity. The recorded world, the world of unique and fleeting records, the world that we are responsible for preserving, will disappear.

What's stayed the same (for better or worse)?

Even in the face of enormous change over the last twenty years, I’m sure that much has remained unchanged, but what I think about most in this regard is us. As archivists, we are sometimes too cautious for our own good. Why? Because we know that we are each an essential link in a profound chain of responsibility, and because we know that our mistakes could very well have negative consequences that will last forever. Any record lost or destroyed on our watch is likely a record that will never be seen again, so caution is our byword. But caution can take us only so far. At some point we need to be fearless, we need to take calculated risks, we need to accept (for instance) that we might fail if we try to preserve electronic records. Yet if we do nothing, we know we will fail, and we cannot guarantee failure. What we, as archivists, have to learn, even if it goes against our general nature sometimes, is how to take risks and how to advocate for necessary change in our organizations.

How did you become interested in electronic records?

As computers arrived in our lives, I became interested in them for what they could do for us, for how they could change our lives, so I experimented early with computers to figure out how they might support a different kind of writing, provide greater control over page design, and allow for the creation of kinetic poems for the screen. And this last interest made me someone interested in the knotty problems of digital preservation back in 1986. Starting back then, before I was an archivist or thinking of becoming one, I developed a plan for preserving the first significant collection of early digital poems, the Canadian poet bpNichol’s “First Screening." To ensure the preservation of these poems, I preserved, as well as I could, the original 5.25-inch diskette that held them and a backup copy I had made, I printed out the computer code, and I created a videotape of the poems playing on a screen. What I failed to do was save the code electronically, but I saved enough for a dedicated group of people to reproduce the original experience of watching these poems move on screen. I was the only archivist in this endeavor.

My interest in electronic records, you see, grew out of a personal interest in preserving digital experiences of what it is to be human. What I didn’t want to lose was that sense of what we were as humans at any point in the digital past. For some people, the digital world is somehow inhuman and soulless, but I do not see it in that way. The digital is what makes us unique as animals. The digital is simply another way in which we express ourselves. I like to tell people that digital records are those records that best represent us because they, like us, require electrical impulses to be.

What advice do you have for new archivists or those interested in the profession?

My first bit of advice to new archivists is “Don’t limit yourself.” When I was in library school, my goal was to work eventually in literary manuscripts. And I have seen a literary manuscript or two in my career, but those opportunities to work in that particular field never materialized. Instead, work in government records did, and work with a broader records management focus but centered in an archival framework. What I have found is that this work is exciting, various, challenging, and that it has allowed me to work with hundreds, if not thousands, of people over my career. The flexibility I had, borne originally merely out of a desire to pay my bills, proved more than worth it in the end. My other bit of advice is to take pride in what we do as archivists, and by that I don’t mean that we should take pride in how we care for records (though we must do that as well). I mean that we must realize, accept, and prize that we are service workers, that we serve, every day, human beings. There is no higher calling.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

The PDA Replaces the PDO PDQ

2007-11-21T21:48:00.000-05:00

I live in Gmail, the email system I use for my personal email, and I use it to send messages, to chat with fellow users of Gmail, and to store, organize, and search for my email. Those 5GB of storage space (and counting) are so inviting that I even store backups of important files in email, meaning I can access them instantly, no matter where I am, anywhere on the globe, so long as I have an Internet connection. In effect, my Gmail account--along with my various blogs, my YouTube site, and my various stores of electronic documents, photographs, and videos--form my own dispersed and disarrayed MyLifeBits project. It holds my memory for me, because I can't depend on human memory. (Of course, I still have an active paper life as well, especially at home, where I keep journals, write poems, and sketch, usually by hand on sheets of dry wood pulp.)

Although Gmail is free, Google (its creator) is a company and needs to make money somehow, so what they do is display ads in a couple of places in the GUI of the email system. Because I'm an archivist and records manager, I tend to be interested in the concept of records, so I tend to use the word "record" (and its plural) quite a bit. Apparently, this caused Gmail to show me this "sponsored link":

Personal Doc Organizer
Makes organizing your important personal documents easy - Grab & Go
www.MyHelperPDO.com

Being a man of some curiosity, I decided to take a look at the Personal Doc Organizer (all the while wondering why the familiar "Doc," most frequently associated with members of the medical profession, made sense as the middle name of this product for this advertisement). After all, I'm a records professional as well as a person who has to manage his own records. My office at work is usually exceptionally neat, and that neatness helps keep me from forgetting to complete certain tasks. (I did spend part of the day today foldering or discarding a small pile of papers that had accumulated over the past few months, but even without this improvement my desk was probably the neatest in the Archives. And I do this without any filing cabinets at all, just a couple of file drawers. Most of what I keep long term is electronic.)

My home office is another matter: a landscape piles of papers, books, and boxes--all waiting for me to assign them some order. I give up at home, deciding that perfect order will have to wait. So the question was, Could the PDO help me manage my own records? The answer was easy: No. First, I doubt the "100 archival safe sheet protectors" or the binder itself would allow enough space to save the wide range of documents this system is designed to manage: financial, personal, medical, etc. A filing system, even for a single modern human being, cannot be contained in such a small space. Second, the filing structure seems only half-thought-out. What exactly are the distinctions between the categories "Financial," "Loans," and "Monthly Bills"? Is "Personal Papers" a reasonably narrow topic under which to store records? And what exactly--and this is an old question--should go under "Miscellaneous"? People aren't good with categorical rigor--I'll grant you that--but categorical confusion is of less help. I should point, out, however, that the dividers that carry the subject categories do include explanations that may clarify this distinctions. The third reason this system is not for me is that it tries to present itself esthetically by covering each divider with pretty pictures that do nothing but confuse the mind. And, hey, I don't believe the vinyl business card holders are "archival safe," and my doctor has never given me a business card to put in there anyway.

Certainly, the idea of a single binder that you can grab as you're escaping an oncoming brush fire has its charms, and the minimalist records creator who hews closely to a set of retention guidelines might be able to put this product to good use, but why not just buy a regular binder and dividers on your own and save two thirds the online price of the "system"? What I do is keep the few very important papers I have in a little fire safe with a handle. In the event of an emergency, I can grab that and leave. But if I don't make it to the fire safe in time, the records should withstand the fire.

What of my other records? Many are temporary records that I really need to hold onto for only about a month, so there's no real loss there. Any risk management plan would allow me to lose those records easily. Others would be helpful to own, but I can replace most of them by going to the companies and institutions I'm associated with. The process would take a little bit of time, but it's possible. My great loss would be my family archives, maybe 20 cubic feet of records going back almost 150 years: thousands of photographs, numerous films and videotapes, a few audiotapes, about forty years of my grandmother's diaries, and the records of almost all grandparental branches of my wife's and my families. That would be the loss.

Anyway, I don't need the PDO at all. My valuable information is digital and kept accessible to me at all times. I might need to grow that repository a bit, but I see it as a real source of protection for records I really need.

archivity furthers

Forward to the Past

2007-11-19T20:44:00.000-05:00

My past, my professional past, always has a way of coming back to it, of repeating itself. I'm dragging my past six jobs behind me like a raft of degrees of a man who never left school long enough to start working.

What amazes me most about this is how different the responsibilities of each of my jobs were, how quickly I went from a labor archivist to a grants administrator to a field advisor to a workshop and publication developer to a manager of field advisers to manager of most of those who had taken over these past lives of mine and many more. With each turn, I'm in a new room, addressing the problems and promises of records from a new vantage point, but I haven't even made through the entire house yet.

Back in 1990, which I realize was seventeen years ago, I served as the field archivist for the Capital District Labor History Project out of the University at Albany, SUNY. This is the job that prepared me for all the rest of my jobs because it prepared me for dealing with people. My job started out with cold-calling labor unions to ask them to let me appraise their records and possibly microfilm or accession them. Yes, I spent months talking to people who didn't understand the concept of archives about archives. And I met with them in person in their offices, their basements, and their closets. I worked out agreements with them, and I dealt with their competing issues of confidentiality and historicity, the desire to conceal and to show and therefore prove one's worth. It was a fun job, requiring talking, traveling, and trudging through cellars.

One of the unions I worked with was the Schenectady Federation of Teachers, whose history reached back to the 19teens. I borrowed the core of their historical records during this project and returned them after we had microfilmed them. Now, the union is moving its offices to a better facility and reviewing the records they have. My wife is a member of the executive committee of the union, so today I offered to go down to the office and help them review their records.

What I discovered is that their records are in the general shaped I'd expect records to be when kept by part-time officers with other full-time jobs--except maybe a little better. There was plenty of disorder, but it was not absolute. Patterns did emerge pretty plainly in the records. I also discovered evidence of my own hand at work. Here and there, I'd find an acid-free (hey, the term's good enough to use) folder with my neat pencil notations on it, thus I was able to pull some of the archival records out of the piles of records almost effortlessly. And I learned what happens to archival records when they are turned back to their owners: Their owners shuffle them back into the mass of records they're working with. The minutes were no longer simply in their one neat box. Instead, they were split apart, and other records were stored in the boxes with them. Some of my folders were reused, the original contents of the folders having disappeared. Where there once was reasonable order, there was now new chaos.

All of this was a great learning experience. I learned that historical records always belong in an archives, because an organization dedicated to managing records can manage them better than any other type of organization. I learned that original order is best understood as eventual disorder. And I learned that it was a good idea that my wife Nancy and I had convinced the union leaders that their best course of action with these records was to donate them to the University at Albany. (And I didn't even tell you about the minutes the union had tossed in the dumpster, only after calling a librarian at their parent union and learning that those were valuable records!)

archivity furthers

Archival Quotations (Recollected/Re-Collected)

2007-11-14T23:43:00.000-05:00

I've decided to collect my oft-repeated personal sayings on archives and records management in one spot, so I can easily add to them. Here are the four I recall at the moment, presented in alphabetical order.

Email is the unprotected sex of records management.

Ironically, electronic records are both impossible to preserve and impossible to destroy.

Records management is only tangentially about the management of people; it is primarily concerned witht he management of people.

There are two types of people: people who want to save nothing, and people who want to save everything. The problem with archives and records management is that they require a third kind of person, one who doesn't exist.

archivity furthers

Becoming Digital

2007-11-13T22:05:00.000-05:00

The following is a reprint of my "Chair's Message" in Mid-Atlantic Archivist, (Fall 2006, 35:4). The entire issue that included this issue is now available at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives' website.

At one point in my career—still a young archivist and barely into my thirties—I decided I was too old for electronic records. I assumed that I had come into this profession a little too late and that my career in archives would have nothing to do with those records created out of nothing by ones and zeroes. My assumption soon faltered.

Within a couple of years, my job itself had changed so radically that I had to advise and direct people on how to manage their electronic records. I had to use the knowledge I had, which forced me to notice that I had some. Since the mid-1980s, I had used computers daily, so I started with that basic knowledge, grounded in an understanding of four separate operating systems for personal computers: Windows, Macintosh, DOS, and ProDOS. I had taught myself to use Apple BASIC to program increasingly complex kinetic poems for the computer screen. I had also migrated data between operating systems and file formats, from my Apple IIe and IIGS to a
Macintosh, and from a Macintosh to a Windows environment.

My training in electronic records wasn’t formal or organized or comprehensive, but it was real. I was forced, by my personal circumstances, to address a number of preservation challenges. Starting in 1986, I used a multi-pronged plan to preserve, as best I could, my little coded poems: I saved a printout of the original code, copies of the original files on unreliable 5¼" floppy disks, and a videotape of the poems in action. None of these has proved a perfect solution, but each assists me in the preservation challenge. In the past couple of years, I’ve used my printout to enter the code into an Apple II emulator that allows me to see my poems running on a computer screen again. I’m now working with a friend to convert these poems into JavaScript, to give them a temporary berth in our current computing environment.

What I gain from this experience is the clear realization that each of us has lived with computers for decades, whether with reluctance or brio, so each of us has some knowledge to start with. Whenever I do any training in electronic records, I urge people to take hold of the knowledge they have and to open their minds to the possibility (no, the reality) that they can address electronic records in their institutions. I don’t try to overstate the case. Few of us will ever know enough about the preservation of electronic records to do it all ourselves. But each of us has the responsibility to understand electronic records, how they operate, and how we can ensure their preservation and continuing accessibility.

The danger from archivists ignoring the preservation of electronic records is clear, and many have expounded on the potentially huge gaps that may appear in the historical record for our age. The enormity of the electronic records problem is such that many archivists want to avoid the issue altogether, yet that is impossible. Government archives must deal with electronic records. These are simply too important a source of documentation for government. Manuscript repositories might believe that there will be little need for them to worry about electronic records, but more frequently these institutions are discovering that a significant portion of a person’s “papers” might actually be in electronic form.

As a matter of fact, the challenge of electronic records sits on everyone’s desktop. Most families now face this challenge, sometimes without even realizing it. In my family archives, which covers many branches of my wife’s family back over a century, we have correspondence, diaries, photographs, and other records that give us a glimpse into our family’s past. Even stored under less than ideal conditions, these records have survived in fairly good shape, and my wife and I can still look into the eyes of almost every one of our great-great-grandparents. Paper is easy. Digital is hard.

A family archives now includes a plethora of digital and audio-visual formats. Digital cameras now outsell film cameras, and I expect film cameras to virtually disappear within the next decade. Yet few families have any idea how they will preserve their digital photographs for generations, and the pathetic prints most people make at home are little better than their digital analogs. Many families replicate this problem with stores of digital (or even analog) video. Even diaries and correspondence have gone digital. Most families confine their paper correspondence to greeting cards. Correspondence usually takes the form of email, which almost everyone sees as ephemeral and unimportant. I’ll hazard a guess that more people keep an online diary in the form of a blog than actually write down their thoughts in a book at the end of each day. Yet almost no family is trying to save any of these records.

The problems with electronic records are legion, and one of these is that there are just too many electronic records. People are overwhelmed by the thousand pictures they took during vacation or the hundred emails they traded with friends over the past week, and they don’t know what to do. As archivists, we have to know; we must have a solution. We can’t leave this problem for another day. I often say that the frightening truth about archives is that preservation is a chain from the past into the future, and if only one link breaks then the entire chain becomes useless.

Fate has chosen us to be the link at the most challenging time in history for archives, and we cannot afford to be the weakest link.

archivity furthers

The 3 Ms

2007-11-12T23:29:00.000-05:00

When I give workshops on managing electronic records, I spend much of my time discussing preservation, since preservation is the great unsolved issue of electronic records. One of my discussion points is that you must preserve three separate but intertwined things to preserve electronic records:

Message

Media

Metadata
The message is the record itself, the core information of the digital object, the information that the creator of the message intended to communicate outward. (Of course, using the term "message" is merely struggling for alliteration, but I don't mind.)

The media used to store this message always presents me with a quandary, because (as I say) media doesn't matter in electronic records. We can easily copy a digital object to another medium and have a perfect copy of the original record; as a matter of fact, the concept of an original copy is essentially meaningless. (I claim it is the version held in RAM as you write it.) But media is where the record is stored, and if all media storing the digital object are destroyed, so is the digital object.

Metadata is another problematic concept. Paper appears to exist without metadata, so why should metadata be so important with electronic records. My real answer is that nothing has changed, that we have always needed enough metadata to understand a record and put it into context. I used to work in an archives that had a number of old accounts books from country stores, yet they could be remarkably bare of metadata: we might not know who the proprietor was of the store (the creator), what years the book covered (the date), where the store was situated (the location), or even the full names of the store's customers. Sure, we would know the cost of different products and we could perceive trends in what people bought, but without that essential metadata we could not understand the data itself without guessing.

The concept of the 3Ms is simple: If you lose even one of these components of an electronic record, then you have not adequately preserved it.

archivity furthers

In the Land of the Michicano*

2007-11-11T23:29:00.000-05:00

Nora Mendoza, Puma Head for a Día de los muertos exhibition, Zeitgeist Gallery, Detroit, Michigan (2007)

I am lucky enough to travel the country a few times a year, at someone else’s expense, to give workshops on archives and records management. I enjoy these excursions because they give me a chance to meet new people and to learn from them as I teach them some little of what I know.

But yesterday was a special day. I was giving a workshop on archives and records management to a group of Latino artists and representatives from Latino organizations. This workshop was part of the Midwest Latino Arts Documentary Heritage Project of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame. I was lucky enough to land this job because Tracy Grimm knew me, knew of my work as a trainer, and knew I was interested in and involved with art in my personal life. I also had experience with electronic records issues, donation of my records to an archives, and with living in a Latino country (Bolivia), so I seemed the person for the job.

Before I began my presentation, we had people introduce themselves, and some of these introductions were long and delved into a number of areas of interest to this project. This particular project’s aim is to better document Latino arts and artists from the Midwest, and I have assumed that most of these artists (if not all) are either citizens of the US or legal residents. But Juan told us about working in the Michigan countryside and learning that Mexican farm laborers were transforming themselves into farmers, owners of land, and that they were erecting altars in their fields. (Usually, these altars were set up next to a gun that would shoot off a loud blank periodically to scare the birds away, so the gun and the altar had the same goal: to ensure the protection of the crop.) These altars, of course, are a kind of folk art, and one that is, in essence, a movement.

Elena, another member of the audience, noted a dilemma facing this project: that many Latinos have spent so much of their lives keeping under the radar, that they need to be taught that they need to document themselves, that they need to prove their existence. The undocumented remain undocumented as a way to protect themselves, and this project is a struggle in the opposite direction. At one point, she said something so interesting to me that I wrote it down: “It is a revolutionary act to do oral histories and archive your records.” Our day, then, was spent thinking about revolution.

My talk itself was fairly basic, consisting of an overview of records management (primarily retention scheduling), a discussion of how to take care of your records (especially historic records), and a final discussion on donating papers to a repository. One special feature of this workshop is that I avoided all technical terms—except for “record” itself. This was a simple introduction to the field, not an in-depth discussion of any of it.

For lunch, we walked a few blocks to the Majestic Theatre Center, which includes the Majestic Theatre (supposedly the site of Houdini’s last performance), the Garden Bowl (“America’s oldest active bowling center”), and the Majestic Café (where we ate). The discussions at lunch were quite interesting, especially those I had with a woman [I’m intentionally holding her name back] about the appraisal of her recently deceased husband’s papers and subsequent negotiations with archives.

That issue of donation became one of the more interesting during our afternoon discussions. George Vargas, an artist who reported on his donation of his papers to the Bentley Historical Library at the University at Michigan, urged all of the attendees to preserve their records by donating them outright, without requiring payment. “We are spirit people,” he added. The widow gave her own perspective: her husband was a well known artist who should be afforded the honor of the purchase of his papers, the tangible evidence of their value. At times, this discussion was a little emotional, but never heated. No sparks flew. Near the end, I explained to the woman that donation is a personal act, one that no-one else can force upon anyone. I told her that the process of choosing an archives to donate to can be a trying one. I explained that she had not found an appropriate repository yet and that she had to find a repository that fulfilled her needs. I advised her to take the time she needed. After the workshop, I reviewed the appraisal of her husband’s papers, which was well done but which appeared to me to be too low (one eighth—to put it in perspective—of the appraisal of my papers, and it appears that this man was more famous than I).

What I tried to make clear during all of this is that donation one’s papers is an emotional issue, so it should not be forced. People need to take whatever time they need to decide on a home for their records, and no-one should pressure them to move more quickly. We forget, sometimes, that records are (as I quoted in my workshop) “extensions of ourselves.” They may be paper and plastic, ink and bits, but they represent us, they represent human beings, so we understand them as living creatures that are parts of ourselves. Anytime we are dealing with donations, we need to keep that human reality in mind.

The audience made this workshop work, because they were filled with life, ideas, and passion. That is what any teacher needs. In my professional life, I try to instill passion in other people for the work we do as archivists and records managers, so it is always refreshing to find the passion already in place.

George Vargas invited everyone to the Zeitgeist Gallery to see an exhibit of art works examining the topic of El día de los muertos. Since I had six and a half hours until my plane was scheduled to leave, Tracy and I went to the gallery and enjoyed the show, where we had the chance to see some artworks by Nora Mendoza, who attended the day’s workshop.

After the gallery, we went to the Bagley Housing Art Gallery, where we browsed through another exhibition. And just outside of this gallery, we were greeted by two well known murals: one, “City Spirit,” painted by George Vargas himself in 1979, and the other, “Corn Field,” painted by Vito Valdez. We had met Vito at the Zeitgeist and toured the murals (both of which he had also worked on the restoration of) with him.

Vito invited us to his house for dinner, where we met Mary and their four kittens, and where we had a great meal of tortilla chips with salsa, guacamole, and nopales (prickly pears), caldo (soup), and a great brown rice seasoned with a subtle and delectable spice blend of Mary’s invention. We discussed art (of all types), records, and our lives, and Tracy and I thanked everyone profusely for their great hospitality and the wonderful food.

Records are not dead things. They represent people. They endure after their creators disappear, yet they retain the aura of those creators. And what this day taught me, better than most of my days working in this profession, is something I have always believed: Our work is about the people, not the records.
_____

* This term, meaning “Michigan chicano,” I learned today, along with “chicanorico” (as in “Chicanorico Studies.”

archivity furthers

Nora Mendoza, Violin with Column (after Frida Kahlo) for a Día de los muertos exhibition, Zeitgeist Gallery, Detroit, Michigan (2007)

Poetry, Personal Papers, and Persistence

2007-11-09T23:15:00.000-05:00

Hilton Garden Inn, Room 211, Detroit, Michigan

Today, I flew to Detroit in the same aisle of an airplane as another writer from New York’s Capital District. He didn’t recognize me, not having the faintest idea who I was. And I didn’t recognize him, not having seen him sitting two seats and an aisleway away from me. But I saw his suitcase in the overhead compartment, which made me scan the cabin until I found him. Since there was another man sitting between us, I waited until we were off the plane, then I introduced myself.

Surprisingly, Joseph Bruchac, primarily a writer of poetry and fiction, was quite happy to be recognized and to talk to a fellow writer, and we carried on an interesting conversation about his career as a writer. He was traveling today, for instance, to a conference on children’s literature in Findlay, Ohio, and he travels quite a bit. He was kind enough even to remember my name and to ask for my card before we ended our conversation.

The important part of this story for the purposes of this blog is that he asked me what I was doing in Detroit, and I told him that I was here to give a talk to artists and art organizations on managing and donating their records. This line of discussion led immediately to a discussion of Bruchac’s papers, which is where I wanted it to go. I wanted to make sure his papers were somewhere, and I discovered they were at the Beinecke Library at Yale. (I discovered that Yale has 106 boxes of his papers, though I am not certain what a box equals in this case.) Also, the records of The Greenfield Review, a little magazine he runs with his wife, are at Brown. Most remarkably, he was paid for the donation of these papers, a practice more common at Ivy League universities than elsewhere.

He also explained to me his process of revising and how he saved the paper revisions as well as digital copies. This point was important to me because he told me that his disks with his writings have also become part of his donations. The donation of electronic records has to become expected even in the manuscripts world now, so I was glad to see Bruchac was doing that. And certainly Yale, at least, should be ready to provide intelligible access to these fragile records over time.

With my own papers, which I donated to the University at Albany (not quite as well known as Yale or Brown), I insisted that digital records be part of the deal. My thought here was to force the issue of electronic records on one more organization, but secondarily there were some records I had created that just didn’t exist in anything but electronic form—or which could only exist in electronic form. The change is here, so archives need to be ready for it. The time for waiting is over.

(In related news, I discovered today that UAlbany has almost completely finished the box and folder list for the finding aid to my papers. I personally wrote the finding aid, but I left the box and folder list for the university to finish.)

archivity furthers

What is a Record? What is a Publication?

2007-11-08T23:05:00.001-05:00

The New York State Archives and the New York State Library are preparing to work together on a grant project to develop a shared digital repository for their respective digital collections. The prospect of working with the Library on this project is refreshing, because the more I think about the issues involved the more I think that our two entities must work together. I explained my point of view to my colleagues in response to an email we'd received from the Library:

Interesting, and this note highlights our need to work with the Library. Some items that [the Library] sees as publications we have treated as records. My POV on this remains the same: saving historical materials is more important than defining the material types precisely. The unavoidable intertwingularity of concepts makes perfect categorization impossible anyway.

This moves us to intertwingularity, which, of course, is not my word or concept, alas, but it is still a good one. The concept here is that human concepts are intertwined and interrelated to such a degree that precise hierarchies and distinctions are all artificial. (Of course, we could argue that human knowledge is artificial as well.) This concept flies in the face of . . . well, pretty much everything that has to do with archives and libraries. These institutions are about structure, control, order. Yet, I often wonder, how many people truly understand the Library of Congress' classification system? And, more importantly, how many users get value out of that classification system. It seems clear to me that messy folksonomies, like the clumsy labels I add to these posts, have (despite their huge weaknesses) a better chance of being valuable, because they are more natural. They conform more to the messy minds of humans.

But my thought tonight is a little more focused than that. Archivists have spent years defining what a record was, and they thought they had it straight, and they could distinguish, say, a record from a publication. But the problem always was that something could be a record and a publication at the same time. A series of newsletters of an organization, retained by that organization as record copies, are clearly records, yet just as clearly publications. There's no reason for a library to fight an archives for control of those materials. Just just need taking care of in the easiest way possible. This problem of definition increased, I believe, with the advent of interest in electronic records. I still remember the gyrations people went through to define a record just perfectly so that it would fit the electronic world. Trouble is that world didn't cooperate. And definitions--and I say this as a lay lexicographer with a fairly good background in the field--are never perfect, and they shouldn't be. Language works because it isn't too specific; its mild ambiguity is what makes it work.

So I say, Let's take care of the digital objects and not worry if they are records or publications. The management of historical records is already complicated enough in my subparent organization, the Office of Cultural Education (the State Education Department being my parent organization). The State Archives, Library, and Museum all include, among their holdings, historical records. The Archives merely has the purest and the largest collection of them.

intertwingularity furthers

I Am Not an Historian

2007-11-07T20:44:00.000-05:00

One of the problems I have being an archivist is that I'm more of a records manager whose portfolio includes archives. One of my problems with being a records manager is that I am really a manager of people now. I stopped managing records myself (besides my own) years ago. A problem I don't have is being an historian. I've never been one, and I'll probably never be one, but I exist in a profession filled with people who want to be historians.

When I moved into this field, with a background in English and writing, I had no idea that many of its practitioners were people who saw themselves as historians. They had degrees in history, and they had a deep interest in history. Some of them never found jobs as historians, so they saw archives as a good fallback position. Some of them merely transformed their love of history into a love of the sources of history. And I have no problem with either of those reasons for calling oneself an historian.

I just don't want to be called an historian myself. I came into this profession with weird ideas about working with literary manuscripts. I thought my background suited me for that line of work. I actually have occasionally touched literary manuscripts, but I have never come close to having a job with that focus. I was never an historian. The only degree I ever started and didn't finish was an MA in history. (Two kids and a full-time job finally slowed me down enough to make me stop. But no worries: I have two master's degrees already.) I'm interested in history, I cherish how archives supports that activity, and I see the value of history.

But I don't create histories. My interest is in the records themselves, and it's almost talismanic. Part of that interest is understanding the value of the records to inform history. To say I was an historian, though, would cheapen the work of historians and falsify my record, falsify the record (I gather) of most archivists if they would to do the same.

This issue came up because in a conversation at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference the other day, one of my colleagues said, "Well, we're historians." Immediately, I responded with my mantra: "I am not an historian." To be good archivists, good records managers, good information professionals, we need to accept, honor, and cherish what we really are. So I do.

archivity furthers

The Critical Gene

2007-11-06T20:38:00.000-05:00

While trying to hold a multi-state telephone meeting today with two other archivists, I failed. Technical problems occurred at the organizing end of the conference call and the organizer had also experienced problems with his house following shortly on the heels of moving his mother out of her hard-lived house. He said of his mother,

"She has the preservation gene, but lacks that critical arrange and describe component."

This single archivist's thought--because who else would have had it in quite the same way, with quite the same words?--leads me in a number of different directions at once. It hits me at a little pressure point of archival thinking, and ideas radiate out from there:

Types of People

Initially, I was reminded of one of my archives and records management sayings (one I haven't assembled with the rest of mine): There are two types of people: people who want to save nothing, and people who want to save everything. The problem with archives and records management is that they require a third kind of person, one who doesn't exist. As with almost any axiom, this one is essentially false. (The range of human activity in even this small realm is fairly broad.) Yet conceptually correct. (Dividing up the world in this simple way helps clarify patterns.)

I see this all the time. Most people I work with--remember: we are archivists and records managers, AKA records professionals--have desks overgrown with papers and email inboxes of 1000+ messages. But some of us, including me, have fairly neat desks (mine is usually virtually bare save for my desk furniture) and an email inbox with about 30 messages (I had 29 when I left work today). The busyness of the person does not have any relationship to the relative order of files; there is something innate that controls this.

I find it strange that archivists are not always preternaturally neat (which I am not at all, for instance, with my papers at home), that they do not naturally understand what records of their own to keep and which to throw away, and that they do not control and manage and organize their records well as part of their regular office life. I once shared an office with a great archivist--incredible archival mind, great historical breadth of knowledge, and fantastic reference skills--who stored up to a foot tall frozen wave of records on his floor, leaving himself only a narrow pathway to move along through his office--after, that is, he pushed the door hard enough to allow himself space to enter the room.

Archival DNA

Which makes me wonder if there's an archivist type at all. I have, however, in the dark moments of my career, identified a feature of archivists that I call "archival DNA." This concept is not at all politically correct, it is markedly unfair, it smells of cruelty, yet I cling to it out of desperation. Archival DNA (ADNA) is what brings many archivists into the profession, and it certainly was a feature of my entrance into the field. ADNA is a set of character traits: shyness, reticence, an inclination towards perfection over achievability, a preference for boxes over people. Full-blown cases are rare, but whiffs of it are common. I, for instance, seem like some crazy extrovert to many of my colleagues, but when I compare myself to real extroverts I see how unlike them I am. I carry with me the shyness of my childhood, even if I don't let it out much. Don't want it to run into the street and get hurt, after all.

So why care about archival DNA? Because ADNA can cripple us. It can make us poor advocates for our role in the world. It can make us doctrinaire, accepting only perfection when 85% is pretty darn good enough. It can keep us from forming the alliances we need to form to make our work successful. It can make us forget that our real goal is never records themselves. Records alone are useless husks of information without people to use them, understand them, extract their riches. ADNA can make us forget that people should be our ultimate goal. ADNA might make us believe that preservation is the ultimate archival achievement, whereas access truly is. If a record is not used, it simply is not. Access and use justify preservation.

Electronic Records

And the quotation from the woman who had preservation gene but lacked the arrange and describe components reminds me that this is the opposite of what we see with electronic records projects even now. We have plenty of ways to assign or maintain metadata associated with a digital object. We even have tools to capture the metadata that maintains the structure of a body of records. But the preservation components are often weak (sometimes, only bit preservation) and always lacking. There is no Electronic Records Archives for us to use yet, the various species of document management systems people use to store their electronic records are simply filing systems, and preservation remains primarily a luck-based prospect of choosing the best possible file format for long-term storage.

Just a few vagrant thoughts I decided to put down this evening, just to think out loud the thoughts I think daily, not to cause controversy, though controversy loves my pleasant company.

archivity furthers

Revising MARAC’s Constitution and Bylaws

2007-11-03T11:44:00.000-04:00

Marriott Williamsburg, Room 142, Williamsburg, Virginia

The most important event to me at MARAC this morning--but please don't forgot to attend MARAC in Chautauqua, New York, May 1 to 3, 2008--was the presentation of the changes to the bylaws. I presented these at the business meeting, with a modicum of humor and almost no issues. But the membership voted on a number of changes to Article 5, Section D of the bylaws. Find below the changes we will be sending to the membership, along with the explanations for these changes. (Please note that the information on this blog is not the official posting of this information. If it were, I'd have to note that I call the new Article 10 of the bylaws "the Dan Linke Amendment.")

* * *

Over the years, MARAC changes its procedures or sees better ways to do what it currently does. During the course of the past year, the MARAC Steering Committee has considered a few changes to the constitution and bylaws that will regularize and improve operations of the Conference. This mailing of the proposed changes, within the pages of the Mid-Atlantic Archivist, to the constitution and bylaws constitutes the official notification to the membership of a vote on any proposed constitutional changes at least thirty days before a business meeting. The members of MARAC who attended the fall business meeting, in Williamsburg, Virginia, voted to send these to the full membership for voting on November 3, 2007.

CONSTITUTION

Below are extracts from the MARAC constitution, along with proposed changes to the text and the rationale for each change. Edits are shown in this manner: ~~strikeouts~~ denote text deleted; [text within brackets and bold] denote text added.

8. AMENDMENTS

Amendments to this Constitution shall be proposed by twenty-five (25) members in writing to the Secretary. Proposed amendments shall be [issued] ~~mailed~~ to the membership at least thirty (30) days before a business meeting in order to be discussed at that meeting. After being discussed at the business meeting, a proposed amendment shall be voted on by mail ballot of the full membership. The ballot shall be [issued] ~~mailed~~ no more than fifteen (15) days after the conclusion of the business meeting. A special committee shall be appointed by the Chair to tally the votes. A majority of the votes cast shall be binding.

Rationale:

Changes ensure that amendments to the constitution may be voted on via any means, meaning that paper ballots are not required.

BYLAWS

Below are extracts from the MARAC bylaws, along with proposed changes to the text and the rationale for each change. Edits are shown in this manner: strikeouts denote text deleted; [text within brackets and bold] denote text added.

1. DUTIES OF OFFICERS

B. [The Chair may designate others to carry out official duties of the Chair as necessary.] The Chair shall serve as an ex-officio member of the [Development and Meetings Coordinating] ~~Education, Outreach, and Publications~~ Committees. The Vice Chair shall serve as ex-officio chair of the Meetings Coordinating Committee. The Treasurer shall serve as ex-officio chair of the Finance Committee [and as an ex-officio member of the Meetings Coordinating Committee].

Rationale:

The addition to the beginning of paragraph B clarifies that the Chair may designate others to carry out the Chair’s work in the Chair’s absence or whenever the Chair believes such an action would improve efficiency.

There is no need for the Chair to serve ex officio on so many committees. However, the Development and Meetings Coordinating committees’ work is critical to the development and mission of the organization as a whole, so it is appropriate that these be the two committees where the chair serves ex officio.

The last proposed change clarifies that the Treasurer also serves ex officio on the Meetings Coordinating Committee.

2. TERMS OF OFFICE

A. The Chair, Vice Chair and Members-at-Large shall be elected in odd-numbered years. The Secretary, Treasurer and State Representatives shall be elected in even numbered years. [Each term shall be for two years.]

Rationale:

This change may not be essential, but nowhere under “Terms of Office” do we state that terms are for two years, though this is stated under section 4 of the constitution.

~~D. Members-at-Large shall be ineligible for immediate reelection.~~

Rationale:

The members-at-large are the only members of Steering Committee who are term-limited. Given that this ensures that members-at-large will serve for only two short years, this impedes their ability to serve MARAC well.

3. NOMINATIONS AND ELECTIONS

A. The Nominations and Elections Committee shall consist of five (5) members. Two (2) shall be outgoing Steering Committee members chosen by the [MARAC Chair] ~~Steering Committee~~, and three (3) shall be elected by the membership ~~by mail ballot~~.

Rationale:

In actual practice, the MARAC Chair has chosen the non-elected member of the Nominations and Elections Committee, and this is an appropriate responsibility for the Chair.

The reference to a “mail ballot” has been removed to clarify the acceptability the option for electronic voting.

D. The Nominations and Elections Committee shall issue an official ballot [in whatever form it deems appropriate] at least sixty (60) days before the first meeting of the calendar year. Ballots shall include space for write-in candidates for each position. Ballots shall be [submitted] ~~returned~~ to the Nominations and Elections Committee [no later than] thirty (30) days after being [issued] ~~mailed~~.

F. A nominee receiving the highest number of votes for an office shall be elected to that office. In the event of a tie vote, the Nominations and Elections Committee shall [issue] ~~mail~~ a second ballot containing only the names of the tied nominees within fifteen (15) days of the first tally. These ballots shall be [submitted] ~~returned~~ to the Nominations and Elections Committee within fifteen (15) days.

Rationale:

These changes in the bylaws ensure that any method of voting, including electronic, is acceptable for MARAC elections, if the Nominations and Elections Committee deems it so.

The phrase added before the reference to thirty days clarifies that ballots must be submitted no later than thirty, rather than precisely at the thirty-day mark.

5. COMMITTEES

A. The Standing Committees of the Conference shall be: [Development], Meetings Coordinating, Nominations and Elections, Finance, Membership Development, Publications, Education, and Outreach. Standing Committees shall be comprised of at least three (3) members.

Rationale:

The colon is grammatically faulty.

The Development Committee is a committee accidentally left off this list in the past.

D. The awards committees shall be the Arline Custer Award Committee[, the Distinguished Service Award Committee,] and the Finding Aids Award Committee. Members of the Finding Aids Award Committee[, including the chair,] shall be appointed by the [MARAC] ~~Conference~~ Chair for [two-year] ~~three (3) year~~ terms. ~~The MARAC Chair shall appoint the chairs of the Arline Custer Award Committee and the Finding Aids Award Committee.~~ [Members of the Distinguished Service Award Committee include four members: the immediate past MARAC Chair, who serves as the Committee’s chair, the MARAC Archivist, and two members elected by the membership for one-year terms.]

Rationale:

The Distinguished Service Award Committee is a committee accidentally left off this list in the past.

The members of the Finding Aids Committee do not serve two-year terms, but two-year terms are the standard for most committees. The proposed change to the terms of office for this committee regularizes such terms to two years.

The reference to the Chair appointing the chair of the Arline Custer Award Committee is removed, since the chair of that committee holds an elected position.

The description of the membership of the Distinguished Service Award Committee is included to ensure this information appears in the bylaws along with similar information for the other awards committees.

[10. FINANCES

To ensure that MARAC’s finances are afforded appropriate oversight, no officer, member, or agent of MARAC may expend MARAC funds or obligate MARAC financially without first ensuring that spending has been authorized by the approved budget of MARAC, the approved budget of a MARAC conference, or by a special action of the MARAC membership or the MARAC Steering Committee.]

Rationale:

The proposed change clarifies that no one person or unofficial action of a group of MARAC members may make financial obligations to the organization.

archivity furthers

MARAC Williamsburg, Day 2

2007-11-02T23:53:00.000-04:00

Marriott Williamsburg, Room 142, Williamsburg, Virginia

I'm still not recovered from staying awake for about 22 of 24 hours in a row, so I will have little to say here tonight.

The conference is going well. The opening plenary was broken into two parts: a brief rundown of the history of Jamestown, and a brief history of the past 35 years of MARAC (founded in 1972). The first session I attended, on digital repositories, was both interesting and informative, and I found that the questions nicely extended the presentations into conversation (my preferred mode of communication). The luncheon speaker was a linguist who resurrected bits of the local Algonquin language for the Terrence Malik film, The New World, and he provided an interesting (though simple) introduction to how he recreated the tongue. (I've read enough linguistics to want more detail in his description of the process, but I think it was perfect for the audience, though a little weak in terms of its archives connection.)

The conference's reception was at the Earl Gregg Swem Library on the campus of the College of William and Mary, where we celebrated the 35th anniversary of MARAC with a cake.

There was a good crowd at the reception, and everyone was having a good time. My favorite part was where reproductions of the covers of the every MARAC conference program were laid out on tables so we could sign those we had attended. I discovered that I had attended twenty MARAC conferences since I joined in 1988.

Geoff Williams and Geof Huth, Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia
(photo courtesy Amy Schindler's List)
What else happened at the conference today? I realized I was a bit exhausted.

archivity furthers

Archeiology and Archifacts

2007-11-01T23:46:00.000-04:00

Gravestone (Detail), Jamestown (Island), Virginia (USA)

Marriott Williamsburg, Room 142, Williamsburg, Virginia

I often plan to post thoughts on archives and archives matters to this blog, but my nighttime disappears into other activities, such as blogging about visual poetry or blogging a lifelong and fragmentary poem. When something must give way at night to allow me some sleep, it is blogging about archives. But I'm at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference fall meeting tonight, and I feel obliged to blog at least a small capsule of a thought.

After arising at 3:45 in the morning and flying down the ragged Atlantic coast to Williamsburg, my wife Nancy and I made our way to Jamestown, Virginia, to see the remains of an important early European settlement in the land that became America. We began at the Jamestown Settlement, a living history museum not located on Jamestown Island itself. There was something sterile about this museum, something unlike the richer "reality" of Plimoth Plantation, yet we were able to spend the allotted two hours of the tour here profitably enough.

Our real goal, however, was to see Historic Jamestowne (part of Colonial National Historic Park), which is on Jamestown Island. The ruins and excavations, such as they were, were interesting enough--as was the presence today of an Episcopalian event focused on the 400th anniversary of Anglicanism in North America and on reconciliation. Episcopalians were everywhere, including more American Indians than I'd ever seen in one place outside the Southwest. There was something gratifying--I say this without a sense of liberal guilt (note that I'm not even using the term "Native American")--about seeing that island populated by Indians again, even if only temporarily.

But none of that has to do with my night's tiny point.

What we found on this island were ruins, a brick church, a large tercentennial obelisk, grave markers, flora, fauna, a beautiful day, and a museum that went by the name the "Archaearium." The focus of all the information in this historical park was artifacts, human and natural. The Archaearium went out of its way to explain how DNA and carbon dating and other methods were used to understand the artifacts, but what was remarkably clear from all the exhibits and all the labels on the exhibits was that archives were an important key to understanding these artifacts, that archives and artifacts together helped recreate this particular past.

This realization, so obvious as to be unremarkable, is important to me because it shows the clear connection between these two pathways to the past. People usually respond more strongly, more viscerally, to artifacts (ruins, buildings, clothing, whatever) than to archives (which are essentially seen as information-carrying devices, rather than romantic connectors to the past). But every artifact is richer, every archeological site is more deeply understood and experienced, when bolstered by the simple paper and parchment of archives.

archivity furthers

Thursday at SAA

2007-08-30T23:53:00.000-04:00

The Fairmont, Room 2614, Chicago, Illinois

The power of records is everywhere. This evening, after returning from a baseball game at Wrigley Field (Go, Cubs, Go), I discovered in the drawer of our hotel room's desk a small card indicating that Daniel Reid stayed in this room on July 30th of this year for a room rate of $359. This interests me because I'm paying $149 a night to house four people in this room for the Society of American Archivists' conference, which clearly shows us what a deal we are getting in this hotel, the best hotel I've stayed in at an SAA conference since Los Angeles.

***

First, back to my day at SAA. I was too tired to rise quite early enough to arrive at the opening plenary at 8 am, but I was there long enough to hear the speech about diversity. While the gentleman was talking about diversity, in a careful and well reasoned way, I let my ears take over for my mind. I reverted to my natural state of listening to sounds. His voice was deep and musical, and for a while (but not for the entire speech) I heard more than I listened. I was standing at the back of the room with David George-Shongo, a friend of mine from New York State and an archivist for the Seneca nation. As I considered the issue of diversity in SAA, I looked around and was surprised by the stunning lack of racial diversity in the audience (at least from the back). I live in a fairly diverse, though white-majority, neighborhood in upstate New York, so I’m used to not paying attention to racial differences, but what I saw was that the audience was somewhere around 95% white. I mentioned this to David, who noted that SAA president Elizabeth Adkins had made the same point before I’d made it into the room.

***

My next stop was going to be the two-hour brunch. Unfortunately, before I could head to the brunch, I had a nice chat with Richard Pearce-Moses (the immediate past president of SAA) about the proceedings for the New Skills Colloquium he convened and I attended and spoke at in Washington, DC, last May and June. He also told me that the brunch was tomorrow, so I found my family and surprised them by have a brunch with them. This meant I missed the first session of the conference, but I needed to eat a little. This unexpected free time also gave me a chance to walk through Millennium Park, which I visited the year before last. But this time the Bean wasn’t entirely covered, and we had a fun time examining the way its metallic carapace reflected and distorted the world around us.

***

Unfortunately, I left my brunch and went almost immediately to a lunch meeting with the officers of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference. I attended as the immediate past chair, and we had a useful meeting, though it ate a bit into the next session block. (Holding other meetings during SAA is a great tradition of this organization, and one that adds value to the conference.)

***

Since the session I was speaking at was right after this next session, I had to go up to my room first and grab my laptop and other supplies before I could attend Session 206: Desperately Seeking Solutions. I came in only in time to hear Mark Conrad, the last speaker, give his talk. By the time I arrived there were only two free seats left, and they were half-hidden in the front of the room. (No-one else, apparently, felt like walking across the entire room to take a seat, especially so far into a session.) My friend Mark Myers, who had just finished speaking at this session, was a little surprised to see me come in late, but I decided it was not a problem at all. Why? Because this session was a repeat of a session I’d already attended at MARAC last year, with the same three principles speaking. A good session, but I didn’t need to see it twice.

Mark Conrad did his usual good job of laying out the problem of preserving electronic records: there are currently (right now, not counting stuff from the past) 4,000 different data formats in use in the federal government, NARA is expecting to have to manage 3 trillion digital objects in the near future, and there are “only a handful” of long-term formats. He also touched on the problems archivists are seeing with the management of electronic records: too much theoretical research and too little practical research, not enough practical experience, too few collaborations and connections with the computer science community. All too true.

Mark takes, however, an overly pessimistic point of view to my mind. (I’m not a pessimist, just a possimist, someone who knows everything is going to go wrong but acts as if it will all be all right in the end if I just work at it. That’s my daily balancing act.) When asked to name long-term formats, he named ASCII, Unicode (so far as the version of Unicode is chosen carefully), and TIFF—and he specifically eliminated PDF/A. This list doesn’t make sense to me. ASCII and Unicode are about the only formats we can really believe have long-term sustainability as they are (leaving aside for a second the fact that Unicode is essentially and extension of ASCII).

But if we define the world that narrowly, then there’s no way to accept TIFF as a long-term format either. First, it has changed over time; certainly more slowly than PDF/plain or PDF/A, but it changes. Second, the use of TIFF outside of certain niche markets (like archives) is actually dropping. It is very unlikely for most people to shoot TIFFs with digital cameras, use TIFFs on the web, or actually take advantage of the advantages of TIFF over other formats. And with the advent of JPEG2000, I’d say that the advantages of TIFF are diminishing. It appears to me to be a format in regression.

As archivists, we have to care about the general viability of formats because we alone cannot maintain a format. What PDF (and, by extension, its doppelganger, PDF/A) give us is market penetration; it is a format supported by millions of people. That support might wane, sure, but not as quickly as TIFF’s is. (This lack of ubiquity, by the way, is one reason I cannot come to support the OpenDocument Format yet, though there’s still a chance it might catch on.)

Mark also said that PDF/A is owned by Adobe, which is simply not true. My friend Dan Noonan (late of New Jersey, recently of the Ohio State University) spoke for me: PDF/A is an open standard, an ISO standard. It is, literally, not owned by Adobe, and Adobe shows every indication of supporting the development of revised versions of PDF/A. (Certainly, this proliferation of versions is another problem Mark perceives, and I understand it, but all readers of PDF/A are supposed to have the capability of reading all earlier versions. Each version is built upon the back of the last, supporting only those features in PDF that can be assured any long-term viability.)

My last point in this regard is that Adobe announced this January that it will be making its specifications for PDF an open standard, which I have to believe they will do. For instance, they’ve already been publishing their specs and allowing other vendors to create software products to read and create PDFs. And, hey, they’re the people providing us with the TIFF standard as well. This is simply their operating model. That could change in the future, but so could anything we believe about the state of electronic records.

Finally, in listening to Mark—who’s a friend of mind, has a great (simply great) electronic records mind, and who understands so fully the challenge before use—I thought of one point that I come back to from time to time in my life: Pessimism can get us only so far. Pessimism can be a motivator, but it cannot be the only one. We need a little hope. We need to seem where hope glimmers, and we need to build it into a little fire. That’s where we need to go now. We’ve spoken enough about the issues and what we’ve failed to do, so now we have to do what we know we must do.

***

I ended the day (discounting the Cubs game I attended—good pulled-pork sandwich) presenting at a session on the Council of State Archivists’ Closest to Home project, an NHPRC-funded project to crack another difficult archival nut: how to ensure that local governments have the archives they need (meaning “archives” in all senses: the records, the program, the facility). I’ll write more about this project some other time on this blog, but for now let me just say that a major point I made was that we needed to be passionate about local government archives if we wanted to foment change. I said, pretty clearly, that the days of moaning about our fate have to be over. We cannot grouse about the poverty of resources for local government archives. Instead, we my use our passion to move that poverty into the past and make way for riches and success. Dream of success, and it just might come.

archivity furthers

A Brand-New Records Management Axiom

2007-05-29T22:07:00.000-04:00

Email is the unprotected sex of records management.

An Archivist's Dream

2007-04-24T23:42:00.000-04:00

Today was a day of visitors at the New York State Archives.

A few of us had a chance to meet Donna McRostie, records manager from the University of Melbourne, today. We don't often have visitors from Australia, and Donna was the first to be more of a records manager than an archivist, so we had some good discussions about her university, its records management program, and even its application of TRIM to manage its electronic records. The University of Melbourne is huge (45,000 students and 9,000 staff), but it also has a remarkably large records management staff of about seventeen. The Australians are great records managers and archivists, and the prove their interest in the field with the number of people they set aside to conduct this activity. We had a great, though still too short, discussion over a good lunch of Mexican food.

Later in the day but before her nighttime, the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin visited the State Archives. Traditionally, such visits focus on our collections, so I didn't run into her in the building today. Instead, I saw her first at the reception held by the Archives Partnership Trust* at the Egg, a famous egg-shaped theatrical venue on the Empire State Plaza in Albany, New York. At the reception, we ate, drank, and chatted. I spent much of my time with local politicians, including the mayor of my city† Brian Stratton and John Faso, who recently ran for governor. Goodwin graciously signed autographs for people who brought books with them. This was not planned, but she appeared to enjoy the time, and as she was being led away she made sure to sign the books and chat with everyone still in line.

Goodwin was here to receive the third Empire State Archives and History Award (after Brian Lamb and Sam Waterston), but the bulk of the even was a conversation between Goodwin and Harold Holzer. Harold kept the conversation moving and changing direction, allowing the conversation to move over the topics of Goodwin's famous books: LBJ, the Kennedys, the Roosevelts, Lincoln, and even the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The conversation was unfailingly interesting. Holzer has a deft touch as an interviewer, and Goodwin was a fluid speaker: funny, engaged, passionate, informative, eloquent, and even um-less. But I remembered to start taking notes when she said, "It's bizarre what you get used to." This comment was made about LBJ's famed tendency to conduct work from a toilet, and Goodwin continued to tell a story about working for him as a young woman and having to go to the bathroom to talk to him even while he was on the toilet. Her experiences working with LBJ gave her insight into the man that few historians have with any historical figure, and her discussions about LBJ were touching. Certainly, without the stain of the Vietnam War on his fingers, he would have been seen by most people as one of our greatest presidents. His civil rights work alone would have seen to that.

Goodwin was a lucky historian. Connections through her husband, Richard Goodwin, who was a speech writer for John F. Kennedy, eventually gained her access to fifty boxes Joseph and Rose Kennedy had kept in the attic of her house. "It was," she said, "an archivist's dream. They had every check, every letter, ever diary entry." She told a story from her husband of Robert Kennedy worrying that his brother John would not be remembered because he had only three years of a presidency. Richard Goodwin told him that Caesar had only three years, yet people still remembered him. But Kennedy responded, "Yeah, but he had Shakespeare to write about him."

She had many stories about Lincoln. His allowing his hand to rest before he signed the Emancipation Proclamation so posterity wouldn't take a shaky signature of his to mean he signed the proclamation with reservations. How Lincoln, in a dark time early in his life, assured his friends that he would not kill himself, since he had not accomplished enough for anyone ever to remember him. And she told the story that ends her book on Lincoln, Team of Rivals, which I'll quote here instead of recount:

In 1908, in a wild and remote area of the North Caucasus, Leo Tolstoy, the greatest writer of the age, was the guest of a tribal chief "living far away from civilized life in the mountains."

Gathering his family and neighbors, the chief asked Tolstoy to tell stories about the famous men of history. Tolstoy told how he entertained the eager crowd for hours with tales of Alexander, Caesar, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon.

When he was winding to a close, the chief stood and said, "But you have not told us a syllable about the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world. We want to know something about him. He was a hero. He spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were strong as the rock...His name was Lincoln and the country in which he lived is called America, which is so far away that if a youth should journey to reach it he would be an old man when he arrived. Tell us of that man."

"I looked at them," Tolstoy recalled, "and saw their faces all aglow, while their eyes were burning. I saw that those rude barbarians were really interested in a man whose name and deeds had already become a legend." He told them everything he knew about Lincoln’s "home life and youth…his habits, his influence upon the people and his physical strength." When he finished, they were so grateful for the story that they presented him with "a wonderful Arabian horse."

What Goodwin did was tell stories, because that is part of being a good historian. Nothing can be learned without our wanting to learn it, and good stories capture attention and the imagination. She told stories of politicians were statesmen, in a time we feel we can never get back. And she told stories of herself: how she became a historian from recounting the details of baseball games to her father and from reading books aloud to her mother, how she loves the Red Sox and at least loved the Brooklyn Dodgers, and how she eventually threw out her autograph book signed by Jackie Robinson with this inscription: "Keep your smile/A long long while." (An archivist's nightmare.)

She talked--not finally, but finally here--of the current state of media and its "desire for awkwardness." Her point is that the media now hopes to find public figures in embarrassing situations and to publicize them. How in the past the peccadilloes (or worse) of politicians were ignored. How FDR could fall, his braces coming apart, before a big speech--yet the only news was about the speech itself, not the fall. How we now focus on the occasional clumsiness of Gerald Ford and the vomited of George H.W. Bush (AKA "41").

Of course, it's hard to avoid a desire for more information and to hold facts learned against someone. Today, I heard George W. Bush (AKA "43") on the radio, and he said the phrase "a arbitrary timetable" (with a long a for "a"). People occasionally make that mistake, so much so that there appears to be a tendency towards dropping the "an." But people usually hear the phrase when they say it and correct themselves. Instead, the next broadcast sentence by Bush included "a arbitrary timetable." Just after I heard that phrase a second time, I picked up David Lowry and told him the story. He immediately said, "He is an retard."

So our desire for awkwardness continues even as our memories of the ages of great leaders urges us elsewhere.

_____

* The APT functions essentially as part of the New York State Archives, but it is a legally a separate entity.

† Schenectady, New York.

archivity furthers

The Ultimate Day: It Ends, and it Begins Again

2007-04-21T22:30:00.000-04:00

Back at home, I review today's end to the MARAC meeting in Scranton.

The day began at breakfast, early. By 7:40, I was setting up and preparing for the 8 am breakfast, followed by an 8:30 business meeting. In the picture above, you can see the line for breakfast, and if you look closely you can even find my wife Nancy, who attended her first MARAC conference coincidental with my last conference as chair of MARAC.

This last meeting slipped by quickly, but we took time to remember our colleagues and others affected by the murders at Virginia Tech this week and to bring some little attention to the members of the Steering Committee, who are the people who make so much of MARAC work. I am in debt to these people for all they have done during the two years of my term. And thanks to John LeGloahec for spilling a few kind works about me unnecessarily into the room. I'm looking forward now to Susan McElrath's new administration.

My last official act was to give John LeGloahec authority to apply for a credit card for MARAC, but not before Susan McElrath agreed to this. This photograph captures John LeGloahec applying for the credit card, and it is the least scary looking picture I took of him.

The term of a MARAC chair concludes at the end of the fourth MARAC meeting of his or her term, which traditionally occurs at 1 pm. So I made sure I was around Susan McElrath at 1 pm today to hand Susan the "traditional" basket that looks like a baseball. John took the picture of this momentous event, making sure to make me look as goofy as I made him look devious.

Before we headed out of Scranton, Nancy and I walked around Scranton, looking for someplace to eat. During this walk, we passed a number of banners bearing the names of companies that supported Scranton, the Electric City. We were lucky enough to stumble upon such a banner recognizing the support of one of the most famous businesses in Scranton, the mythical Dunder Mifflin.

archivity furthers

The Penultimate Day: Romance and Recollections

2007-04-20T23:59:00.000-04:00

Radisson Lackawanna Station, Room 219, Scranton, Pennsylvania

Since I live in the Electric City, I find it a bit strange to be in Scranton, which bills itself as the Electric City apparently because it was the home of the first financially profitable trolley system. The lit sign explaining Scranton's status is enjoyable enough, and even has moving lights, but it's not as impressive in size as the GE sign at the end of Erie Boulevard (the filled-in heart of the Erie Canal) in Schenectady, New York.

We have had a few problems with this conference hotel: the sessions are housed in three distinct parts of the building, the elevators were down for a few hours yesterday (and the hospitality suite was on the fifth floor), and the downstairs session rooms were simply too hot. But overall this is a nice hotel with a beautiful interior. Of course, it's a bit dark inside the hotel also, but that makes it romantic, romantic enough to be the site of a marriage proposal yesterday (which was returned with a yes) and a bachelorette party tonight. Cupid is on the prowl through these hallways.

The sessions I attended were good, meaning one or two speakers in each session really connected with the audience and provided some good information. I never expect sessions to be great learning experiences, but they can always add something to our store of knowledge. There were three possible session spots today, not counting the plenary or the luncheon speaker. Here are brief summaries of the sessions:

Building Digital Collections through Archival Context
Daniel Pitti, who did a great job, had one great joke. Putting one hand in the shape of an angle bracket on either side of his head, he said, "This would be a header."

Status of National Emergency Preparedness Initiativies in the Mid-Atlantic Region
Maria Holden, of my shop, the New York State Archives, laid out a good description of what we provide in this regard, which is much: disaster preparedness grants, disaster recovery grants, disaster management workshops across the state, a disaster management publication (which Maria may have forgotten to mention), and immediate onsite response from our nine regional officers and people in Albany when disasters affect one of our customers. She also outlined the new procedures we're working on.

Melting Pot or Isolation Chamber: Dealing with Records of Merged Organizations
Since local governments in New York State do merge often enough, I decided this would be an interesting session, and it was. Lots of good stories of mergers and separations, and the complications they engender. My favorite stories were about CIGNA, as explained by Scott DeHaven, but all were good.

Scranton's central square was quite attractive, but much of the city was under reconstruction or empty. Scranton is a typical northeastern industrial city in the middle of a post-industrial world.

This is the site of the first Rite Aid pharmacy ever, giving Scranton (I assume) the honest distinction of being the home of Rite Aid.

We had to ride buses dressed up like trolleys to the Trolley Museum (just across a parking lot from the Steamtown National Historic Site. From the steps of the trolley, I was able to take a good picture of the crowd (at bit shy of its largest size).

At the reception, a few people lounged on the worn velvet seats of the trolley on display.

My wife Nancy is attending this conference and has been having a good time attending sessions on labor history. Her only problem is her own cough, which is sending her out of the sessions. After our return from the reception, I found sixteen people at a long table celebrating the retirement of Lois Densky-Wolff. (See surveillance photo taken from the second floor for details.) Congratulations, Lois.

At the hospitality suite, someone thought it would be fun to arm Easter peeps with toothpicks for jousting and microwave them until one toothpick popped one of the peeps, thereby setting a winner. This was quite fun, but apparently peeps just expand a bit and then burn as sugar on the bottom of the microwave. Other fun at the hospitality suite tonight was pin the tail on the donkey. Good fun as well, but I had to spin myself to make sure the spinning was hard enough. Jennie Guilbaud was the winner of this complex game of absolute skill.

archivity furthers

The Antepenultimate Day: Almost a Banquet

2007-04-19T23:49:00.000-04:00

Radisson Lackawanna Station Hotel, Room 219, Scranton, Pennsylvania

It seems to me that archivists are, by their nature, frugal, trying to make the most of the sometimes meager resources they have. So it's not surprising that the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC) tries to keep its costs down as much as possible. At one point, when I was on Steering Committee, I suggested that we not serve dinner at Steering because that would save us a few hundred dollars, and for years we have occasionally decided that that was necessary to save money when we were meeting in expensive venues. Scranton, however, is a fairly cheap place to meet. Rooms in this hotel are only $89 a night, and I cannot remember when we had a room that cheap. I co-chaired local arrangements for the meeting in Saratoga Springs, New York in 1998 was $99.

Tonight, I walked into Ballroom III of the Radisson to find this table before me. With seating for thirty, the table was arranged for a banquet: candles, cloth napkins, three different forks, and faux rose petals scattered over the table cloth. It was the most beautiful sight I'd ever encountered in a Steering Committee, and it will probably remain so.

Not only did we have beautiful table settings; we also had great food. I'd say that great food was a rarity except that this might have been the only time we have had great food: plenty of vegetables, a fine tortellini dish, good chicken, and plenty of choices for dessert. And we had this for a reasonable price. We do not usually have hot meals, because they're too expensive for us, but in Scranton we could manage.

MARAC holds its steering committee meeting on Thursday night, just before the conference actually begins. These meetings are legendary, often lasting three hours or more. Today's meeting was scheduled from 6:30 until 10, but I (in my disappearing role as chair of the Conference) succeeded in getting us to finish by 9. A two and a half hour meeting isn't bad, but shorter is better. There was just too much to do and too much to prepare for.

This is my last meeting as chair, and we needed to bring new folks into the fold (after our recent election) and say goodbye to outgoing members of Steering. We had financial issues to discuss and one issue related to the records of the federal government--as we try to help ensure that the records of the military tribunals at Guantanamo are not summarily destroyed. But we also had some fun, because conferences cannot be merely about learning and making a difference. They are also about making connections, seeing friends, and enjoying ourselves.

After Steering, many of us went upstairs to Room 521 to spend some time in the hospitality room chatting. It was a busy place tonight, full of good times. And that's a good way to end the day.

archivity furthers

The First Shall Last

2007-03-13T23:33:00.000-04:00

Today ends a two decades’ long trip for me, and a three-year trip for Jim Andrews and four of his widely dispersed co-conspirators. After twenty-three years, some of the earliest computer poems, programmed by bpNichol back in 1983 and 1984 and published under the Underwhich imprint in 1984, are once again loosed on the world. The process wasn’t easy, but it was easier than we could reasonably have expected it to be. The project and its results address three issues that interest me most: visual poetry, archives, and language.

Nichol was a great imagineer (with two e’s). He constantly discovered or created new ways to play language into art, and in the early-mid-1980s he was becoming enamored of computers. With a little help from his friends, he learned how to write simple code in Apple Basic and used those skills to design a dozen of the earliest kinetic digital poems. These ran on the Apple II series of computers, which were common in schools at the time. Since I had near-constant access to one back then, I purchased one of the 100 signed copies of Nichol’s FIRST SCREENING.

These simple poems were a revelation I never forgot. Running off a delicate 5¼" floppy disk, these poems were always in danger of disappearing. The media they were on was unstable, the computing environment they needed to survive was becoming obsolete by the time I received my copy of the collection in 1984, and no one was really thinking of preservation of such things—never imagining that these were a gentle bulging that would soon become a huge wave that would wash over the world. I tried to do what I could to preserve the poems: I took great care of my diskette, I printed out a paper copy of the code, and I made a silent videotape of the poems in flight. In the end, all of these steps were essential to making this project a reality. (See details at FIRST SCREENING: COMPUTER POEMS.)

And what is this project I haven’t described yet? The brainchild of Jim Andrews, this project preserves those digital poems of Nichol’s in three formats: as the original code runnable once again through an emulator program that can pretend to be an Apple II computer from the 1980s, a JavaScript re-creation of the original poems by the masterful Marko Niemi and Jim Andrews, and a digital video version captured while running in the emulator. You can now see these poems pretty much as they existed twenty-three years ago. This makes the project an archival project, an important preservation achievement—made even greater by the remarkable fact that my decades-old diskette was still readable even though it should have stopped working no more than five years after it was created in a plant somewhere.

But the project is much more. It is also an appreciation of bpNichol’s achievement. Begin with the introduction, but be sure to read Lionel Kearns’ memories of Nichol during the time he was creating these poems, Jim Andrews’ detailed appreciation and deconstruction of Nichol’s “OFF-SCREEN ROMANCE,” and Dan Waber’s elegant appreciation of the entire suite of poems. I even wrote something about these poems, even though I’ve written about them before.

Nichol’s poems influenced my own attempts mightily, and trying to figure out how to preserve my own 1980s digital poems led me to the ideas that we ended up using in this project. I was, however, primarily a cheerleader and enabler in this project. Jim and Marko were the technical people. Dan Waber, who has connections everywhere, found someone who could move the data off my old floppies. And Lionel served as our connection to Nichol, our touchstone. Jim was careful to ensure that we completed this project with the approval of Ellie Nichol, bp’s widow, who graciously allowed us to avoid the potential complications of copyright, which will prove to be the bane of many digital archivists in the future.* Probably a dozen people had some essential hand in this project, which was brought together by a group of helpers (just as was “FIRST SCREENING”).

Visit the site, learn about these early digital poems, and become an acolyte. We are trying to show here how to preserve and make accessible digital poetry and, by extension, digital writing in general. We are archivists, scholars, technologists, and appreciators, because all of these people are needed for such a project.

And don’t just look at the work at Vispo.com for bpNichol’s digital poetry. For a wonderful view of Nichol’s work, see the JavaScript version the remarkable Marko Niemi has produced in Finnish! His Nurotus website is an unbelievable collection of visual and digital poetry, translated into Finnish where necessary. Almost no-one is translating visual poetry nowadays, let alone to the extent and with the brio that Marko is.

Thanks to all my co-conspirators, especially Jim Andrews, who made sure we did what we had to do.

_____

* Coincidentally, the New York Times ran a story yesterday about the preservation of a related set of digital artifacts, videogames Here are a couple of interesting excerpts:

Mr. [Henry] Lowood and the four members of his committee — the game designers Warren Spector and Steve Meretzky; Matteo Bittanti, an academic researcher; and Christopher Grant, a game journalist — announced their list of the 10 most important video games of all time: Spacewar! (1962), Star Raiders (1979), Zork (1980), Tetris (1985), SimCity (1989), Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990), Civilization I/II (1991), Doom (1993), Warcraft series (beginning 1994) and Sensible World of Soccer (1994).

Mr. Lowood said that preserving video games presented certain challenges. For example the hardware that games are played on changes so frequently that there are already thousands that can only be played through computer programs called emulators, which, while readily available on the Internet, technically violate copyright laws.

archivity furthers

A Day for Local Government Archivesfish

2007-02-26T23:59:00.000-05:00

Hampton Inn Convention Center, Room 1223, Washington, DC

By luck or misfortune, I ended up starting my meeting with the Local Government Task Force three hours early, and just shy of twelve hours later (after a few short breaks) we ended the meeting. It was a long hard day. People were arriving at different times during the day as they flights finally came in. A couple won't make it at all because the weather in the Midwest just made travel (even delayed travel) impossible for them.

The task force is working on CoSA's local government project, trying to figure out the enigma we call "local government records," trying to figure out how to create and sustain a significant number of local government archives programs across the country. It is a heavy lift, we know it, and people are working hard to think through the issues. Today, the task force reviewed the four consultant reports (including mine on sustainable funding) and we prepared for a meeting at the National Archives tomorrow. Too much work for one day, but there's always too much work.

ecr. l'inf.

DC2007

2007-02-25T23:05:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow, in only a few hours, I fly to DC to take part in a Council of State Archivists meeting relating to the Closest to Home project I'm working on. There are three other consultants and members of the task force to meet, and we'll be meeting with others to discuss how to make a difference with local government archives across the nation. It's a difficult job, but one I've spent my career thinking about. Success is essential to me. More notes tomorrow.

archivity furthers

Radio Free Archives

2007-02-05T21:40:00.000-05:00

Today was the day of my SAA webinar on the portable document format in general and PDF/A in particular. It was a wild ninety minutes: talking, pausing for questions via phone and text, dealing with more written questions than I could ever hope to answer, tight for time, but making do and ending right on time. I'm pretty passionate about the PDF/A standard and its usefulness for archives dealing with the unavoidable issue of digital preservation, and I tried to get some of my passion across. The tight timetable of the workshop might have muted that passion a bit, just as it forced me to put aside most of the jokes I would otherwise have made. I wish I'd had more time, because I could have spent at least an extra half an hour just answering questions. There was some real fun talking back and forth to people over "the [virtual] air."

These webinars the Society of American Archivists puts on are a good idea. At the end of the webinar, I apologized for not being able to get to all the questions and invited people to send me questions. Within minutes, four messages found their way to my inbox. One of these was from a woman from Montana, who thanked me for the session, noting that these webinars are one of the best and cheapest way for her to get professional training. A good point, and I was glad to help out a bit.

The numbers for this webinar were pretty fun. There were 179 sites tuned in across the continent. Someone was listening in every state of the union except for six (Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and South Dakota), three Canadian provinces (British Columbia, New Brunswick, and Ontario), the US Virgin Islands, and Washington, DC. The University at Albany had 35 people in attendance for this webinar. Sites reported a total of 930 listeners, and I'd guess there were more than that many in attendance. The session number for this webinar was 12309, which is the same of my ZIP code, and there actually was a site located within that ZIP code.

All great fun. And I opened and ended by identifying the webinar as Radio Free Archives. Wishing all of you the best of evenings.

archivity furthers

Archivity and its Contemporaries

2007-02-04T09:59:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, while reading a small volume, logokons: an alphabetic bitmap narrative of the endless society, written by mIEKAL aND and his son Liazon Wakest and released by Xerox Sutra Editions, I discovered the word "archivity." The book combines digital images (moved to paper) with subtitling words or phrases providing the meaning of the glyphs, and the book is arranged alphabetically in the manner of a dictionary.

That word "archivity" interests me. It certain is a blend of "archive" and "activity," but the glyph seems to make clear that it doesn't mean anything as simple as "archival activity" (which might mean the various processes of archives: accessioning, arrangement, description, preservation, access). I might normally assume that the word refers to the information technology sense of "archive," a set of data moved from an active working area. But I don't think this is the case here. The glyph that "archivity" defines (the glyph that is "archivity") begins with a single superior point (the most basic feature of a visual symbology), which is followed by an serpentine sequence of right-angled turns that grow in size to the end of the glyph. This leads me to interpret "archivity" to be the process of keeping archives and the growing effect that a set of historical records can have.

Think of a set of records at the point of the point of "archivity." It has some meaning, some perceivable value, some point to its being preserved. But the longer it is kept, the more likely that greater knowledge will grow from any contact with that point, which in turn and over time grows more and greater knowledge. Maybe the sense of "saving" (AKA "archiving") the records is a core concept of this; still, the word holds together some core concepts about the value and purpsoe of archives for me, making it a good closing for my thoughts here.

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Preservation Options of PDF

2007-01-29T23:18:00.000-05:00

A week from today, I'll be giving my first webinar, a 90-minute examination of the portable document format, paying special attention to the PDF/A standard. Last I heard, there were 144 sites set up across the country, with at least one site expecting 45 people in attendance. There are still seven or so states without a site (and seven provinces of Canada), so it's not too late to make sure we cover the entire continent north of Mexico. Here are the details on the webinar:

Electronic Records: Preservation Options of PDF - Web Seminar

Monday, February 05, 2007

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REGISTRATION FEES:
Early bird (on or before 1/22/2007):
SAA Member – $145; Nonmember – $175
Regular (after 1/22/2007):
SAA Member – $185; Nonmember – $215

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Most of you are faced with the challenge of preserving your electronic records and “What are my options?” is one of the first questions you need answers for to make an informed decision!

During this seminar you’ll:

Examine the use of PDF/A as a preservation format

Learn about the limitations of PDF

Review the ISO PDF/A standard

Discuss processes for converting electronic documents to PDF

Review quality control procedures and general preservation management for PDFs

One fee for as many participants as your room can comfortably accommodate!

Who Should Participate? Archivists, Records Managers, and others who are considering options for preserving electronic documents.

Ask your colleagues, students, or staff to join you in learning together over lunch or breakfast – in the convenience of your conference room, office, or classroom. Gather around a PC and a speaker phone, call in or email your questions, and get information and tools that will help you analyze your options and make decisions!

February 5 at:

02:00 PM – 03:30 PM Eastern
01:00 PM – 02:30 PM Central
12:00 PM – 01:30 PM Mountain
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM Pacific
10:00 AM – 11:30 AM Alaska
09:00 AM – 10:30 AM Hawaii

Instructor:

Geoffrey A Huth (Bio) [This bio is a bit out of date now]
Director, Government Records Services
New York State Archives and Records

The Finding Aid Arrives

2007-01-26T23:59:00.000-05:00

Today, the finding aid to my papers has been posted to the University at Albany’s website. Essentially, the University posted the draft finding aid (biographical note, scope and contents note, and series descriptions) I wrote of the papers, with one little change. This note:

Note that all books were removed from the collection and will be available from the Grenander Department's book collection as they are cataloged in Minerva, the University Libraries' online catalog.

I think this way of dealing with the books is perfectly reasonable, but it also gives me pause. The books are books, but they are primarily books filled with annotations by me. They function essentially as manuscripts, so they made more sense to me in a box together. So their dispersal is both disturbing and reasonable.

The reason this finding aid was posted today was that this was the last day of work of Amy Schindler, the archivist who handled the transfer of these records. Amy has been fun to work with, and always one to crack a joke. The two of us are so sarcastic that I've no idea how we communicated clearly enough to effectuate this transfer. Amy moves to Virginia next week. She'll be starting a job at the College of William and Mary (the second oldest college or university in the nation) very soon.

A Week Almost Ago

2007-01-25T23:13:00.000-05:00

Last Friday, January 19, the steering committee of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC) met at the University of Baltimore in the selfsame city. MARAC's steering committee meets in Baltimore twice a year, once during the winter and once during the summer. These are scheduled about half-way between our twice-annual conferences, thus allowing the steering committee to keep up on the activities of the entire organization.

I flew into Baltimore that day for the meeting, as has been my practice for many years, a practice about to come to an end as I hand over the reins of MARAC to a bnew chair at April's meeting in Scranton. Along with me, two others from the Albany, New York, area came: Ray LaFever, the New York State Caucus chair; and Brian Keough, an at-large member of MARAC.

But what did the steering committee do? First, we had a record fast meeting. I'm interested in two things in meetings: working quickly and telling jokes, and we accomplished both of those quite well this time. As a matter of fact, it was one of the most fun meetings ever, with everyone joining in with witticisms, especially at our lunch break.

Our big topics of interest were the funding of the Herbert C. Finch Online Publication Award (endowed by John Woods), preparations for MARAC's first online election ever, discussions concerning a number of necessary bylaws changes and updates, plans for transferring responsibility for arranging conference workshops to the Meetings Coordinating Committee, and a small pilot of an online conference registration process that allows payment by credit card. We hope to roll out online credit card payment and conference registration at the fall meeting in Williamsburg, where we will celebrate the 400th anniversary of British America (so to speak). Note I said "hope" in that last sentence. There are lots of details to work out.

And that's what the steering committee, along with the program and local arrangements committees for our conferences, does. We try to take care of the details so that our members can enjoy themselves at our conferences, learn much, and talk to colleagues. We try to eliminate the headaches. We are not quite perfect at this, but we do a good job overall, and I'm proud to be able to work with every one of these people.

World Trade Center Documentation Symposium

2007-01-24T23:13:00.000-05:00

A week after two airliners slammed into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, I found myself in an eerily quiet New York. Life went on. People and cars moved in the streets, but no-one honked their car horns and people were quiet, subdued. I made it down to ground zero that day, saw the giant hole, the posters of people searching for family and friends, and the giant memorials growing everywhere.

Soon afterwards, I joined the World Trade Center Documentation Task Force and worked to ensure the documentation of that clear day in September. In particular, I worked with Daisy Pommer and Constance Malpas to develop a survey to determine the records situation related to the World Trade Center attack (records destroyed or damaged and documentary records created) and to conduct the preliminary analysis of that data. This was an important project to me, so I am sorry that I will not be able to attend the World Trade Center Symposium on March 29th of this year (I'll be in Seattle giving an electronic records workshop), but I encourage others to attend:

What: World Trade Center Documentation Symposium
When: March 29, 9:00-4:30
Where: Woolworth Building (NYU/Woolworth Conference Center), 15 Barclay Street, New York, NY

The New York State Archives, Documentary Heritage Program invites Archivists, Records Managers, Conservators and Historians to participate in a one-day symposium that will review the status of efforts to date to document this catastrophic event and plan for future documentation activities.

The keynote speaker will be Dr. James E. Young, Professor of English and Judaica Studies at the University of Massachusetts. Dr. Young is writing a book about his experiences serving on the jury for the World Trade Center Site Memorial. Representatives from several institutions have been invited to discuss their WTC documentation activities, including the College of Staten Island, Hofstra University’s Long Island Studies Institute and Voices of September 11.

Following the presentations, break-out sessions will be held to review the success of current projects, identify documentation challenges yet to be addressed and to determine future actions. The group will then reconvene to determine a plan for future documentation, fund-raising and other support.

As well as archivists, representatives from the family/survivor community and from first responder groups will be invited to participate and share their thoughts about documenting the defining moment for the start of the new millennium.

For further information please contact either Ray LaFever (rlafever@mail.nysed.gov) or Laura Zelasnic (lzelasni@mail.nysed.gov). Fuller details about the event will be available by mid-February.

Funding for this symposium is being provided through a grant awarded to the New York State Historical Records Advisory Board (SHRAB)/New York State Archives by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).

A Different Type of Appraisal

2007-01-23T23:59:00.000-05:00

When I arrived home today, the largest piece of mail in my mailbox was a monetary appraisal of my papers, which I had recently donated to the University at Albany. This piece of mail ended up being one half of a significant coincidence, since tonight I also transferred to the university the last box of records (Subseries 12 C: Hardcopy Digital Writing Publications, 1983-1984, 1986-1987, 1990, 1995) in this first wave of records.

I was interested in this appraisal report since it was so different in style and content than the usual appraisal reports I deal with in my work. Also, the report puts me on the other side of the table in a records transfer. In the past, I’ve dealt as an archivist accepting records, but I’ve never been a donor before. It’s a strange feeling to have as an archivist.

For the entertainment of, well, primarily myself, I scanned these appraisal report and the accompanying letter into Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional, OCR’d the results, and saved the files as a PDF/A-1b (to be a tiny bit technical). I then copied the text out of the files, pasted them into a Word file, corrected a few misspellings (the first appearance of my name was as Geaf Ruth), and created this little blog posting for tonight. For a description of the papers in question, see the blog posting just before this one.

Cover Letter

21 January 2007

Dear Geof,

We were very excited by this archive – had to reluctantly stick to appraisal examination only so as not to overcharge you – but we shall return to it on our own time!

I enclose a pamphlet we produced in 1978 (and sent to subscribers to our postal history journal) – which was our first introduction to Mailart. We’ve not been active since then – but certainly attuned to its trajectory in the art world (and we’ve continued to be the recipients of some wild and woolly stuff through the USPS). For several years we’ve bought all the duplicate catalogs and ephemera from the library at the National Gallery, which keeps us stimulated by the current art scene.

Bravo for the life’s work, and the generosity to donate it to SUNY – they’re very fortunate (which means all us New Yorkers are).

Best regards,

Appraisal Report

Appraisal of the Geof Huth Archive, donated to the Dept. of Special Collections and Archives at SUNY Albany

We examined the 62.5 cubic feet of material at SUNY Albany on 17 January 2007. Reference should be made to the complete listing of the papers, prepared by the donor, by which we were guided in the examination of the papers.

These papers document the life of Geof Huth, artist and archivist, born in 1960 (Mr. Huth will continue to add material to the archive). If an unexamined life is not worth living, Huth’s papers add that an examined life is worth archiving. An artist’s process – particularly in the ‘counterculture’ arts of concrete poetry, mailart, etc. – is all about document but rarely about archive. Huth’s papers are particularly rich because of the art/archive dichotomy he embodies. The material is housed impeccably (ready to be accessed by students): the mature artist backed by his high school¹ and college work²; the artistic output backed by the correspondence³; Huth’s own work bolstered by much of his contemporaries;⁴ the electronic data backed by printouts; the organization of the whole backed by files of his career as an archivist.

Huth’s visual poetry (and passion for alternative lexicography⁵) happens to straddle a key period in art history – when such radical art forms invaded the internet. Huth was extraordinarily active on both sides of the divide, conscientiously pursuing contacts by both snail- and email; churning out limited edition poetics while constantly blogging.

Following the “verbal is visual and visual is verbal” golden rule of visual poetry, this archive provides rich scope for exhibitions. One on mailart, alone, would stretch all assumptions of the posted letter.

After delivering a eulogy for his mother, Huth wrote: “it’d be interesting to believe Mom was somehow impressed by me. I feel that she was basically just confused by me, my interests and my work. I’m harder to pin down than most.” Given the record he has kept and now donated for study, he and his work won’t be hard to “pin down” at all – it will, instead, be key to understanding a genre and a specific time period in American arts and letters.

In our professional opinion, these papers have a fair market value of $ __________.*

¹ Eg. 1974 Haiku by English 7-8 at [Father] Ryan High School† –Huth’s is [sic] published, and he added more in manuscript

² at Vanderbilt University, as an undergraduate, Huth contributed to and/or helped edit 4 publications: Vanderbilt Poetry Review; Vanderbilt Photograph[y] Review; Versus; The Scrivener.

³ See, for instance, the 4 limited editions of Xray Mail [X-Ray], Pneumatic Press 1993-5 that include Huth’s work, Charles Bukowski’s until his death in publications files, and correspondence with the editors.

⁴ There are hundreds of single pieces, or runs of small journals, by Huth’s contemporaries. A collection of ’zines (rather than poetics) has already been donated to the New York State Library. In the present papers, however, is a complete run of Mike Gunderloy’s Factsheet Five, 1982-92, which reviewed all zines.

⁵ An important Huth publication is Familiar Words – a dictionary of one family’s words, along with extensive files of its collection and production. See also, for instance, correspondence with Richard Kostelanetz over Huth’s contributions to a Dictionary of the Avant-Garde, 1992; with J. James Mancuso 1993-2005 beginning with The International & Chaosmic Dictionaerie of Retrofuturistic Langnage [Laugnage].

_____

* I’ve decided to redact this one datum.

† Haiku by English 7-8 was the earliest publication to include any poems of mine. It was a ditto’d (spirit-duplicated, not mimeographed) publication of the American Cooperative School in La Paz, Bolivia. Not of Father Ryan High School in Nashville, Tennessee. I don’t mind the small error at all. Instead, I’m amazed that aGatherin’ (the appraisers) actually found, understood, and made such good use of these papers of mine in their appraisal report.

MSS-137

2007-01-23T23:26:00.000-05:00

I’ve decided, tonight, that I have to remember to blog some of my thoughts on archives to this blog, rather than just to my major blog, dbqp: visualizing poetics. As part of that plan, I will post a few thoughts on the monetary appraisal of my papers, recently donated to the University at Albany’s M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives. To put that entry in context, I first need to repost this description and explanation of my papers first posted to dbqp last month. A colleague of mine at the University at Albany is editing my rough draft description, and that version might be posted to the archives' website this week.

_____

A long process has come just about to its end.

Today, I finally turned over the last of my papers to the University at Albany: a small box with maybe ten paper folders and a hard drive with my electronic records. (I still have a few more to send them, but I don’t have them in hand at the moment.) In the end, I turned over 62.5 cubic feet of records. That’s a number that makes sense to an archivist and a records manager, but usually not to other people. One cubic foot is a standard “banker’s box,” and I had estimated I had about 20 of those boxes worth of papers to send to the University at Albany. My estimate wasn’t even close, wasn’t even one third of what I actually donated.

I have sent the university, however, huge swaths of my life, leaving behind some material I’m still working on, but which represents only a tiny fraction of the total I sent. I also have maintained ownership of my bqpd publications (unique bookworks), selected artworks and publication files, most email files in electronic form, most photographic records, my diaries and travel journals, and the family records of the Huth and Frye families back to the 1800s. So it is not as if my house is free of records at the moment.

What I enjoy about my papers is that they are more than just papers. I have all manner of media and formats represented in this collection of mine. There’s a weird kind of richness to these. In format, at least. I won’t make many claims about the value of the records in general.

During the process of preparing these records for transfer, I have kept careful track of the papers I donated to the university, and I began to create what archivists call a finding aid to these records. I’m appending my lengthy and potentially final version of this finding aid to tonight’s blog entry. It consists of a brief description of the papers for use in a general catalog, a too-detailed biographical note about myself, a scope and contents note (which describes the collection in general), and series descriptions (which describe in detail the particular groupings that these papers fall into). It is probably not kosher for a person to describe his own records, but I’ve had more control over these records than is common with a donor who is not an archivist. Also, I doubt the graduate student who tackles these papers will learn easily the significance (whatever little bit of it there is) that these records have. So I wrote this myself. I’ve been out of the description business since 1990, so this is my first finding aid in sixteen years. All that’s left for the graduate student to do (besides rewriting what I’ve done) is to type up the lengthy box and folder lists that will catalog the thousands of folders and items in this collection of mine.

A final note: The University at Albany has assigned my papers this identification number: MSS-137. This number identifies my papers as the one hundred and thirty-seventh manuscript collection in one of their collections, their “Business, Literary, and Miscellany Collection.”

I figure my papers should fall under “Miscellany.”

Catalog Description

HUTH, GEOF
Papers, 1960-2006, 62.5 cubic ft. + 5.65 GB of Electronic Records (MSS-137)
The collection includes artworks produced by Geof Huth (including poetry, fiction, essays, aphorisms, visual poems, dramatic works, and comics), biographical records, extensive correspondence, records of his various micropresses, weblogs, audiovisual recordings of sound poems and presentations given at professional conferences, and a large collection of small and micropress publications focused on visual and experimental poetry.

Biographical Note

Geof Huth is an artist and archivist who was born in 1960 in Burlingame, California. He spent the vast majority of his childhood living overseas on four continents and in nine countries. He has lived in California, Virginia, Portugal, Canada, the District of Columbia, Barbados, Bolivia, Ghana, Morocco, Tennessee, Somalia, Germany, and New York. He has also traveled extensively in South America, Europe, Africa, and the United States. He learned to read and write Portuguese and German before he learned English, but he eventually lost both those languages. He currently reads, writes, and speaks French and Spanish to some degree.

His first school was the Deutsche Schule zu Porto, the German school of Oporto, Portugal, where the languages of instruction were German and Portuguese. He attended fifteen schools across the world before he graduated from Father Ryan High School in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1978. He graduated with a BA in English from Vanderbilt University in 1982, received an MA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University in 1986, and earned a Master of Library Science from the University at Albany in 1989. He married Nancy Anne Frye in 1984, and they have two children, Erin and Timothy.

Huth began writing short stories, poetry, and commonplace books since he was a child. In college, he began producing other kinds of art, including films, photography, and other visual art. He has been active in the international visual poetry field since 1985, and has produced a wide variety of language-based art since that time, including poetry, visual poetry, fiction, essays, and creative dictionaries. Huth is a well known authority on visual poetry and has spent years writing visual poetry criticism and theory, most of it published to his weblog, dbqp: visualizing poetics.

Starting in 1987, Huth became an active micropublisher, releasing small publications in small editions, first through his micropress dbqp, which publishes language, visual, and conceptual poetry, comics, prose, and other artistic and usually minimalist works. The press publishes a number of different series and magazines, including Alabama Dogshoe Moustache (an irregular poetry journal); Socks, Dregs and Rocking Chairs (an occasional comic book); The Subtle Journal of Raw Coinage (a once-monthly magazine printing undefined invented words from antiquity to the present), and A Voice Without Sides (a limited edition magazine of all types of art, published in exotic ways). Begun in 1989, pdqp, the sister press to dbqp, publishes works primarily related to Huth’s family (such as the family’s annual holiday cards) and short runs of works by Huth himself (such as programs for his poetry readings). Involved in mailart for years, Huth has released most of his mailart under the qbdp imprint since 2004. He also produces unique bookworks (including diaries, notebooks, and artist’s books) under the imprint bqpd.

By 2003, most of Huth’s artistic output became focused on the World Wide Web. He began to produce dbqp: visualizing poetics, a daily weblog on the topic of verbo-visual art in general and visual poetry in particular. He also began to produce other weblogs, including one on mailart (qbdp: the mailartworks) and a daily blog of observational prose poems (One Million Footnotes). Many of his works, particularly those digital works that cannot exist on paper, continue to be published on the Web, in e-zines, blogzines, and websites.

Huth has also been active professionally in archives and records management and has served as the executive officer of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference, the Lake Ontario Archives Conference (now the New York Archives Conference), Capital Area Archivists of New York, and the Albany Chapter of the Association of Records Managers and Administrators (now referred to simply as ARMA). He has also chaired the Electronic Records and Government Records sections of the Society of American Archivists. Huth regularly speaks on archives and records management, particularly electronic records, across the country. He currently is the Director of Government Records Services at the New York State Archives.

Scope and Contents Note

The majority of these papers focus on Geof Huth’s artistic activities: his creation of artworks, his involvement in the fields of visual and experimental poetry, his productions as a micropublisher, and his work as an active blogger in the worldwide network of online poets. Although Huth began writing poetry and short stories as a child, few of these works survive. His frequent moves during his childhood were opportunities for discarding unnecessary materials such as drafts of writing. Huth’s records provide good documentation of the interrelated international fields of visual poetry, experimental poetry, and mailart from the 1980s until the present. Huth’s papers include a wide range of media, including broadsides and other large-format paper publications, books, videotapes, audiotapes, electronic media, and super-8 and 16mm films. Huth has created a wide range of artistic and literary works, including very early digital poems written in Apple BASIC and still readable via Apple II emulator software. The bulk of Huth’s creative works range from the mid-1980s until the present.

The papers also document Huth’s personal life, including his school career, travels, family, and friendships. Through various records, including newspaper clippings, his biographical records provide information about his personal activities as a child and an adult. His correspondence provides sometimes detailed information about his life, art, and relationships, and his weblogs provide much detail about his life and biography.

Finally, these papers document Huth’s career in archives and records management. The association records in his biographical files document the archives and records management profession and Geof Huth’s role in various associations in New York State and across the country. His work records document his presentations across the country and his various professional positions. These records also include copies of publications and articles written by Huth.

The primary language of these records is English, but other languages present in these papers include Danish, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Somali, and Spanish.

Series Descriptions

Series 1: Biographical Records, 1960, 1962, 1964-2006, 9 cf
This series consists of copies of art and professional vitae, newspaper clippings about Geof Huth and his work, school records, records relating to readings given by and art shows displaying Huth’s visual art and visual poetry, and files relating to associations Huth has been active in (including archival associations).

Subseries A: Art, 1978, 1981, 1985-2006, 3.5 cf
Arranged alphabetically, with exhibitions and readings arranged chronologically thereunder. Includes documentation of Huth’s art activities and non-work writing activities, including files on his art exhibitions and poetry readings. Includes one cubic foot of odd-sized exhibition records, about a cubic foot of rolled acetates from a year 2000 exhibition, and two metal file card cases documenting the submission of his writing to journals.

Subseries B: Associations, 1977-1978, 1988-2006, 1 cf
Arranged alphabetically. Includes documentation of Huth’s involvement primarily in professional and academic associations, especially Capital Area Archivists of New York, the Mid-Atlantic Archives Conference, and the Society of American Archivists. Records include minutes of meetings run or attended by Huth, newsletters, and articles by Geof Huth.

Subseries C: Personal, 1960, 1962, 1964-1967, 1970-1977, 1980-1981, 1984-1988, 1990-2004, 2006, 0.75 cf
Arranged alphabetically. Includes various documentation of Huth’s personal life, including his travels. Records include newspaper clippings and memorabilia.

Subseries D: School, 1968-1991, 1.25 cf
Arranged alphabetically. Includes school work, report cards, yearbooks, and other documentation of Huth’s entire academic career. These records provide extensive documentation of his school activities. Secondary school literary magazines, however, are stored in the publications series.

Subseries E: Work, 1978, 1987-2006, 2.50 cf
Arranged alphabetically and chronologically thereunder. Includes documentation of Huth’s professional career. Records include publications written by Geof Huth, scripts of professional presentations by Huth, work newsletters, and newspaper clippings on his work as an archivist and records manager.

Series 2: Writing and Art, 1976-2006, 3.5 cf + 2 GB
This series consists of paper and electronic manuscripts of all the types of artistic works produced by Geof Huth (poetry, fiction, essays, aphorisms, visual poems, dramatic works, comics, digital poems, and others).

Subseries A: Writing and Art, 1976-2006, 3.5 cf
Arranged alphabetically by type of work and alphabetically by title thereunder. Consists of drafts and final versions of paper manuscripts of writing and art projects organized by subcategory: Aphorisms, Comics, Conceptual Texts, Dictionaries, Dramatic Works, Essays, Fiction, Light Verse, Poems, Pwoermds, Visual Art, and Visual Poems. Includes oversized material stored separately.

Subseries B: Digital and Video Poetry, 1986-1987, 2006, 29.9 MB
Arranged alphabetically. Includes early digital poems written in Apple BASIC for the Apple II computer and videopoems that exist as digital video files. Also includes copies of early digital writing by others written in Apple BASIC. The early digital poems exist as .dsk files which can be run under an Apple II emulator program, which is stored within the subseries. The later videopoems exist as .wmv (Windows Movie) files.

Subseries C: Electronic Files of Writing and Art, 1980-2006, 1.61 GB
Arranged alphabetically by type of work and alphabetically by filename thereunder. Includes completed and draft copies of writing and art, including digital poetry.

Series 3: Correspondence, 1960-1961, 1963-1969, 1972, 1977-2006, 11 cf + 226 MB
This series includes personal and dbqp correspondence and mailart, especially from the mid-1980s until the present. This correspondence includes both extensive paper and electronic correspondence. This series does not include most of Geof Huth’s email correspondence since 2003. Huth’s most frequent correspondent in these files is the poet Bob Grumman.

Subseries A: Paper Correspondence, 1960-1961, 1963-1969, 1972, 1977-2006, 11 cf
Arranged alphabetically by name of correspondent and chronologically thereunder, but opening with correspondence on particular topics. Includes incoming and outgoing personal correspondence, mailart, and some dbqp correspondence. Includes a separate cubic foot of oversized correspondence.

Subseries B: Electronic Correspondence, 2001-2006, 226 MB
Arranged alphabetically. Includes incoming and outgoing e-mail and electronic copies of outgoing paper correspondence stored as Microsoft Word (.doc) and portable document format (.pdf) files, as well as some instant messages saved as ASCII text (.txt) files.

Series 4: dbqp Records, 1982, 1987-2006, 2.5 cf
This series documents the micropress dbqp and includes final copies of publications (usually two of each), business records for dbqp, and layouts for dbqp publications. Larger object dbqp publications are stored separately. The micropress dbqp publishes a number of different series and magazines, including Alabama Dogshoe Moustache (an irregular poetry journal); Buried Tongue (a gallery of verbo-visual art compiled with a different co-editor/publisher for each issue); Epistulational Exscrapts (a magazine publishing excerpts from personal letters); Foolscap (an occasional broadsheet of reviews and essays); Socks, Dregs and Rocking Chairs (an occasional comic book); The Subtle Journal of Raw Coinage (a once-monthly magazine printing undefined invented words from antiquity to the present); and A Voice Without Sides (a limited edition magazine of all types of art, published in wildly exotic manners). The press also publishes leaflets (in the series &, CHRON, and QCXK), postcards (dbqprescards), chapbooks (goodbooqpres), and semiotic objects (Objecta).

Subseries A: dbqp Publications, 1982, 1987-2005, 1 cf
Arranged numerically by dbqp number, which coincides with chronological order. Includes one or two copies of every dbqp publication ever released. The numbering of dbqp publications begins with 0, because Socks, Dregs and Rocking Chairs # 1 was numbered dbqp # 0 years after the fact to bring it into the series. Includes a half a cubic foot of odd-sized and object publications.

Subseries B: dbqp Layouts to Publications, 1987-2005, 0.75 cf
Arranged numerically by dbqp number, which coincides with chronological order. Includes layout copies of many dbqp publications and copies of manuscripts used in producing the issues.

Subseries C: dbqp Business Records, 1987-2003, 2006, 0.75 cf
Arranged alphabetically and chronologically (where applicable) thereunder. Includes correspondence regarding subscriptions, financial records, reviews of dbqp publications, and lists of series relating to dbqp publications.

Series 5: pdqb Records, 1989-2006, 1.25 cf
This series documents pdqb, a personal micropress that publishes documentation of Geof Huth’s family (such as the family’s annual holiday cards) and short runs of visual and conceptual poetry by Geof Huth. The press also publishes some work by other artists in Film Clips, a mailart magazine. The name “pdqb” can stand for “pretty damn quick books,” although that is not its official name. The series includes final copies of pdqb publications (usually two of each), administrative records for pdqb, and layouts for pdqb publications. Unlike dbqp publications, pdqb publications are rarely sold and meant to be given away for free. The original issues of eXmaSscard (the family’s series of holiday cards) were originally released as issues of dbqp but have since 1989 been released under the pdqb imprint.

Subseries A: pdqb Publications, 1989-2006, 0.75 cf
Arranged numerically by pdqb number, which usually coincides with chronological order. (Some pdqb issues, however, were retronumbered intentionally out of order to fill holes in the numerical sequence.) This subseries includes one or two copies of every pdqb publication ever released.

Subseries B: pdqb Layouts to Publications, 1989, 1991-1992, 1999-2006, 0.4 cf
Arranged numerically by pdqb number, which usually coincides with chronological order. Includes layout copies and drafts of many pdqb publications.

Subseries C: Administrative Records, 1990-1991, 2006, 0.1 cf
Arranged alphabetically by folder title. Includes printed reviews of pdqb publications and lists of people receiving some pdqb publications.

Series 6: qbdp Records, 1991-1992, 2002, 2004-2006, 0.75 cf
The micropress qbdp releases only tiny runs of mailart. The series includes single copies of the mailart produced by Geof Huth in the qbdp series and occasional copies of layouts for same. The micropress qbdp was officially initiated in May 2004, when Huth began to produce mailart in small editions, saving one copy of each for his files. The original issues of Film Clips, the mailart zine originally released by pdqb were retronumbered as the first numbers of qbdp, and issues from Film Clips are now released only under the qbdp imprint.

Subseries A: qbdp Publications, 1991-1992, 2002, 2004-2006, 0.5 cf
Arranged numerically by qbdp number, which coincides with chronological order with the exception of qbdp # 101. Includes one copy of every qbdp mailart item ever released.

Subseries B: qbdp Layouts to Publications, 2004-2006, 0.25 cf
Arranged numerically by qbdp number, which coincides with chronological order with the exception of qbdp # 101. Includes layout copies of many qbdp publications.

Series 7: CWM Records, 1989-1993, 0.25 cf
Arranged alphabetically. This series consists of the records of the art and literary magazine CWM co-edited with David C. Kopaska-Merkel, including announcements, correspondence, and two copies of issue # 1.

Series 8: Weblogs, 2003-2006, 1.25 cf + 1.5 GB
Starting at the end of 2003, much of Geof Huth’s artistic output was focused on his work on weblogs. This series consists of paper and electronic copies of the various weblogs produced by Huth, one of which is a joint blog with D. Ross Priddle. This series includes blog files (archived copies of each blog), electronic files (copies of the electronic files used to created the blogs), and paper files (printouts of the weblogs).

Subseries A: Alongside a Gibbous Orange Moon, 2004, 1 folder + unknown MB
Consists of archived electronic copies and paper copies of the weblog Alongside a Gibbous Orange Moon, which documents the Huth family’s April 2004 trip to Florida’s Gulf Coast. The URL for the weblog refers to the family’s shorthand for itself: “GNET” stands for “Geof, Nancy, Erin, and Tim.” URL: http://gnethuth.blogspot.com

Blog Files: Arranged in reverse chronological order. Consists of an archived copy of the weblog.

Paper Files: Arranged in chronological order of blog posting. Consists of a printout the weblog.

Subseries B: The Anarchivist, 2006, 1 folder + unknown MB
Consists of an occasional weblog that discusses archival issues. Includes reprints of and original articles written by Geof Huth and documentation of some of the professional conferences he attended. URL: http://anarchivist.blogspot.com

Blog Files: Arranged in reverse chronological order. Consists of an archived copy of the weblog.

Paper Files: Arranged in chronological order by month and thereunder in reverse chronological order of blog posting. Consists of a printout the weblog.

Subseries C: bqpd: the bookworks, 2004-2006, 1 folder + unknown MB
This weblog documents and describes the unique books (journals, bookworks, and notebooks) produced by Geof Huth. Some entries are retrodated so the postings coincide with the original date of publication of the books. URL: http://bqpd.blogspot.com

Blog Files: Arranged in reverse chronological order. Consists of an archived copy of the weblog.

Paper Files: Arranged in chronological order by month and thereunder in reverse chronological order of blog posting. Consists of a printout the weblog.

Subseries D: dbpq, 2005, 1 folder + unknown MB
A joint weblog produced with D. Ross Priddle that includes documentation of the micropress dbqp. URL: http://dbpq.blogspot.com

Blog Files: Arranged in reverse chronological order. Consists of an archived copy of the weblog.

Paper Files: Arranged in chronological order by month and thereunder in reverse chronological order of blog posting. Consists of a printout the weblog.

Subseries E: dbqp: visualizing poetics, 2003-2006, 1 cf + unknown MB
Geof Huth’s primary weblog, dbqp: visualizing poetics focuses on discussions of visual poetry and other forms of verbo-visual expression. The weblog’s prospectus describes the blog as “A kaleidoscopic review of visual poetry and related forms of art over the centuries, joined with the recollections of one contemporary visual poet. Topics of interest include visual prose, comics art, illustrated books, minimalist poetry, and visually-enhanced textual poetry.” This weblog usually includes one posting per day. URL: http://dbqp.blogspot.com

Blog Files: Arranged in reverse chronological order. Consists of an archived copy of the weblog.

Electronic Files: Includes drafts of blog entries, copies of images used on the blog, and periodic captures of the blog template. Consists of 963 MB of files.

Paper Files: Arranged in chronological order by month and thereunder in reverse chronological order of blog posting. Consists of a printout the weblog.

Subseries F: dbqplist, 2004-2006, 1 folder + unknown MB
This weblog documents and describes the publications released by dbqp. Some entries are retrodated so the postings coincide with or appear close to the original date of publication of the issues. URL: http://dbqplist.blogspot.com

Blog Files: Arranged in reverse chronological order. Consists of an archived copy of the weblog.

Paper Files: Arranged in chronological order by month and thereunder in reverse chronological order of blog posting. Consists of a printout the weblog.

Subseries G: Geof Huth, 2006, 1 folder + unknown MB
Geof Huth is a little-used weblog that includes occasional documentation of Geof Huth and drafts of poems in progress. The primary purpose of this blog is to guard against cybersquatting. URL: http://geofhuth.blogspot.com

Blog Files: Arranged in reverse chronological order. Consists of an archived copy of the weblog.

Paper Files: Arranged in chronological order by month and thereunder in reverse chronological order of blog posting. Consists of a printout the weblog.

Subseries H: One Million Footnotes, 2004-2006, 0.25 cf + unknown MB
A weblog that includes single numbered sentences published at a usual rate of one per day. The weblog’s prospectus describes the blog as “Footnotes to a nonexistent book, a series of observations, a novel without the plot, the autobiography of an imagination, linked poetry of the everyday world, an impossible goal.” URL: http://onemillionfootnotes.blogspot.com

Blog Files: Arranged in reverse chronological order. Consists of an archived copy of the weblog.

Paper Files: Arranged in chronological order by month and thereunder in reverse chronological order of blog posting. Consists of a printout the weblog.

Subseries I: pdqb, 2004-2006, 1 folder + unknown MB
A weblog that describes Geof Huth’s pdqb publications, which document Huth’s family and include some short-run editions of his artwork. Some entries are retrodated so the postings coincide with the original date of publication of the issues. The weblog’s prospectus describes the blog as “A bibliography of the publications of pdqb, a micropress publishing documentation of the family GNET.” URL: http://pdqb.blogspot.com

Blog Files: Arranged in reverse chronological order. Consists of an archived copy of the weblog.

Paper Files: Arranged in chronological order by month and thereunder in reverse chronological order of blog posting. Consists of a printout the weblog.

Subseries J: qbdp: the mailartworks, 2004-2006, unknown cf + 554 MB
This weblog documents and describes the mailart produced by Geof Huth under the rubric of qbdp. The subtitle of the blog is “The Occasional Mailart Activities of Geof Huth.” URL: http://qbdp.blogspot.com

Blog Files: Arranged in reverse chronological order. Consists of an archived copy of the weblog.

Electronic Files (554 MB): Includes drafts of blog entries and copies of images used on the blog.

Paper Files: Arranged in chronological order by month and thereunder in reverse chronological order of blog posting. Consists of a printout the weblog.

Subseries K: This Old Huthhouse, 2006, unknown cf + unknown GB
This weblog documented the remodeling of Geof and Nancy Huth’s home from February until July 2006. The blog includes numerous digital photographs and some digital video. A daily blog recounting the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of remodeling too much of the home of the GNET Huth family (with the E of GNET only rarely in evidence). We take as our governing principle this quotation by T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings: ‘The surroundings householders crave are glorified autobiographies’ (the full version of which appears at the bottom of this page).” URL: http://huthhouse.blogspot.com

Blog Files: Arranged in reverse chronological order. Consists of an archived copy of the weblog.

Paper Files: Arranged in chronological order by month and thereunder in reverse chronological order of blog posting. Consists of a printout the weblog.

Subseries L: Visual Poetry Clippings, 2004-2006, unknown cf + unknown MB
This weblog is a clipblog that includes snippets from and links to entries about visual poetry posted on blogs not managed by Geof Huth. URL: http://vispo.blogspot.com

Blog Files: Arranged in reverse chronological order. Consists of an archived copy of the weblog.

Paper Files: Arranged in chronological order by month and thereunder in reverse chronological order of blog posting. Consists of a printout the weblog.

Series 9: Electronic Files, 1995-1997, 2006, 7.9 MB
This series consists of electronic files that cannot exist reasonably in paper form and which do not form a part of any other series.

Subseries A: dbqp and pdqb Website, 1995-1999, 113 KB
Arranged alphabetically by filename, with images stored in a separate subfolder. Entitled “dbqp,” this website consists of the final state of an early website for dbqp and pdqb. This website remained virtually unchanged for its entire run from 19 July 1995 until 30 September 1999. Original URL: http:/www.interlog.com/~dal/dbqp/

Subseries B: Databases, 1993-2006, 6.5 MB
Arranged alphabetically by filename. Includes two documentary databases maintained by Geof Huth: “Geof Huth Evidence” (2005-2006, a database that includes citations and data from references to Geof Huth primarily from weblogs and other electronic sources) and “Huthworks” (ca 1993-2006), a database that documents the works of Geof Huth, including type of work, date and place of creation, publication and exhibit data).

Series 10: Audio-Visual Records, 1966, 1974, 1981-1982, 1984-1988, 1990, 1993-1997, 2000-2006, 1.5 cf + 2.56 GB
This series includes audiotapes of sound poems, super-8 and 16mm films, and videotapes and audio media of presentations given by Geof Huth at professional conferences.

Subseries A: Audio Files, 1990, 1993-1994, 2000-2001, 2003, 0.3 cf
Arranged alphabetically by main entry. Recordings of Geof Huth’s audio-based poetry and presentations at professional conferences. Includes five cassette tapes and one CD of Huth’s professional presentations and three cassette audiotapes of Huth’s sound poetry and music.

Subseries B: Films, 1981-1982, 0.2 cf
Arranged alphabetically by title. Includes super-8 and 16mm films (along with related reel-to-reel audiotapes) created by Geof Huth at Vanderbilt University. Includes seven reels of super-8 film (most with accompanying reel-to-reel or cassette audiotapes) and six 16mm films (five collaged films and one hand-drawn film).

Subseries C: Video Files, 1982, 2004-2005, 1 cf
Arranged alphabetically by main entry. Includes video recordings of Geof Huth’s professional presentations, art performances, and works. Includes two VHS tapes of Huth’s appearances on teleconferences related to records management and one Betamax videotape of Huth’s college films.

Subseries D: Electronic Audio and Video Files, 1966, 1974, 1984-1988, 1992, 1994-1997, 2002-2003, 2005-2006, 2.29 GB
Arranged alphabetically by filename. Includes audio recordings (as .wav and .cda files) of Geof Huth’s professional presentations and poetry performances.

Series 11: Photographic Records, 1980-1982, 0.75 cf
Arranged alphabetically. This series consists of negatives and prints of art photographs of Geof Huth and a small folder of original photographs of the American West by the photographer John Paul Edwards, a founding member of Group f/64, a famed circle of American photographers.

Series 12: Publications, 1965-1966, 1969-2006, 30.75 cf
This series consists of copies of publications received or collected by Geof Huth, primarily zines, chapbooks, and poetry publications of various kinds, and particularly publications with work by Huth. Includes some object and audio-visual and digital writing publications, stored separately. Folders that contain work by, references to, or were partially created by Huth are marked with an asterisk in the upper left corner of the folder, sometimes with explanations about the connection to Huth. A simple asterisk indicates that the publication or publications in the folder include work by Geof Huth.

Subseries A: Paper Publications, 1965-1966, 1969, 1972-2006, 28.5 cf
Arranged alphabetically by main entry (usually author’s name). Includes school, professional, and art publications by Geof Huth (except for books) as well as numerous publications documenting underground art and literature (especially visual poetry) from the mid-1980s on. Some paper publications include audio or other media. Includes occasional correspondence with Geof Huth that is either written directly on the publications or is slipped into the pages. Includes one cubic feet of odd-sized publications and a loose box in the form of a triangular prism, which stores the mailart assembling, Killer Whale.

Subseries B: Audio-Visual Publications, 1982, 1985-1995, 2002, 2005-2006, 1 cf
Arranged alphabetically by main entry (usually title). Includes audiotape and videotape publications, including spoken poetry, sound poetry (some with work by Geof Huth), and video art. Formats include NTSC format VHS videotapes, audio cassettes, compact discs, and audiotapes.

Subseries C: Hardcopy Digital Writing Publications, 1983-1984, 1986-1987, 1990, 1995, 0.25 cf
Arranged alphabetically by main entry (usually title). Includes early examples of published digital poetry and digital fiction on 3.5" and 5.25" diskettes, separated from the rest of the publication series to allow for easier preservation management.

The Alchemist III:1. Edited by Marco Fraticelli. 1984. (Diskette magazine of digital writing.)

Fraticelli, Marco. Deja Vu: Poetry for the Computer Screen. Montreal: Guernica Editions, 1983. (Digital haiku.)

Generator # 12, 2004. (A CD of visual poetry in digital form.)

Glossolalia # 1, 1995. (A 3.5" diskette of poetry and other writing saved in ASCII.)

Huth, G. ENDEMIC BATTLE COLLAGE: KINETIC FUNCTION: RE ARRANGEMENTS ACROSS A DIVERSE PLANE: RUN : AURAL AND KINETIC POEMS FOR THE COMPUTER SCREEN. Unpublished hyperscript, 1986-1987. (A completed sequence of digital poems.)

Huth, G. Things Constantly Moving Against Electric Current. Unpublished hyperscript, 1987. (Digital slideshow of full-color static computer-designed poems, which became a single-copy publication in 1992.)

Nichol, bp. First Screening. Toronto: Underwhich Editions, 1984. (Digital poetry.)

Nichol, bp. First Screening. [Red Deer, Alta.]: Red Deer College Press, 1998. (Digital poetry.)

O’Donnell, Richard M. Rice Wine. Montreal: Guernica Editions, 1983. (Digital fiction and digital poetry.)

Subseries D: Books, 1966, 1970, 1973, 1977, 1982, 1989-1990, 1992-1993, 1996, 1998, 2000-2001, 2005-2006, 1 cf
Arranged alphabetically by main entry. Includes copies of hardcover and softcover books that include contributions by or references to Geof Huth, as well as a few heavily annotated books belonging to Huth. References to or sections by Geof Huth in these books are marked with small metal clips (“page points”) on the respective pages.

Audiatur: Katalog for Ny Poesi, Bergen 13. – 16. Oktober 2005, 2005.
Includes a translation of a short essay by Geof Huth (“Variasjon Versus Flyktighet I Samitidspoesien”) and a translation of an interview of Geof Huth by Crag Hill and Ron Silliman (“Intervju med Geof Huth”), both in Norwegian.

Berry, Jake. Brambu Drezi, 2006.
Signed and inscribed by the author, this book was published with financial support from Geof Huth, among others.

Dickson, Paul. Slang! The Topic-by-Topic Dictionary of Contemporary American Lingoes, 1990.
Includes thanks to Geof Huth for help with chapter 22: “Teen and High School Slang.”

Dresher, Olivia, ed. In Pieces: An Anthology of Fragmentary Writing, 2006.
Includes a back-cover blurb by Geof Huth.

Goddard, Dennis E. A Junior Geography of Barbados, 1966.
A schoolbook of Geoffrey Huth, with his name written in it by his mother circa 1970, includes numerous markings by Huth noting where he found some of the source text for his long poem, A topographicall Description and Admeasurement of the YLAND of BARBADOS in the West INDYAES with the Mrs Names of Seuerall plantacons.

Gunderloy, Mike and Michael Ziesing, eds. Anarchy and the End of History, 1991.
Signed by both authors (including Geof Huth’s friend and the editor of Factsheet Five, Mike Gunderloy) and ironically inscribed “Anarchy is Chaos” and “Chaos is Anarchy” at Huth’s request.

Hitt, Jack, ed. In a Word: A Harper’s Magazine Dictionary of Words that Don’t Exist but Ought To, 1992
Includes twenty-two words coined by Geof Huth, along with definitions and illustrative uses of those words.

Hoyos, F. A. Barbados: Our Island Home, 1970 edition.
A schoolbook of Geoffrey Huth signed by him circa 1971, includes some notes by Huth for his long poem, A topographicall Description and Admeasurement of the YLAND of BARBADOS in the West INDYAES with the Mrs Names of Seuerall plantacons and the source for the poem’s title (from the earliest map of Barbados, which is reproduced on page 92).

Jerome, Judson, ed. 1990 Poet’s Market, 1989.
Includes an announcement for Geof Huth’s micropress dbqp.

Kammen, Carol and Norma Prendergast, eds. Encyclopedia of Local History, 2000.
Includes three entries by Geof Huth.

Kostelanetz, Richard, ed. Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes, 1993.
Includes an entry on and fifteen entries by Geof Huth.

Kostelanetz, Richard, ed. Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes, second edition, 2000.
Includes an entry on and twenty-four entries by Geof Huth.

Leab, Daniel J. and Philip P. Mason, eds. Labor History Archives in the United States: A Guide for Researching and Teaching, 1992.
Includes an essay by Geof Huth.

Lewis, Matthew B. The Monk, 1977 printing.
Heavily annotated by Geof Huth.

Loose Watch: A Lost and Found Times Anthology, 1998.
Includes three pieces by Geof Huth.

O’Connor, Flannery. Wise Blood, 1973 printing.
Annotated by Geof Huth.

Saper, Craig J. Networked Art, 2001.
Includes a four-page discussion of Geof Huth’s micropress, dbqp.

Schmidt, S. J., ed. ersichlichkeiten: internationale visuelle texte der 90er, 1996.
Includes reproductions of a number of issues of dbqp and of a concrete poem manuscript by Geof Huth from 1986.

Stevens, Wallace. The Collected Poems, 1982.
Heavily annotated by Geof Huth during a class taken with Phillip Booth in the early 1980s.

6:00 - 7:00 SAA Awards Ceremony

2006-08-04T18:00:00.000-04:00

Hilton Washington, Room 3122, Washington, DC

I don't often attend awards ceremonies at SAA, but I attended this time because a friend of mine was receiving an award, and it's also good to know who the association is honoring. Rather than say anything about the ceremony, I'll simply list the awards in order of their announcement:

Unlisted Awards

Richard Cox was mentioned for some award, but I didn't catch what it was

Kathleen Roe
CoSA award recognizing her outstanding service in terms of advocacy

Gregor Trinkaus-Randall
CoSA award recognizing his outstanding service with disaster work

The Society of Southwest Archivists and the Emergency Disaster Assistance Review Committee
CoSA award recognizing their work on disaster assistance in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

GladysAnn Wells
SAA Presidential Commendation

Frank Louan
SAA Presidential Commendation

Listed Awards

Donald Peterson Student Scholarship
Jessica Lemieux, San Jose State University

C.F.W. Coker Award
The Walt Whitman Archive Integrated Team for designing this innovative multi-institutional finding aid to the manuscripts and publications of Walt Whitman at twenty institutions.

Colonial Dames Scholarships to the Modern Archives Institute
Francesca Livermore and Terry Jackson (not in attendance)

Donna Cutts Scholarship to the Modern Archives Institute
Gloria Stonge (not in attendance)

Distinguished Service Award
Modern Archives Institute, National Archives and Records Administration

Philip M. Hamer - Elizabeth Hamer Kegan Award
State Library and Archives of Florida for the Florida Folklife Digitization and Education Project
Jody Norman and Gerard Clark accepting

J. Franklin Jameson Archival Advocacy Award
Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada) for being a "passionate backer of the NHPRC," among other cultural institutions
Robert Herbert accepting

Waldo Gifford Leland Award
Mary Jo Pugh, Providing Reference Services for Archives and Manuscripts

Theodore Calvin Pease Award
Ben Blake, University of Pittsburgh, "A Call for a New American Labor Archives: History, Theory, Methodology, and Practice," which was a critical assessment of the evolution of labor archives and which calls for forging closer relations with labor unions, especially through the provision of records and knowledge management services

Harold T. Pinkett Minority Student Award
Shawn Philip San Roman, University of Wisconsin--Madison
Lanell James, University of Michigan

Fellows' Ernst Posner Award
Timothy L. Ericson, "Building Our Own Iron Curtain: The Emergence of Secrecy in American Government," American Archivist (68:1)
(not in attendance)

Preservation Publication Award
Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata: Final Report of the PREMIS Working Group
Biran Lavoie accepting

Spotlight Award
Emilie Leumas, Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for quietly, creatively, and selflessly leading the recoversy of the diocese after Hurricane Katrina

Council Exemplary Service Award
Robert Schmidt, Archives and Archivists List Coordinator, 1998-2006

The following fellows of the Society of American Archivists were inducted today--a larger than usual list:

Margaret (Peggy) O'Neill Adams (Lee Stout presenting)
National Archives and Records Administration

Thomas J. Connors (Steve Hensen presenting)
University of Maryland

Philip B. Eppard (Rand Jimerson presenting)
University at Albany, State University of New York

Frederick L. Honhart (Frank Boles presenting)
Michigan State University

Elisabeth Kaplan (Nancy Bartlett presenting)
University of Minnesota

Wilda Logan (Danna Bell Russell presenting)
National Archives and Records Administration

Nancy McCall (Peter Hirtle presenting)
Johns Hopkins University

Gregor Trinkaus-Randall (Linda Henry presenting)
Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners)

Diane Vogt-O'Connor (Rob Spindler presenting)
Libary of Congress

1:15 - 3:00 pm: CoSA Closest to Home Project Meeting

2006-08-04T13:15:00.000-04:00

Washington Hilton, Room 3122, Washington, DC

This was a planning meeting to discuss CoSA's Closest to Home project, an NHPRC-funded project to help improve the state of local government archives across the country. I'm a consultant on the project, along with Jami Awalt of the Tennessee State Archives, Bruce Dearstyne, and Greg Hunter. This was a first meeting between the full contingent of consultants (Greg Hunter couldn't make it) and the Closest to Home Task Force. The meeting was extended for Jami, Bruce, and I, as we met afterwards to discuss our role in the project.

12:15 - 1:15 pm: Electronic Records Section

2006-08-04T12:15:00.000-04:00

Hilton Washington, Room 3122, Washington, DC

I could stay only for the first hour of this meeting, which marks my departure from the Electronic Records Section's steering committee, after being part of that for the past five years. I helped a little with the collecting and counting of the ballots, but little else.

Dr. Reagan Moore of the San Diego Supercomputer Center gave a significant presentation entitled "Building Preservation Environments Using Data Grid Technologies." And I couldn't stay for all of that before I had to go to my next meeting.

10:00 am - 12:00 noon: Government Records Section Meeting

2006-08-04T10:00:00.000-04:00

Hilton Washington, Room 3122, Washington, DC

I stayed through the end of the day's plenary, which ran long, so I had only a few minutes to eat a brunch in the exhibit hall, and rush to the next meeting, the Government Records Section. I had to be there ahead of time, because I'm the outgoing chair of the section, so I'd be running the meeting. I had designed this meeting to be quick moving: a handful of announcements, made by different people, and a couple of longer discussions with audience interaction. I'll keep the description of most of this meeting brief.

Bruce Dearstyne told us about CoSA's important Closest to Home project, which is focused on improving the state of local government archives across the country.

Maria Holden gave a good overview of CoSA's Emergency Preparedness Initiative. Two interesting (and dissimilar) results of this initiative are a report to be delivered to George W. Bush outlining the nationwide emergency preparedness picture, and a simple concept: PREP-ed, a tiny Tyvek envelope that can fit in a wallet, and a template upon which we can write our emergency contact numbers (so that we always have basic emergency information with us).

Lucy Barber discussed NARA's two new grants initiatives, both due October 2nd: the Archives Leadership Institute and the digitizing grants program.

Howard Lowell gave a brief review of the NARA ten-year strategic plan, which lays out many changes including plans to improve records management in agencies, improve processing and prescription, improve access to collections, and equip staff to meet the changing needs of customers.

Ann Marie Przybyla gave a discussion of what she called "Random Observations on the State of Disaster Management in New York State," but the meat of this discussion was the discussion with the audience of ways to ensure local governments (and others) would plan for disasters, rather than just respond to them. A few of the ideas:

Require disaster plans at point of grant application
Include disaster planning component in all records management training
Bring records officers, emergency managers, IT, and administration together in meetings to discuss disaster management
Cooperate with IT on disaster planning
Don't give too much detail to anyone; allow them to think through and, thus develop their own disaster plan
Make disaster planning as easy as possible

Arian Ravanbaksh discussed NARA's guidance products (on web records management, IT procurement, and wikis and IMs and blogs), which won't be finalized until later this year. He noted that IMing (and to a lesser extent wikis and blogs) is becoming a serious recordmaking technology that people must become comfortable with.

We also had some voting at the meeting. The bylaws revision passed 44 to zero (though there were about 85 people in the meeting all told, and we had at least one member voting absentee). Sharmila Bhatia of NARA won the position of federal representative, Kelly Eubank of the North Carolina State Archives won a two-year term as a state representative, Mark Myers of the Kentucky State Archives won a one-year term as a state representative, and John H. Slate won the position of local representative. After I announced the results, the winners went outside to find out if anyone was interested in becoming vice-chair/chair-elect, and John Slate was the only one, so he'll be chairing this meeting two years from now.

As I was closing the meeting, Lucy Barber came up to praise my job as chair (nice, but unnecessary), and Nancy Melley gave me a small belly-dancing kit in recognition of some entertainment I provided the archivists at the last Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (unnecessary, but I'm not sure if nice).

8:00 - 9:45 am: Plenary II: Technology

2006-08-04T08:00:00.000-04:00

Hilton Washington, Room 3122, Washington, DC

RPM

Richard Pearce-Moses opens his talk by noting that C-Span will be taping (and broadcasting) some of the conference sessions, which led to a few room changes. Richard noted that, during his tenure as president of SAA, he has emphasized the important issue of technology. He then introduced the classical god Janus, two-faced (one eye to the past, one to the future) and the symbol of the International Council of Archives. Janus serves, in Richard’s mind, as a threshold between the past and the future, between the analog world and the digital. He noted that some archivists try to deal with this issue simply by saying, “I’ll just take care of paper and leave the electrons to someone else.” But that won’t work for the profession

He posited that he imagines three scenarios for dealing with the records of our digital world:

The Status Quo

The status quo is that we are living with digital records but doing too little to address that issue. The problem is that so many archivists don’t have the skills they need to deal with these records. Richard dispensed with this scenario out of hand because in this scenario we don’t learn enough to change our ways.

Negative View

In this scenario, we end up failing to address the critical issue of electronic records and we lose our “social memory.”

Brighter Vision

In this scenario, archivists preserve the richness of our digital cultural heritage. Our electronic records are saved and made available to such a degree that everyone knows what archivists are because they are central to the work of their lives. But Richard also noted that we must realize this scenario actively.

Richard continued by saying that archivists must be as comfortable with digital materials as they are with paper. To do this well, archivists must increase their technical skills, but they also must enhance their soft skills (such as administration). We need, he explained, people with “big picture skills,” people who are trendspotters, people who are embracers of new technology, people who are planners, and risk-takers. “We cannot predict the future, but we can influence.”

Janus has one face bearded and the other not. He has changed. He’s aged, but he’s the same person. He’s fundamentally the same. And so it will be for archivists who take on this challenge.

Fynnette Eaton has said, “Whatever we do we may fail, but if we do nothing failure is guaranteed.” With this she gave us permission to fail sometimes. Richard said that we need strategic thinking, which is about direction, not steps. “We need the spirit and attitude of pioneers.”

Brewster Cale

Richard Pearce-Moses introduced Brewster Cale as the director of the Internet Archive (IA). Richard then noted that Cale has no idea that “archives” had an s in it, so Richard gave him a framed capital S.

Cale was a good speaker, folksy and sincere. He really believes in his mission; he really believes in libraries and archives and all repositories of knowledge. He opened by saying, “After ten years of running the Internet Archive, it’s going well.” He noted that IA is cool, and that he’s next off to Wikimania. He continued, saying, “This is the librarian’s and archivist’s day, if we step forward and take it.”

Cale described his mission simply: “Universal Access to All Knowledge,” which he claimed was in our grasp. He described the simplicity of digitizing most knowledge, published and unpublished, to the Web. He explained his preferred method of scanning books (hand scanning on a specially made V-shaped book cradle). He described his Internet Archive Book Mobile, which drives around, letting children to choose books and then printing and binding each book they choose on the spot (at a cost of $1), and giving away the book for free. He passed around samples, and I enjoyed flipping through the full-color reprinting of The Cheerful Cricket and Others by Jeannette Marks, illustrated by Edith Brown, and originally published in Boston in 1906 by Small Maynard and Company. Cale said, “What we’ve learned from the Library in Alexandria—which is probably best known for . . . burning—is don’t have just one copy.” Now, IA shares all of its collection with the newly rebuilt Library of Alexandria.

At the end of the talk, Cale said he didn’t know if we will rise to this opportunity. He called for all of us to cooperate, and to be bold. He asked, “Will this archives [of all knowledge] be Elsevier’s and Google’s or Internet Archive’s, NARA’s and the Library of Congress’? Will it be open or proprietary?”

“Universal access to all knowledge is possible, and it could be something we could be proud of for centuries.”

Cokie Roberts

Allen Weinstein introduced Cokie Roberts as “a combination of civility and common sense,” “a friend of archives and archivists,” and an active member of the Foundation of the National Archives (a board her mother, a congresswoman, also served on).

When Roberts spoke, her voice was huge, her presence was overpowering compared to the day’s previous speakers. She began with jokes about Strom Thurmond and her own mother (who lives on Bourbon Street in New Orleans). Then she mentioned her difficulty writing books about woman because woman’s records had not been saved, had actually been deliberately destroyed in some cases. She told us about one of her own interaction with archives, which ended up being working with the typed transcripts of original records held by the Massachusetts Historical Society (not exactly what we’d think of as “archives”). She ended by telling us about advocacy. “Advocacy works.” “The money follows the advocacy.”

The Order of Events

2006-08-04T01:26:00.000-04:00

Remember that the day's events recounted below are presented in reverse chronological order (in exactly the same manner as a certain episode of Seinfeld).

6:00-11:00 Dinner

2006-08-03T18:00:00.000-04:00

Hilton Washington, Room 2166, Washington, DC

I didn't really have dinner tonight, but I ate plenty DC2006 is simply like SAA: a marathon. The only clear break is for lunch. The rest of the time it is going to sessions and meetings--or avoiding them.

I began my dinner at the Happy Hour in the exhibit hall. I ate a couple of nachos as I spoke to Eric Singer of Lockheed Martin about possibilities for collaboration and his work on the Electronic Records Archive. Then I met with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference's Education Committee (in my role as chair of MARAC) to discuss proposed changes to the work the committee. During that discussion, I had a glass of cranberry juice and ate popcorn. Afterwards, I went to the University at Albany, SUNY, Alumni Party and Capital Area Archivists of New York Mixer (one event) and ate some vegetables and more nachos. Not much, but more. (Lots of talking there, since these were almost all people I know.) Then I went to the presidential reception hosted by SAA's president Richard Pearce-Moses, and I ate strawberry cheesecake and some cheese. (This reception was in the presidential suite and it was quite crowded, but the noise and the heat and the cramped space made the event just a bit more fun.) So I ended up with quite a good meal, as you can tell.

As I left the reception, finally done with my day, I saw a clutch of people chatting in the elevator lobby. One woman asked if I was going to blog about them and their discussions of southern literature and James Joyce. I can't remember my response, but here I have done it.

Someone knows this blogging is going on, even though today's entries have been streamlined for the good of all of us.

4:30 - 6:00 pm: Records Management Roundtable

2006-08-03T16:30:00.000-04:00

Hilton Washington, Room 3122, Washington, DC

About a score of people showed up for the Records Management Roundtable. Besides standard announcements I've covered elsewhere, there were a couple of major discussion points at this meeting. The first was a report by Jim Cassedy of the SAA/ARMA Joint Committee on a simple brochure the committee has developed to explain archives and archival processes to records management. Next, the roundtable discussed a number of different conference program possibilities, a few of which I thought fairly interesting.

But what I got out of this meeting was something that was never said: we need to forge bonds between records managers and archivists in the profession as a whole, but also within SAA. A few archivists today said very mildly disparaging remarks about records management, and I know why. I understand their point, but records management and archives are very similar professions, and maintaining boundaries between these twinned professions is not good for anyone.

During part of one session today, for instance, I looked over resumes trying to find possible candidates for four jobs I have to fill in the next few months. I noted that some of the potential candidates had purely archival work, but that others had some records management work (scheduling, files management, etc.) as well. The latter are always the people more likely to accept a job offer from me, because they are ready to be records managers but also happy to be archivists. They see that connection and understand only dimly how the two professions are different.

Years ago, when I was young enough to be optimistic, I gave a presentation at a regional ARMA conference entitled "Archivists and Records Managers: Together at Last." I discussed the similarities and differences in the professions but noted that we have to dispense with differences. I'd much rather hire an archivist who had a deep understanding of various filing systems and how they work. And I'd much rather hire a records manager who understood preservation and how to arrange and describe records. No matter what the focus of their job, these two mythical applicants would bring more insight than a person who was nothing but an archivist or nothing but a records manager.

This is a big topic for SAA and the profession to address.

1:00 - 2:30 pm: Session 205: Making Technology Work: DSpace and Its Implementations

2006-08-03T13:00:00.000-04:00

Hilton Washington, Room 3211, Washington, DC

This was a simple, clean, and helpful session to anyone unfamiliar with DSpace and how it works. MacKenzie Smith opened by explaining that DSpace was an open source software product used an institutional repository for most kinds of digital object. Her big point was to make sure people understood that they needed to customize DSpace to make it do everything they would want it to do. DSpace is not simpley commercial off-the-shelf software.

She and Tom Rosko explained how anyone implementing DSpace would have to set up policies for a wide range of issues: rights management, metadata, withdrawal of files by the submitter, retention of files, versioning, and preservation among them.

Matt Veatch gave a clear explanation of how Kansas got involved with DSpace, and created KSPACE (Kansas State Publications Archival Collection--electronic) to provide access to electronic publications of state agencies. They started with $50,000 from the state, purchased the necessary servers and firewalls, did some limited customization, and developed a list of file format guidelines that included three categories of document types:

Preferred: plaintext, XML, and PDF/A (the last expected in the future)

Acceptable: PDF and most other formats

Unsupported: Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, and other Microsoft products

9:30 - 11:00 am: Session 101: Institutional Approaches to Digital Recordkeeping

2006-08-03T09:30:00.000-04:00

Hilton Washington, Room 3122, Washington, DC

Mark D. Giguere: "Interconnectedness: ERM, E-Government and Enterprise Architecture"

Let's make this one simple. Mark gave some details about NARA's Electronic Records Management Initiative, which you can find on the NARA website in a more accessible form than I could summarize.

Adrian Cunningham, "Australasian Digital Recordkeeping Initiative"

Again, I can simply direct you to the Australasian Digital Recordkeeping Initiative, but with one comment. Adrian wanted us to be sure to understand that "recordkeeping" to antipodeans means managing records throughout the life cycle and including archival recordkeeping.

Daniel Caron of the National Archives of Canada ended with a few cogent remarks. First, he listed five major things needed to develop a solution to electronic recordkeeping:

1. Clear goals and a good vision
2. Investment (in terms of dollars)
3. Enunciation of guidelines and standards
4. A strong IT infrastructure
and
5. Another point I didn't catch

8:00 - 9:00: Plenary I

2006-08-03T08:00:00.000-04:00

Hilton Washington, Room 3122, Washington, DC

David Carmicheal--Georgia State Archivist, president of CoSA, and former Westchester County (New York) Archivist--opened not with the expected plenary, but with a few remarks and then an introduction of Brian Lamb. David noted that CoSA, with a mere 56 members, was the smallest of the three organizations at DC2006. He also mentioned that last year was the year of advocacy and the year of hurricanes. He ended by noting two large programs CoSA is working on: the Emergency Preparedness Initiative and a Partnership for the American Historical Record (PAHR), both of which will require consistent long-term work.

Dr Allen Weinstein, AOTUS, gave a brief speech that focused on public awareness and access. "Too many people don't know what we do, how we do it, or why we do it." We must make sure people understand, he explained, how much records mean to them. And we much ensure easy accessibility to records.

Brian Lamb, the president and CEO of C-Span, gave the real opening plenary. He began by telling a few humorous anecdotes about people mistaking him for John McCain, John Glenn, and (surprisingly enough) J. Edgar Hoover. Lamb noted that this hotel of ours was the site of "one of the most important pieces of American history." This was the site where Ronald Reagan was shot on March 30, 1981. He had spoken on the same stage Lamb was speaking on, then he went out the side entrance of the hotel and was shot. He also noted that this room was the site of the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, including this year's famous dinner featuring an acerbic Stephen Colbert.

Lamb discussed two archival issues, and one was the archives of C-Span, specifically the tapes of all C-Span broadcasts since 1987, about 129,000 hours of television. He discussed the expense of this program, taking it back from Purdue (the original repository for it), and the fact that only two people have visited the archives in person. More interestingly, Lamb told the story of a small notebook he uses, a notebook that is meant to remind him of the "cahiers" Alexis de Tocqueville used to write his thoughts about our young country. The story was long and interesting, and it touched on the human need for artifact as talisman.

Brian Lamb gave a talk at a New York State Archives Parnership Trust event in the last year. He was a great speaker then and he was this time. He is modestly immodest, and he tells a good yarn. He gives some sense of his learned love for history and his interest in the record that makes that history possible.

After the First Day at DC2006

2006-08-03T03:02:00.000-04:00

I like to say that no-one attends the same conference that anyone else does, so the notes that appear in this blog for the next few days are notes that pertain only to my experience at this conference, which is not a Society of American Archivists conference. It is a joint conference of SAA, NAGARA, and CoSA, and I have to remember that. I'll be attending sessions that focus on the missions of each of these organizations, for instance. I'll try to keep that in mind as I write, but I expect to say SAA sometimes when I mean DC2006.

Below is documentation of my first day at the conference. I wrote the sections in reverse order of their occurrence, so the entry the latest in the day is the most complete. Keep this in mind as well, and have fun reading the four entries for the first day. Also, I dated each entry according to the hour each session began--not according to the time I posted the entry.

Finally, see the sidebar of this blog for a listing of four other blogs talking about experiences at DC2006, four stories about four different conferences.

I'm a bit into the second day now, but I'm preparing for tomorrow.

Geof

7:30 - 9:30: Reception at the National Archives

2006-08-02T19:30:00.000-04:00

Hilton Washington, Room 3211, Washington, DC

I made it to the conference reception with four other members of the New York State Archives. We barely fit in the taxi, but we arrived at the Connecticut Avenue entrance to Archives I right at 7:30. I'd been to this building just two months ago for the New Skills for a Digital Era colloquium (see entries for the end of May and beginning of June for details), so I knew what to expect: we had to go through metal detectors and X-ray the contents of our pockets. What I didn't expect was that Dr Allen Weinstein, the Archivist of the United States,* and his wife Adrienne would be at the other side of the metal detector welcoming every single attendee to the Archives.

I hadn't been to see any of the exhibits at the Archives in many years, probably not since the mid-1990s, so I was impressed with the new arrangement of the Charters of Freedom. The space was more open and inviting, though still dimly lit and quite cool for the benefit of the documents. This was my first "free" time all day, so I called my wife Nancy and paced within the rotunda (surrounded by the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and other important documents) and found out about my wife's day. This was the quietest space in the area, so it worked well, but I thought it a strange place to chat with my wife hundreds of miles away--and I mentioned that to her.

Strangely, my wife, who teaches high school English, spent the day in an archives, a coincidence I found remarkably moving. As I spoke and walked, swiveling from time to time on the balls of my feet to point myself in the opposite direction, Nancy told me how she and her team teacher (the social studies teacher) went to the archives and special collections at the University at Albany, SUNY, today and looked through their collections. Nancy loves social history and is very knowledgeable about it, so she has worked with her team teacher to develop topics in history that her students can write about in English class and which coincide with the subject matter in eleventh grade social studies. She hoped that the collections at UAlbany would be able to support her juniors' research papers, and she was not disappointed. Instead, she was thrilled beyond expectation. They found many collections that fit in with their collection, and some of these had even been digitized and were available on the Web. She still expects to bring some students to the archives to do research, but others will be able to conduct their research--in primary sources--from their high school library.

Even more exciting to me was that I used to work at UAlbany, and she was finding valuable many collections that I had acquired while working as a field archivist almost two decades ago. She was reading and using finding aids I'd written. She was looking through boxes of records I had refoldered (though most of that work was done by my student interns). It was a good day for archives and education.

The great part of this reception was not the food (cookies and punch) but the Public Vaults, which is a colorful, imaginative, and interactive exhibit of the archival records held by the National Archives. This exhibit was more like an exhibit at a children's museum. There were many hands-on exhibits that allowed children (and adults--the attendees loved pushing buttons and pulling out drawers) to become a part of the exhibit, to make their bodies part of the intellectual experience. But, more importantly, the exhibits were imaginative--going far beyond the standard types of exhibited materials and bundling like items into little mini-exhibits.

My one big regret was that I had decided not to use a flash when photographing the Public Vaults--even though all the documents were facsimiles--because I thought the flash would be annoying to others. So I have no good pictures of the space. What I really liked was that the exhibit honored the past and those relics of the past we call records or archives--but that the exhibit also was of the present. Many of the exhibits included digitized video or touch-screen interfaces where patrons could answer questions or look more closely as digitized images of documents. But these exhibits also replicated the look of old filing systems, or presented rows of Hollinger boxes as part of the exhibit. The message was clear: the past is for the present.

Fidel Castro's Famous Letter in the National Archives
I spoke to a number of people I know as I walked through the exhibits: Steve Walker (formerly of New York State, now the state archivist of Idaho), Arian Ravanbaksh (of NARA), Gary Saretzky of Monmouth County in New Jersey, Leslie Simon (NARA, Philadelphia), and many more. And I met a few other people, including Dorothy Dougherty, who is from NARA and interested in replicating little Public Vaults in other areas. We talked, generally, about the possibility of a collaboration.

The World of Electronic Records
I spent more time, however, talking to Greg Hunter (who shares my initials and is always next to me alphabetically at conferences, at SAA, at MARAC, at ARMA) and Clyde Relick (Lockheed Martin's director of the ERA projet). I like to talk to people about the Electronic Records Archives project, because the success of this project would be a great boon to the archival profession and go a long way to solving the electronic records problem dogging the profession. We talked about the challenges of the ERA (especially with more complicated formats, such as VRML). We talked about the need to have something tangible to show the profession as soon as possible, hopefully by SAA and ARMA next year. We talked about the need to make the entire profession care about the issue of electronic records. I'm not capturing the flavor of this talk, but it was interesting and dynamic, hopeful and determined.

The reception was fun and intellectually stimulating, which is all I ever ask for. I ended my time there in the gift shop, where I purchased a copy of The Public Vaults Unlocked (the book equivalent of the exhibits I'd just seen). I thought my wife (who couldn't follow me to the conference this year) would enjoy it. While waiting in line, I found Ed Galvin (who, years ago, had the job I now have at the New York State Archives). I told him that we were in the midst of a move and have been going through our files and that I'd found some early records (from the 1980s) documenting his work at developing the local government records program at the NYS Archives. I thought that connection was thrilling: that we still had evidence of that beginning and that Ed and I could meet and discuss it. The records are sitting on my table at work, waiting for me to return and read them.

Afterwards, I lost track of everyone I knew and walked out into the night, where soon enough I ran into Patti Dohrenwend (archivist of Westchester County, New York, and a member of the NYS Local Government Records Advisory Council) and her husband Bob. We ended up eating at Ten Penh, an Asian fusion restaurant at 1001 Pennsylvania Avenue (202/393-4500). It was great food, and I recommend it to anyone at the conference who doesn't mind going a little distant from the conference hotel for a remarkable meal.

*Sometimes abbreviated to "AOTUS," if you can believe it.

5:00 - 6:30: NAGARA and SAA Local Government Records Roundtable

2006-08-02T17:00:00.000-04:00

Hilton Washington, Room 3211, Washington, DC

This joint meeting of NAGARA's and SAA's local government records roundtables focused on two issues: CoSA's Closest to Home project and a review of three successful local government archives programs.

Kaye Minchew spoke about the Council of State Archivists' Closest to Home project, which is an NHPRC-funded project to determine what we as a profession need to do to ensure the success of local government archives. Since local government records is a big part of my job, this project interests me. I'm even serving as a consultant looking into the issue of sustainable funding for local government archives (a big issue to me in my regular work). We have much yet to learn, so pay attention to the results of this project. And if you're interested in this, be sure to attend the incubator session on Saturday morning.

Afterwards, John Slate of the Dallas Municipal Archives: Bill Dow of the archives of Keene, New Hampshire; and Judy Cetina of the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, archives, discussed the success of their programs. Afterwards, someone asked them what were the reasons of their success:

Judy: A director who was a champion.
John: A strong personality, public advocacy, selling to resource allocators (especially by showing where the archives saved them money).
Bill: A strong personality and showing graphic photographs of problems.

What worries me about this list is what worries me about the fate of all local government archives. It is often a single person--charismatic, determined, intelligent, resourceful, diligent, and hard-working--who keeps a good archives going. And I've seen enough local government archives succumb to the pressures of inertia once that personality has left.

What do we need to do, I wonder, to make sure that every local government archives survives the departure of its champion or its original and imaginative archivist?

2:00 - 4:00: Strategic Issues Leadership Forum

2006-08-02T14:00:00.000-04:00

Hilton Washington, Room 3122, Washington, DC

In this session, SAA leaders discussed the three strategic issues for SAA--essentially, public awareness, diversity, and technology. This was the most intellectually satisfying and stimulating part of my day, but I'm a bit tired right now (it's about 2:30 am), so I'll give this much shorter shrift than it deserves.

My table discussed public awareness and advocacy. We decided that this was certainly an important issue for SAA because if people don't know that archivists exist or if they don't know what you do, then you will have a hard time finding support. Steve Novak noted that making oneself known as an archivist is both a micro issue (focused on one's own place in one's institution) and a macro issue (focused on the world as a whole and archivists as a whole).

It was clear to us that the sufficiency of funding for an archives program was based on how well we as archivists make our case--and that that case needs to be make within the context of both one's institution's culture and the culture of our country as a whole (getting to both the micro and the macro). The flexibility to
respond to changes in one's environment is a key issue.

We wondered how a nationwide Archives Month could help with public awareness. Would it have any effect? Would the effect it did have be worth the cost to participating organizations? One idea was that Archives Month could help train archivists to advocate for themselves, that they could use the support they gained to build programs, and that the existence of archives helpful to their parent institutions would eventually result in an expectation of their being an archives. When someone moved from a job at an institution with a good archives, they would ask why that service was not available in their new location. Optimistic, maybe, but we were assuming long-term incremental change, nothing more.

We saw SAA as have the role as a national leader for archives. SAA should advocate for archives proactively, not only reactively. SAA needs to push a positive image of archives and the archivist. (Apparently, at this point I said that archivists must present themselves as "impassioned stewards of the historical record." People wrote this down and quoted it back to me later.) SAA needs to think beyond "archives," to "records." A broader focus can be beneficial.

SAA could suggest best practices for records legislation, regulation, and policy. SAA needs to develop its website for people besides members. It should tell the general public about the value of archives and archivists. It should include this and other information in an online press kit.

SAA must define its role as one of promoting archivists to the public. SAA should push the idea of archivists as people who provide access to information. SAA should define issues pertinent to archives, say where it stands on the issues, and tell archivists how they can get involved.

We can promote archives by making the connection between archives and people's natural and deep and varied connections to the past. But the word "history" (rife with negative connotations about dry academic subjects) should be avoided. To be successful, any public awarenes program must be multi-pronged.

That, in a nutshell, and leaving out much information, is what my panel discussed. Afterwards, all the panels joined into a discussion of all the topics, but this was much less detailed and so less satisfying to me. My favorite line, however, was from a panel discussing diversity: They decided that the best way to improve diversity in the archival profession would be to hire Republicans. (I've done my share of that, by the way.)

At the end of our discussions, I noticed something interesting. We were discussing SAA as if it were some rough beast skulking in the hallway behind us. So I noted that we are SAA, that SAA isn't a concept: it is a reality made out of people. That, for anything to happen, we need to volunteer and find the people to do the work. That we have accept responsibility for the future of SAA and the future of the profession.

1:00 - 2:00: Leadership Orientation

2006-08-02T13:00:00.000-04:00

Hilton Washington, Room 3122, Washington, DC

This session was designed to orient SAA leaders (such as section and roundtable chairs) to the culture of SAA and requirements SAA makes of it. I attended this as the outgoing chair of the Government Records Section. Elizabeth Adkins, incoming president of SAA, led the meeting. What we learned:

That SAA has a template for us to use to submit section issues through our Council liaison to SAA Council (and that we should submit these four to six weeks before any Council meeting).

That we need to get word about new section and roundtable leaders to Nancy Beaumont, SAA executive director, as soon as possible after this meeting.

That annual reports are due December 31st of each year.

That section will be allowed to endorse only two sessions for each conference. But that such endorsements will ensure that these sessions are considered and discussed by the Program Committee. (Because of the volume of session proposals, any sessions receiving too low an initial score from Program Committee members will not be discussed by the entire Program Committee at all.)

That a task force on sections and roundtables has produced a 21-page report that will soon be released.

That it has been recommended that SAA endorse National History Day.

It was an informational meeting, and useful for what it was. But I'm rotating away from any such responsibilities, so I wish Lucy Barber luck in her new job as section chair!

The Power of Secondary Value

2006-08-01T23:56:00.000-04:00

Central Foreign Policy Files, created, 7/1973 - 12/1974, documenting the period 1973 ? - 12/1974
Creator: Department of State. (Most Recent)

Type of Archival Materials: Data Files
Textual Records
Level of Description: Series from Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State
Other Titles: State Department Cables
State Department Telegrams

Back at the beginning of June, I learned that the National Archives had uploaded the State Department's electronic telegrams ("Central Foreign Policy Files") for parts of the years 1973 and 1974. Since my father was a career diplomat, I had spent my childhood overseas; and since we were living in Barbados in those years, I was anxious to see if there were any cables that mentioned my father. I went the NARA's Access to Archival Databases, typed in "huth," and almost immediately found eleven documents in the foreign policy files with that name. After glancing through my search results, I quickly identified the three documents sent from Bridgetown, Barbados, and experienced the sudden thrill of learning a little bit about my father's little-discussed work life.

This series consists of telegrams, airgrams, memoranda, correspondence, reports, diplomatic notes, and related material. The materials relate to all aspects of American bilateral and multilateral foreign relations and routine administrative and operational activities of the Department of State and its Foreign Service posts.

From the document from 26 July 1973, I learned that my father was the "narcotics control officer" for the Bridgetown post. That information might have explained, to some degree, why our next assignment was Bolivia (the land of coca) and why my father was always asking me to find out about kids who used drugs at my high school there in Calacoto.

In the cable from 9 Aug 1973, I found this note:

1. YOUR MESSAGE REGARDING THE SUBMISSION OF ITEMS FOR THE ARA MONTHLY NARCOTICS REPORT IS TIMELY IN THAT THE PRESENT NCO, DONALD E. HUTH, IS PREPARING TO DEPART THE POST FOR ANOTHER ASSIGNMENT AND WELCOMES THIS OPPORTUNITY TO DISCUSS THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NCAP FOR BARBADOS AND THE EASTERN CARIBBEAN. THE DCM, PETER P. LORD, WILL ASSUME DUTIES AS NCO, WHICH WILL PROVIDE FOR CONTINUITY OF OUR PROGRAM.

With this I learned a little bit more about my father's life as a narcotics control officer (NCO), but this message also gives a little evidence about the rest of the family. It indicates that we left Barbados (after living in that one place for an unprecedented three years) shortly after this cable was written. This dull piece of bureaucratic trivia gives some evidence of our peripatic lives, without even mentioning us.

That is the power of secondary use. Inside the folds of the most mundane documents, we can find evidence of people, of families, proof that some person was once somewhere doing something. On the face of it, even that information isn't very exciting, but to a certain individual that information might have profound significance, might be the only evidence of a life, might be the strongest connection they have to a past they once lived.

When an Archivist Isn’t an Archivist

2006-07-31T20:17:00.000-04:00

The following is a reprint of my "chair's message" in the mid-atlantic archivist, (Summer 2006). The entire issue that included this issue will soon be available at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives' website.

When members of our profession were putting together the A*CENSUS survey of archivists, I read the draft with interest, and I paused for a long time on the first question. The archivists working on the questionnaire decided, quite rightly, that they needed to define what an archivist was right up front. And they had. They devised a definition that carefully identified the canonical attributes of an archivist, and in doing so they defined me right out of the profession. And not only me. Many of my colleagues—who don’t provide direct care for archives, but who provide advice to others on how to do so—were similarly left out of the profession. Or they would have been if interested archivists had not taken the opportunity to send comments to the A*CENSUS folks and suggest a more inclusive definition for “archivist.”

The strange fact about all of this is that archivists sometimes are not even archivists. A quite dedicated archivist I know in North Dakota actually spends almost all of her time working as a reference librarian. Another archivist in Pennsylvania runs the information technology department of her organization, which includes archives and records management as part of its responsibilities. It is actually quite common for an archivist to merge the traditional responsibilities of an archivist with those of a librarian, a records manager, and a museum curator. In fact, the archivist each of us is might be only an occasional persona of ours.

I’m not at all sure any of this is bad for archives or for us as archivists. Most archivists probably believe that our profession’s cooperation with librarians has led to real improvements in the description of archives. I know that I treasure my training in cataloging above almost everything else I learned in library school. Similarly, I have spent much of my career trying to convince archivists to open themselves up to the possibility of being records managers because records management is a closely related field where there just might be a job when an archivist needs one. And a solid records management program provides a good foundation for an archives program and may even provide the entree an archivist needs to promote that program. From my point of view, archivists are least like museum curators, who manage a much different kind of cultural artifact. Yet it also seems to me that what the archivist shares with the museum curator is the knowledge that the artifact itself may be worth saving, that tangible objects have a human value that mere information cannot always match.

This world of ours is actually designed to change every archivist into something else. I understand this well from looking back at my career. For years, I worked in the field as a trainer, an advisor, and a confidant. My job was to teach people about archives and records management, to direct them, to show them the best ways to manage and provide access to their records. I didn’t work with records directly. All I did was talk and write. I came finally to exclaim that all of us who did this job—and there were a number of us—did nothing at all, since we did not need to handle records at all to do our jobs. Of course, this was a canard. We did work, but the work was completely different from that of the practicing archivist. We were intermediaries when we sometimes yearned to be active participants. In a later job, I wrote workshops and publications, pushing myself yet another step away from any direct work with records. Even compared to those who did nothing, I did less with records. Finally, my work changed so much that I was merely a manager, someone who tells people who don’t manage records how to teach someone who doesn’t touch a record how to train someone to manage records.

This scenario sounds ludicrous, but it is all too real. We are all knowledge workers. Our jobs were—and still are—to provide the knowledge that is necessary to ensure that people can manage their records, especially their archives, well. This, in fact, is how we might describe archivists. Along with all of their colleagues in related professions (librarians, records managers, museum curators, even information technology professionals), archivists manage and share knowledge. The work of the archivist is always more than simply caring for a record. The real work is to ensure the record gets somewhere where it can do some good. Our jobs as archivists—even in the canonical sense—is to be intermediaries. We are the conduits between the information recorded in our archives and the people who need that information.

We are servants to the records but also servants to the people who need those records. Because of this role, we must do everything we can—we must be everyone we can be—to ensure we complete our jobs successfully. We must be public relations experts and historians. At certain times we must be conservators, and we must always be preservationists. We must be gatekeepers who know how to open the gates. And we must be security experts who know how to keep the records safe. We must be managers of records and managers of people.

An archivist, after all, doesn’t have a single role or one that is easy to understand from any angle. An archivist is a chimera that must change form to meet the challenges of the day. The luckiest of archivists has many challenges, takes many forms, and appreciates the honor of those opportunities and transformations.

New Skills for a Digital Era, Day Three

2006-06-05T02:51:00.000-04:00

Opening Salvo and the Early Morning

Richard Pearce-Moses opened the colloquium today urging us to focus on technical skills, rather than other skills. There was some disagreement on this focus. I personally think that technical skills are necessary, though archivists don’t need to do handle every technical aspect of managing archival electronic records. But I also think that archival skills, managerial skills, and even social skills need to change and improve.

By the third day of our colloquium in DC, people were showing signs of wear, but the case studies rejuvenated us almost immediately.

Topic: Reference and Access

Case Study # 8: The Next Generation Finding Aid: The Polar Bear Expedition Digital Collections: A Case Study in Reference and Access to Digital Materials (Beth Yakel and Polly Reynolds)

This study focused on a collection of digitized manuscript groups that go under the title The Polar Bear Expedition Digital Collections. The goal in this project was to transform paper finding aids for the Web—to take advantage of the affordances of the Web. This site includes an interactive reference system, social navigation (such as the folksonomy tagging in flickr only photo accounts), user biographies and a user intercommunication system, hyperlinks tying together collections with genre or topical overlaps, and link paths that capture user movements such as common movements between two pages (which might identify other webpages that might be of interest to a user interested in a particular webpage).

The presenters suggested a number of knowledge skills as necessary in this project: cataloging, machine processing, human-computer interaction, usability principles, current Internet use, programming, database design, and network infrastructure and security.

Case Study # 9: Archival Reference Services for Digital Records: Three and a half years experience with the Access to Archival Databases (AAD) resource (Margaret Adams)

Margaret Adams began her talk with a quite accurate point that the skills under discussion this week weren’t new to everyone, and certainly not to the National Archives. Then she explained the access to structured archival records in NARA’s collections through the Access to Archival Databases. She noted that, once NARA loaded these electronic data online, they did not see a dramatic increase in demand for physical media. Since 2006, the AAD has experienced over 800,000 retrievals and now sees more accesses in a week than there has ever been for uses of electronic records per year at NARA.

Small Group Discussion

My small group this time consisted of Elizabeth Adkins, Kendall Wiggins, Richard Dymalski, David McMillen, Linda Colwell (recorder), Polly Reynolds, Ross Parcels, Fynnette Eaton, and me.

Immediately, I noted the big difference between these case studies and the rest: Here were electronic records projects where something worked. (I didn’t mean that the other projects weren’t working. They all were, but these were examples of projects that totally met their goals: they made huge improvements and expansions to access.

We carried on many discussions from this point including the obvious issue that these projects can be hugely costly. An essential skill to meeting that problem is the ability to prioritize what to do first. Other skills: to attract people to a website so that access is possible, making access more intuitive, dealing with excessive expectations, the ability to rethink how certain activities are now done, and an understanding of copyright, privacy, and security.

Large Group Discussion

Archivists need to look at new service models that still take into account return on investment. We will have to develop levels of service appropriate to different audience skill levels. We need to be totally self-sufficient in reference, meaning the ability to reformat records, use markup languages, and carry out cataloging. We need to develop (or find or use) better tools to measure website hits. We need to allow users to carry out item-level description in an area of the website that is clearly segregated from the work of the archivists—so that we can take advantage of extra descriptive work without worrying about all the metadata being perfectly accurate. We need to leverage the knowledge of users. (Archivists, you see, need to develop an ability to let go, an ability to strive for—but not insist on—perfection.) We need to develop qualitative and quantitative ways to measure the success of such access improvements. We need to determine the potential unplumbed affordances of the finding aid in a web environment. (There was much agreement that the traditional finding aid provides too little help to the user.)

Participants Chatting

More Discussions
Late Morning

Topic: Managing Digital Archives: Balancing responsibilities and skills

Case Study # 10: One County’s Attempt to Move from 0 to Digital in Record Time (Rich Dymalski and Jerry Kirkpatrick)

The presenters explained how Maricopa County, Arizona, developed a new system for managing email—after discovering its inability to meet state guidelines and after many investigations and audits failed over the course of a year. They found a world with few solid records management standards and practices in place, and needed to get executive backing to make changes. They identified needed new skills as leadership skills, relationship skills, ensuring RM functionality in electronic recordkeeping systems, and the ability to “boss around IT.” (Keep in mind that half this team was IT.

Case Study # 11: Mapping Processes in Motion: Practical lessons from the experience of discovering, visualizing, analyzing, and redesigning a complex process of digital archiving and dissemination (Cole Whiteman)

The presenter briefly explained the ICPSR and its huge collection of social science data sets. Then he launched into an explanation that ICPSR didn’t understand its own internal processes. So in 2003, the group mapped its processes, went through a detailed step-by-step business process analysis, collected suggestions for process improvements, and reduced 57 human steps to a mere 15. Skills identified including investigation, process design, technical communication, graphic design, and web publishing.

Small Group Discussion

We all agreed that skills in analysis and improving processes were key for any electronic records processes. We spent most of our time, however, discussing the Maricopa County solution, and trying to determine if it truly solved the email situation in the county. I think their plan is as strong as an email management program can be. They have simplified the classification process, and the back end of the process is quite sophisticated, consisting of automated XML tagging of emails, all their metadata, and all their attachments. But the system still has to deal with the human situation: that users will still have to spend time identifying records and classifying them for this system to work.

Big Group Discussion

We need project management skills to make any of our projects work. And we need to be good teachers, so we can pass on skills to others. I made the point that fear and desire are the only motivators in people, so for email records management to work, we need people to desperately fear the ramifications of not filing email or we need them to deeply desire to file that email. (Both of which seem unlikely.) So we need to help work on artificial intelligence systems for email.

Ending Activities

AOTUS

The Archivist of the United States (honestly, the AOTUS) met with us briefly, sat in for part of the discussion, and thanked the attendees for their work.

RPM

Is it coincidence that Richard uses his mother’s “maiden name” so that his initials are RPM? (revolutions per minute). He’s always moving, and he ended the day with a few words. First, thanks again to the participants. Then he brought up the issue of what was next. He told us to send him comments, notes, and afterthoughts. He noted that I was doing this through this blog (and he quoted a few sentences from it). He said the plan was to distribute the results from these days on a website and maybe in other ways.

He said we needed early adopters to take over now, people excited by, rather than intimidated by, technology. We need a spirit of fearlessness.

Room Key, Files, and Stereo

Co-convener David McMillen stood up before us and pulled three items from his pockets, saying, “I’ve brought my room key [keycard], all my files [thumbdrive], and my stereo [iPod].” The message was that electronic records and data are everywhere, that they are small and portable, and that the world is changing. We need, he said, the profession’s help to ensure that archival principles survive.

ERA Demonstration

Some of us ended by listening and watching Mark Conrad tell us a little about the Electronic Records Archives (ERA) in the ERA downtown demo lab. He explained some of the details of ERA and the research (including automated metadata extraction), gave us some idea of the huge size involved, and showed us a few beautiful file formats NARA had no idea how to preserve: digital elevation models, virtual reality markup language (VRML, which had not upward compatibility between its first two versions, proprietary CAD files, and animated undersea bathymetric and topographic GIS data.

Most importantly, Mark reminded me of my point from last night, an important skill archivists need: public relations for e-records. We need to promote the management of these records that most people find boring, and Mark reminded me how to make this work: by showing people stunning electronic records that are not possible in an analog world and by showing people data that simply stuns them with the detail and wonder of its information (maybe files like data files on military combat deaths—something dry on the surface but carrying much emotional weight).

And with that thought, I left for home, barely making my plane in time, but happy to have had the chance to meet with Mark and spend the past three days discussing issues with a great group of dedicated professionals.