INFO CZARINA

Book-o-Mat, 1949

2011-02-14T21:56:00.001-05:00

So much loveliness in one photo!

Hidden Mothers in Early Photography

2011-02-07T21:31:00.003-05:00

Accidental Mysteries has a great blog post about the "Hidden Mothers" phenomenon in early photography. The blogger writes:

PHOTOGRAPHY BUFFS may already know about the “hidden mother” in early photographs, but some of my readers may not.... You see, most infants during that time were photographed with their mothers holding them. The intended picture was ultimately headed for a frame or mat, so the child would sit in the mothers lap for the photo. When the picture was taken, the mother simply was cropped out to serve as the backdrop.

Flickr has a pool of tintypes and cabinet cards to see examples.

INCIDENTAL COMICS: Confessions of a Book Fiend

2011-02-01T21:23:00.000-05:00

INCIDENTAL COMICS: Confessions of a Book Fiend

Civil War tintypes and ambrotypes

2011-01-25T22:21:00.001-05:00

The Library of Congress's Flickr collection includes 700+ high-res scans of ambrotype and tintype photos of US Civil War soldiers. "These fascinating photographs represent the impact of the war, which involved many young enlisted men and the deaths of more than 600,000 soldiers. The photos feature details that enhance their interest, including horses, drums, muskets, rifles, revolvers, hats and caps, canteens, and a guitar. Among the rarest images are African Americans in uniform, sailors, a Lincoln campaign button, and portraits with families, women, and girls and boys."

Visit Civil War Faces.

Review of Preserving Archives & Manuscripts

2011-01-20T20:26:00.000-05:00

My review of Preserving Archives & Manuscripts by Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler.(Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2010).
Published in Journal of Academic Librarianship, forthcoming.

Preserving Archives and Manuscripts is an authoritative guide for those responsible for the preservation of archives, manuscripts, and historical collections, encompassing a range of materials found in such repositories and addressing practical means of implementing preservation programs. Ritzenthaler, Director of the Document Conservation Division at the National Archives and Records Administration, explains that preservation is “an integral component of all archival issues, functions, and decision making….Guidance is provided on optimum practice while recognizing that progress, of necessity, is usually made in slow steps based on institutional resources and the relative value, use, and stability of records within large holdings” (9, xviii). Noting that preservation is “a core management function and a primary ethical responsibility” of the custodians of historical records, the book accentuates the integration of preservation and archival management with special attention given to changing the way materials are handled and processed (xvii).

Chapters address the implementation of a preservation program, archival materials as physical objects, causes of deterioration and damage, creating a preservation environment, handling archival materials, storage and housing, integrating preservation and archival management, copying and reformatting, and conservation treatment. Appendices include a glossary, a bibliography and selected readings, basic preservation procedures, supplies and equipment, regional conservation centers, funding sources, and other topics. Notes Ritzenthaler, “The goal [for preservation programs] is to approach and understand archival materials in a way that combines intellectual interest in their content with a curiosity regarding their physical nature” (94).

The book is meant to be an institutional handbook where “preservation is addressed from programmatic perspectives that emphasize decision making and balancing multiple priorities” and “not a manual of preservation techniques” (xviii). However, the book abounds with technical information, and a reader new to the subject is challenged to connect the technical minutia into a cohesive whole.

The new edition emerges at a time when digital records are gaining importance, while the care of paper-based materials are a continuing concern. Unfortunately, the realities of the hybrid environment are not addressed adequately. As the author explains, “Electronic media are addressed briefly. The rapidly changing technology governing the creation, use, and preservation of electronic records is the subject of a growing body of specialized literature, to which there are references in the bibliography” (xix). While digital preservation poses different challenges than the preservation of analog materials, a book published in 2010 is expected to cover the breadth of preservation of archival materials.

The book’s strength is the history, construction, and care of paper manuscripts and books. Comparatively, photographs and audiovisual material get brief mention. However, Ritzenthaler’s other recent book, Photographs: Archival Care and Management co-authored with Diane Vogt-O’Conner, covers all aspects of photographic access and preservation.

Preserving Archives and Manuscripts is the final title in the Society of American Archivists’ Archival Fundamentals Series II and is the lengthiest of the six-volume series. Overall, the book presents information to create an effective, efficient preservation program, given an institution’s resources. Ritzenthaler believes that when records of enduring value are treated with care throughout their lifestyle, the amaranthine balance between preservation and access is achieved.

In E-Book Era, You Can’t Even Judge a Cover

2011-01-10T20:53:00.000-05:00

From a recent New York Times article:

Bindu Wiles was on a Q train in Brooklyn this month when she spotted a woman reading a book whose cover had an arresting black silhouette of a girl’s head set against a bright orange background.

Ms. Wiles noticed that the woman looked about her age, 45, and was carrying a yoga mat, so she figured that they were like-minded and leaned in to catch the title: “Little Bee,” a novel by Chris Cleave. Ms. Wiles, a graduate student in nonfiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College, tapped a note into her iPhone and bought the book later that week.

Such encounters are becoming increasingly difficult. With a growing number of people turning to Kindles and other electronic readers, and with the Apple iPad arriving on Saturday, it is not always possible to see what others are reading or to project your own literary tastes.

You can’t tell a book by its cover if it doesn’t have one.

Read more here.

Turning Old Books into Art

2010-12-30T21:45:00.000-05:00

Julia at Hokey Stokes! takes old books, carves out the covers and turns them into art, like this vintage dictionary.

See more here.

Britain's Smallest Library

2010-12-20T21:39:00.000-05:00

From the Daily Mail:

Cunning villagers have found a novel way to cope with the shortage of libraries in their area by turning an old red phone box into a book exchange.

The former BT phone kiosk has been transformed from a telephone exchange to Britain's smallest library by cunning residents and now stocks around 100 titles.

Villagers rallied together to set up the book box after their mobile library service was cancelled.

Read more here.

Black Dahlia Archives

2010-12-10T21:52:00.000-05:00

I recently read D. H. Wolfe's 2005 The Black Dahlia Files: The mob, the mogul, and the murder that transfixed Los Angeles. (New York: ReganBooks). I've read just about every book about Elizabeth Short (the Black Dahlia), but I never thought about where the files about the case are archived. The book notes:

As a rule of law, unless there is an indictment that stems from a Grand Jury investigation, the files are sealed and never made public; however, in the Black Dahlia case, some of the Grand Jury investigation material inadvertently became accessible in 2003 when the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office established its archives and opened up to researchers some of its files on notable twentieth century criminal cases. Among these files was a portion of Grand Jury investigator Frank B. Jemison’s file on the murder of Elizabeth Short. This unintentional disclosure of Grand Jury proceedings and testimony proved to be a windfall of new information that had been hidden from the public for more than half a century.

In speaking to a former file clerk who handled the assembly of the files for the archive, I learned there had originally been sixty-five file boxes of accumulated Black Dahlia investigative material, which included the files for the LAPD, the Sheriff’s Department, and the District Attorney’s Office. The file clerk recalled that the sixty-five boxes were culled through in the early months of 2002 and reduced to thirty-five boxes, which remain in the LAPD warehouse. But two file boxes involving Jemison’s 1949 Grand Jury investigation into the Black Dahlia case were among those placed in the archives of historical criminal cases at the D.A.’s office (267-8).

and

Some of the material found in Elizabeth Short’s lost luggage by the Examiner was returned to [her mother] Phoebe Short, but many of the photos of Elizabeth ended up in the Examiner Archive, which was donated to the Special Collections Department of the University of Southern California in 1988. Most of these photos vanished from the USC Library in the early 1990s and were eventually auctioned off on eBay in 2002 (footnote 6, 86).

Some of the images of her in the book cited the Medford Historical Society because she grew up in Medford, Massachusetts; the Delmar Watson Archives, the LA-based new photographer; and UCLA Department of Special Collections/John Gilmore Collection. Gilmore has written about the Black Dahlia, and the collection has an fascinating finding aid.

I also found an article about the Black Dahlia being the most-researched topic of the USC collection.

Digital Image Banks

2010-11-30T09:50:00.002-05:00

Historical photographic collections in archives, libraries, and museums have been influenced by the two billion dollar a year global stock photography industry. The images, used in marketing, advertising, editorials, multimedia products, and websites, are filed at an agency that negotiates licensing fees on the photographer’s behalf in exchange for a percentage, or in some cases owns the images outright. Pricing is determined by size of audience or readership, how long the image is to be used, country or region where the images will be used, and whether royalties are due to the image creator or owner. The images are generic and decontextualized with flat, rich color and blank backgrounds, acting as “the wallpaper of consumer culture” (Frosh 2003, 1). Image banks “distort the nature of the imagery, treating them as if photography were a kind of universal Esperanto” (Ritchen 1999, 90). Cartier-Bresson notes that an image bank “will never match the work of an author. On one side is a machine: on the other is a living and sensitive being” (Dorfman 2002, 60).

Getty Images and Corbis, the two largest digital image banks, represent 70% of the images used in advertising and marketing (Frosh 2003). Getty Images was co-founded by Jonathan Klein and Mark Getty, grandson of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. Corbis is owned by Microsoft founder Bill Gates. In some countries, Getty’s 25% market share would be considered illegal (Machin 2004). Machin (2004) writes that stock photography companies are changing visual perceptions of “the photograph as witness, as record of reality, to one which emphasizes photography as a symbolic system and the photograph as an element of layout design, rather than as an image which can stand on its own” (319). He continues:

We should be concerned about the effect of this increasingly stylized and predictable world on audience expectations of what the visual representation of the world should look like. We should be concerned about the fact that we no longer flinch when we see a posed, processed, stylized, colour-enhanced, National Geographic image of a woman and child taken from Getty and placed on a page in The Guardian for a documentary feature on the Kashmir conflict (335).

More worrisome for information professionals is the fact that image banks have also acquired historic photographic archives. Getty contains the Eastman Kodak Image Bank, the Hulton Picture archives, and the National Geographic image collection, among others (Ramamurthy 2009). Corbis absorbed the Sigmund Freud archives and the photo archives of UPI, the defunct news wire service (Aalto 2008; Dorfman 2002). It also bought the Bettmann Archive in 1995, which contains more than 16 million photographs, one of the world’s largest private depository of images. Batchen (2001) notes that many of the images owned by Corbis are historically significant:

Remember Malcolm X pointing out over his crowd of listeners, the airship Hindenburg exploding in the New Jersey sky, that naked Vietnamese child running toward us after being burned by napalm, Churchill flashing his V-for-victory sign, Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, Patty Hearst posing with her gun in front of the Symbionese Liberation Army banner, LBJ being sworn into office aboard Air Force One beside a blood-spattering Jackie? Corbis offers to lease us electronic versions of them all. It offers to sell us, in other words, the ability to reproduce our memories of our own culture, and therefore of ourselves (150).

Corbis has digitized only the previously top best-selling 225,000 images. The rest are stored in an Iron Mountain underground cold storage facility, inaccessible to researchers. Lister (2009) notes that, “In these processes of acquisition and selection a kind of digital ‘editing of history’ is at stake” (344). By neither digitizing images nor making them accessible for research, scholars are deprived from the cultural heritage of visual records.

Works Cited

Aalto, B. (2008). Industry in transition. Applied Arts 23(2), 10.

Batchen, G. (2001). Each wild idea: Writing, photography, history. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Dorfman, J. (July/August 2002). Digital dangers: The new forces that threaten photojournalism. Columbia Journalism Review 60-63.

Frosh, P. (2003). The image factory: Consumer culture, photography and the visual content industry. New York: Berg.

Lister, M. (2009). Photography in the age of electronic imaging. In L. Wells (Ed.), Photography: A critical introduction. (pp. 311-344). London: Routledge.

Machin, D. (2004). Building the world’s visual language: The increasing global importance of image banks in corporate media. Visual Communication 3(3), 316-336.

Ramamurthy, A. (2009). Spectacles and illusions: Photography and commodity culture. In L. Wells (Ed.), Photography: A critical introduction. (pp. 205-256). London: Routledge.

Ritchen, F. (1999). In our own image: The coming revolution in photography. New York: Aperture.

The Art of the Steal

2010-11-20T20:36:00.001-05:00

Does a film continue to pop up in your Netflix recommendations, but you ignore it, only to find out later what you had been missing all that time? Nearing (hopefully) the end of a week long illness and bored out of my ever loving mind, I finally decided to watch The Art of the Steal. Wowza! While I've been trained in the library and archival sciences, I'm a novice to museum culture and am turned off by the elitism that exists in the art world. While the film took an obvious point of view (with many points I will research further), what struck me as an archivist was Barnes' will which had stipulations that seemed to be restrictive, unsustainable, and unrealistic. Is anti-elitism an elitism in itself? Watch the movie and decide for yourself.

Here's the film's synopsis:

An un-missable look at one of the art world's most fascinating controversies and a celebrated selection of the Toronto, New York and AFI Film Festivals, Don Argott's gripping documentary THE ART OF THE STEAL chronicles the long and dramatic struggle for control of the Barnes Foundation, a private collection of art valued at more than $25 billion.

In 1922, Dr. Albert C. Barnes formed a remarkable educational institution around his priceless collection of art, located just five miles outside of Philadelphia. Now, more than 50 years after Barnes' death, a powerful group of moneyed interests have gone to court for control of the art, and intend to bring it to a new museum in Philadelphia. Standing in their way is a group of Barnes' former students and his will, which contains strict instructions stating the Foundation should always be an educational institution, and that the paintings may never be removed. Will they succeed, or will a man's will be broken and one of America's greatest cultural monuments be destroyed?

Cataloging Digital Documents

2010-11-15T21:30:00.001-05:00

A recent story on "All Things Considered" discussed how information professionals describe digital documents. According to NPR:
This week, Maya Angelou turned over a large trove of personal papers to the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The collection includes many handwritten notes, drafts and letters. Nowadays, though, so much writing is done on computers rather than on paper; correspondence is done over email rather than through the postal service. To talk about how archivists deal with this shift toward digital documents, Michele Norris talks with Richard Oram, associate director of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Listen.

Review of The Thread that Binds: Interviews with Private Practice Bookbinders

2010-11-10T20:39:00.000-05:00

My review of The Thread that Binds: Interviews with Private Practice Bookbinders by Pamela Train Leutz (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2009).
Published in College & Research Libraries, November 2010.

In The Thread That Binds: Interviews with Private Practice Bookbinders, Pamela Train Leutz interviews 21 “independent bookbinders in private practice: general bookbinders, book conservators, book restorers, book artists, designer bookbinders, edition bookbinders, and box-makers,” exploring their training and their work (1). Preeminent representatives of the field include Catherine Burkhard, Jim Croft, Tim Ely, Gabrielle Fox, Peter Geraty, Don Glaister, Karen Hanmer, Craig Jensen, Scott Kellar, Daniel Kelm, Monique Lallier, Frank Lehmann, William Minter, Tini Miura, Eleanore Ramsey, Don Rash, Sol Rebora, Jan Sobota, Priscilla Spitler, and Cris Clair Takacs, with a special interview with internationally recognized conservator and “bookbinding father figure” Don Etherington (313). Leutz, a binder, book arts teacher, and college administrator, conducted interviews from 2004 to 2008 with bookbinders across the country, as well as overseas. She writes, “Each independent bookbinder has a ‘story’—significant, fascinating and unique, that revels the path that unfolded, leading them to bookbinding and sustaining them as they continue their craft” (1).

Viewing book workers as “mechanics, engineers, designers, craftspeople [requiring] imagination, creativity, intelligence, problem solving, and passion,” the book evolved out of Leutz’s curiosity about becoming a bookbinder in private practice (321). Her focus is not on the technical aspects of their craft, but on their character and perspectives; their training, skills, career paths; and the pros and cons of business. As the author states, she “wanted to know about the people themselves and the lives they led….I also wanted to see where they worked, to get a fuller sense of their lives—and to record my images and impressions as I interacted with these people and their work” (2). The interviews begin with an introduction of the binders and their qualifications, followed by a question and answer interview format. The book includes photographs of the studios, as well as the bookbinders themselves.

A common thread throughout the interviews is how to run your own business, and the book, through an assortment of voices, offers examples of a plethora of successful methods. The binders are diverse, employing a range of cultivated skills and experience. For example, conserving historic manuscripts requires knowledge about the chemistry of leather, wood, and paper, and the ornamentation of different eras. Bookbinding “requires the synergy of painting, drawing, and other fabrication techniques as well as a lot of referencing to arcane source material,” notes Tim Ely, who creates single-copy handmade books as art objects (47). The interviewees discovered specialized facets of bookbinding to explore their interests and abilities, ranging from edition binding to artist books, design binding, restoration, book repair, teaching, and conservation. Their training includes self-education, informal and formal apprenticeships, international training, workshops, graduate school, and often a combination of all of these. Despite their disparate backgrounds, the binders share an interest in lifelong learning and a passion for working with the highest standards as possible. Leutz notes, “Bookbinders are interconnected, almost like a family tree, through their training, work, collaboration, or friendships” (322).

Not surprisingly, the economic aspect of private practice is explored thoroughly, and this is the book’s strength. As binder and conservator Don Rash reveals, “What makes a good bookbinder doesn’t necessarily make a good businessperson” (197). In the final Reflections section, Leutz writes, “The majority of [the interviewees] voiced their frustration about feeling unable to charge a fair wage for their work. Unlike a plumber who charges per hour at the end of the job, a bookbinder is usually expected to give a firm price up front. The need to do extra work is often not discovered until a book is disassembled or the unique structure of a book is begun” (321). Frank Lehmann, a San Diego-based physicist-turned-binder, states, “If you are going to make a living off of bookbinding, you have to charge a decent hourly rate….I should be making a higher hourly rate than my car mechanic (who is very good). I have a lot more training than he does, and there are a lot fewer of me than there are of him....The craft of bookbinding is hurting itself by undervaluing its work” (37-38). Catherine Burkhard, a Dallas-based binder specializing in rebinding and restoring bibles, notes, “The money part of it is the bottom line. You can’t just set up shop with a needle and thread and a bonefolder; there is bookkeeping involved” (149). Throughout the interviews, advice about how to price work is given, a vital subject if hand bookbinding is to survive in contemporary society.

The Thread That Binds: Interviews with Private Practice Bookbinders is an excellent book for those considering entering the bookbinding field and into private practice, specifically, and serves as “a testament to the continued life of the artist/craftsman” (323). Due to its specialized subject, the book may have limited appeal to a general audience. However, the book elevates the status of those in private practice by documenting common pleasures and obstacles. The interviewees emphasized that with dedication, sacrifice, and luck, it is possible to make a living in the tentative world of private practice, “a life of hard work and perseverance [holding] the risk of uncertain finances” (1). Not surprisingly, unbounded copies of The Thread That Binds are also available; as of this writing, two exhibitions are scheduled to display innovative, one-of-a-kind bindings of the book.

Forgotten Bookmarks

2010-11-05T21:23:00.002-04:00

The introduction for Forgotten Bookmarks states, "I work at a used and rare bookstore, and I buy books from people everday. These are the personal, funny, heartbreaking and weird thigns I find in those books." I love this site!

How Joan Rivers Organizes Her Jokes

2010-10-31T20:12:00.003-04:00

This clip from the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work displays two ways that Rivers organizes her jokes: a card catalog and binders. Imagine creating a finding aid for this joke collection--just look at the categories on the cabinets!

Bookmans Does Book Dominoes

2010-10-18T21:14:00.001-04:00

Arizona-based used bookstore Bookmans created this cheeky viral ad using used books to create a domino run!

Book of Photography from the Set of Taxi Driver

2010-10-01T21:23:00.000-04:00

TASCHEN has released a book of images from Taxi Driver, my favorite movie!

From the TASCHEN website: Taxi Driver has long been regarded as a cinematic milestone, and Robert DeNiro's portrait of a trigger-happy psychopath with a mohawk is widely believed to be one of the greatest performances ever filmed. Time magazine includes the film in its list of 100 Greatest Movies, saying: "The power of Scorsese's filmmaking grows ever more punishing with the passage of time."

Steve Schapiro—whose photographs were featured in TASCHEN's Godfather Family Album—was the special photographer on the set of Taxi Driver, capturing the film's most intense and violent moments from behind the scenes. This book—more than a film still book but a pure photo book on its own—features hundreds of unseen images selected from Schapiro's archives, painting a chilling portrait of a deranged gunman in the angry climate of the post-Vietnam era.

Of Dolls and Murder Documentary Film Trailer

2010-09-03T19:04:00.002-04:00

From the video description: "Of Dolls and Murder explores a haunting collection of dollhouse crime scenes and our universal fascination with murder. From CSI and real-life forensics, to the Body Farm and a crime fighting granny, John Waters narrates this tiny world of big time murder."

It's a documentary about the The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, which I wrote about previously here.

Things Organized Neatly

2010-08-18T20:55:00.004-04:00

Marianne Vierø — Out of Order #1. Sunbleached library books mounted on a wall.
I've fallen in love with the tumblr blog Things Organized Neatly.

Review of Forgotten Patriots—African American and American Indian Patriots in the Revolutionary War: A Guide to Service, Sources and Studies

2010-07-15T20:28:00.004-04:00

My review of Forgotten Patriots—African American and American Indian Patriots in the Revolutionary War: A Guide to Service, Sources and Studies. Edited by Eric G. Grundset. (Washington, DC: National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, 2008).
Published in College & Research Libraries, July 2010.

Forgotten Patriots: African American and American Indian Patriots in the Revolutionary War: A Guide to Service, Sources and Studies hopes to inspire in readers an interest in African American, American Indian, and mixed descent soldiers in the fight for Independence, as well as the work of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). DAR booklets on the subject led to the first edition in 2001. Seven years later, this 872-page tome expands the list of soldiers and sailors five-fold to 6,600 names.

The book defines the perimeters of military service from the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775 to the final evacuation of the British from New York City on November 26, 1783. The Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware chapters include sections on notable minorities preceding the conflict during the Boston Massacre in 1770, the Boston Tea Party in 1773, and Battle of Point Pleasant in 1774.

Following an introduction that provides context and explains documentation challenges, the book organizes its findings into chapters that include historical commentaries, maps, illustrations, sources, patriot names, and bibliographies. Chapters focus on Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. A chapter entitled the Old Northwest is comprised of Illinois, Kentucky, and Ohio. Additional chapters cover miscellaneous naval and military records, foreign allies, and the West Indies.

Seven appendices include a map of the slave population based on the 1790 census, Documenting the Color of Participants in the American Revolution, Names as Clues to Finding Forgotten Patriots, the Numbers of Minority Participants in the Revolution, a glossary, a master list of source abbreviations, and DAR contact information.

Copies of original documents from the National Archives and Records Administration provide readers with examples of various types of papers useful in research endeavors. However, the grayscale reproductions are hard to read due to their size, condition, and handwriting. While some documents include captions, transcriptions would have also been helpful.

Forgotten Patriots notes that the list of patriot names may be open to interpretation because racial terminology and meaning has changed over time. Description information is inconsistent, even within the same document, while some states like Maryland and Virginia did not record racial data. Other states, like New York, lost records of this period after natural disasters. Often the examination of private, local, state, and federal archives, as well as census records from 1790 to 1830 helped identify race. Decisions on minority ethnic background were based on a combination of name analysis, military occupation, and rank.

Names of clear African or Native American derivation were often a clue to ethnic background. The use of classical (i.e. Roman or Greek) or literary names for enslaved people was common and distinct from the traditional English or Biblical names of those of European descent. However, using names alone as an indicator of race was problematic. For example, a source lists Africa Hamlin of Pembroke, Massachusetts as a possible African American soldier; later research revealed that he was of European descent and had siblings named Asia, Europe, and America.

The book concentrates on groups defined as African American, American Indian, or “mixed descent” with descriptors such as “mulatto” or “mustee.” Others with African, Spanish, Portuguese, Azorean, Latin American, or mixed ancestry are also included because their names are indicators of African ancestry. The book provides additional terms, such “Negro,” “free,” or “black complexion,” to illustrate how an individual was described in eighteenth-century records. American Indian nations are included when specified. The editor states that a major challenge was that “while there are copious examples where a written description suggests a possible minority patriot when in fact subsequent research proves otherwise, it is much more difficult to identify a minority patriot whose description is devoid of any mention of color and whose name suggests European decadency.…It is well documented that by 1700, individuals of African descent had a presence in virtually every European country, often with names reflective of the local populace” (iv).

This complexity is illustrated with the records of Massachusetts, the most comprehensive state in identifying African American and American Indian soldiers, due to naming conventions and the 17 volume series Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War. Even with this comprehensive information, the Massachusetts chapter provides a separate section for men listed with “brown complexions” who were found to be white after further research. The editor explains, “The use of specific colors to describe an individual is usually the observation of a ‘white’ man describing another man and trying to create distinctions between individuals. Because specific and designated terms such as ‘Negro,’ ‘mulatto,’ ‘mustee,’ ‘black man,’ etc., were used to describe individuals of African descent or partial African descent, the use of terms such as ‘ruddy,’ ‘sandy,’ ‘light,’ ‘dark,’ etc. usually refers to someone of European descent in an attempt to describe better then variations in skin tone lumped together by some as ‘white’” (138).

The biggest drawback of the book is its lack of copyediting. Its formatting and spelling errors makes one wonder if the list of patriots could be filled with inaccuracies as well.

Despite this, Forgotten Patriots: African American and American Indian Patriots in the Revolutionary War: A Guide to Service, Sources and Studies offers comprehensive information unmatched by other publications. It is recommended for libraries that serve genealogists, especially those interested in the contributions of African Americans and American Indians in the fight for Independence. The book’s low price, especially for a colossal hardcover, also allows family historians to purchase the volume for personal use and a starting point for research.

Review of Archives Power: Memory, Accountability, and Social Justice

2010-07-01T20:24:00.004-04:00

My review of Archives Power: Memory, Accountability, and Social Justice by Randall C. Jimerson. (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2009).
Published in Journal of Academic Librarianship, 36(4), July 2010.

In Archives Power: Memory, Accountability, and Social Justice, Jimerson, past president of the Society of American Archivists and director of the Graduate Program in Archives and Records Management, Western Washington University, analyzes the influence that archives and archivists wield in contemporary society. He states that archival records “convey essential meanings about people’s lives, hopes, and aspirations, as well as the complex networks of agreements and connections that link humanity together in societal systems. This gives archives, and those who select and manage them, primal powers in society….Yet it is a power often unrecognized by most members of society, who do not see or understand the role archivists play in the contested realms of power distribution and control” (133, 140).

Grounded in historical and cultural theory, the book situates archivists as agents of social memory construction, rather than passive curators. The concept of archives as a location of social values emerges when studying the historical development of American archives, but his observations are universally applicable. He writes, “The American people have always had an ambivalent relationship to their history and to archives. Founded in part on the notion of escape from the shackles of European traditions and with the vision of being a ‘city on the hill’ for a utopian new world, the United States has often been future-oriented and indifferent to the past” (80).

Incorporating the published writings of literary figures and scholars in many disciplines, such as Milan Kundera, Nelson Mandela, and George Orwell, Jimerson calls for a renewed emphasis on archives as a means of securing accountability, open government, social justice, and diversity and identity. He provides a history of literacy, documents, records, record-keeping systems, and repositories and traces the development of the archival profession. Many of the current issues archivists face have been ones that they have grappled with since the 1930s: creating an archival identity, debating ethics, and promoting the profession to stakeholders and society.

Jimerson urges archivists to abandon their positivist rhetoric of neutrality and embrace the authority of records to promote social responsibility and democratic accountability. He writes, “Archives provide a forum to recognize and legitimize the role of disfranchised groups in society….By acknowledging and overcoming the tendencies toward privileging the records of powerful groups in society, archivists can provide a more balanced perspective on the past” (217, 232). The challenge is to make “the documentary record more complete than it has been, not to make it absolutely complete and flawless” by “fill[ing] in the gaps, to ensure that documentation is created where it is missing, and to address the needs of those outside the societal power structures” (298, 303).

Archives Power: Memory, Accountability, and Social Justice is highly recommended for information professionals who select, preserve, and ensure access to records of enduring value, as well as others interested in protecting social memory, cultural history, and the documentation of the human condition for future generations. Readers should also follow the lively discussion amongst archivists who participated in a virtual reading group of the book at readingarchivespower.wordpress.com.

Review of Digital Images for the Information Professional

2010-05-15T22:10:00.004-04:00

My review of Digital Images for the Information Professional by Melissa M. Terras (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008).
Published by Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals, 6(1/2) Winter/Spring 2010.

In Digital Images for the Information Professional, Melissa Terras, Senior Lecturer in Electronic Communication, University College London, surveys the history, technology, and changing information environment of digital images, providing a thorough framework for implementing, sustaining, and making accessible digitized resources for an audience of information professionals, defined as library, archives, museum, or cultural heritage institution workers who maintain and improve access to information.

Initial chapters provide a foundation for subjects addressed in succeeding chapters. Topics include the genesis and development of digital imaging and technologies, file formats, and the fundamentals of digital images, such as pixels, resolution, bit-depth, image size, and compression.

The chapter on image metadata discusses how “good, detailed, systematic and consistent descriptions of [image] contents and provenance is required” to aid access, track legal rights, and facilitate long-term preservation (163). Terras writes, “Creating and maintaining metadata [is] time-consuming and costly, and a tension exists between the two metadata functions of discovery aid and resource description: metadata creators have to provide enough information to be useful, but cannot afford to be exhaustive” (166). Folksonomies, or “unstructured, un-policied, non-hierarchical and unchecked” tagging by users, may improve image retrieval when paired with a metadata scheme and structured vocabulary, but cannot replace skilled description by information professionals (180).

The book’s ne plus ultra are the chapters “Digital Images and Memory Institutions,” which presents an overview of digitization initiatives for the information, culture, and heritage sectors with suggested guidelines and standards, and “Personal Digital Image Collections,” which discusses the use of digital imaging technologies by everyday people. At first, the latter chapter seems unrelated to the former, but the plethora of images shared online affects how they are organized and retrieved in archives, libraries, and museums. Terras advises that memory institutions “had better keep abreast of how the general public are using imaging technologies outside their own offerings to be well used,” because large scale digitization is “a self-promoting vehicle: the more that is provided, the more the resource is used, and the higher the demand for other resources of high quality” (159, 123). The author also explores the role that information professionals may have in educating the public about the future viability of their personal digital image collections.

The concluding chapter examines current issues in digital imaging: color, quality, copyright, sustainability, and “truth and the digital image,” or digital image manipulation. For the information professional, the concern is not so much deliberate adjustments, but alterations in the production process, such as resizing, format changes, or compression.

Digital Images for the Information Professional is not intended to elucidate the execution of a digitization project, but to supply the knowledge necessary to do so successfully. Information professionals, as well as others interested in digital images, will find it an instructive, comprehensive read, as it clarifies complex issues and contains suggestions for further reading. As Terras writes in the preface, “This is the book I wish someone else had written for me” (ix). As a visual collection professional, I am thankful that Terras penned this book—one of the best on the subject that I have encountered.

Review of Information Technology in Librarianship: New Critical Approaches

2010-04-15T21:51:00.004-04:00

My review of Information Technology in Librarianship: New Critical Approaches by Gloria J. Leckie and John Buschman (Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2009).
Published in New Library World, 111(1/2), 2010.

In Information Technology in Librarianship: New Critical Approaches, editors Gloria J. Leckie, Professor of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario, and John E. Buschman, Associate University Librarian, Georgetown University, urge librarianship to advance critical scholarship about technology. Since the first edition's publication 15 years ago, technology, critical analysis, and the understanding of the socio-cultural and economic issues of information technology have evolved considerably. This new edition remedies technology's zealous implementation, which imperils librarianship and libraries.

The book correlates germane critical approaches: capital control of technology; rationalization, control, and monitoring; the information revolution as ideology; feminist critiques of technology; technological utopianism; and technology, politics, and the public sphere. The first section, “Foundations,” imparts metalevel critical analysis of technology, written by scholars in communications, education, and related fields. The second part, “Applications,” authored by academic librarians and information science professors, examines the relationship between technology and libraries from macrolevels and microlevels.

The editors ask, “Why new critical approaches now?” (p. 2). In their introductory essay, they write, “the juggernaut of technology has in no way been halted,” and a critical approach is required “in the face of the social and economic juggernaut that IT is – both in society and in libraries” (p. 2; p. 21). Further, “the grounds for critique need renewing, the reasons for critique need reminding, and alternative perspectives on our library technological juggernauts need to be renewed” (p. 3). “Juggernaut” is an illuminating choice, derived from the Sanskrit Jagannāth, an idol of Krishna drawn on a giant cart under whose inexorable wheels devotees threw themselves.

Critical theory, in this context, is equally negative, arising from the Frankfort School, and subsequently, Habermas. In “Critical theory of technology: an overview,” Andrew Feenberg writes that “Technology is a two-sided phenomenon: on the one hand the operator, on the other the object” so that technical action is an exercise of power (p. 32). Using Marxian analysis and instrumentalization theory, the belief that technology must be analyzed at two levels: the original functional relation to reality and design and implementation, Feenberg demonstrates how technology is simplified and deworlded, yet incorporated as if it was a natural element.

Roma Harris, in “‘Their little bit of ground slowly squashed into nothing’: technology, gender, and the vanishing librarian,” believes that librarians are unrecognized for their complex work and their application of sophisticated
technologies because they are traditionally female. She writes, “In view of the heightened importance now attached to the term information, public uncertainty about the value of librarians' work seems ironic given that librarianship is the original information profession” (p. 165). She implores the reclamation of librarianship's rightful position as the leader of the information sector.

With essays ranging from open source software, information retrieval, surveillance, and digital preservation to autonomous Marxism and techno-capital, literacies and education, and library-state relations, Information Technology in Librarianship: New Critical Approaches will interest librarians, as well as those in government, industry, research, and education. Unless librarians contribute to the intellectual debate about information technology, society will be jeopardized. The question remains, will librarianship hurl itself under technology's wheels to be crushed to oblivion?

Best part of the Helvetica documentary, period.

2010-01-05T20:46:00.002-05:00

I just finished watching Helvetica, about the widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 in Switzerland, and I think I've fallen in love with graphic designer Michael Bierut.

Desk Organization

2009-12-01T21:11:00.001-05:00

Desk - Music and Sound Design from Aaron Trinder Film:Motion:Music on Vimeo.

Are you interested, as I am, about how people organize their desks? Filmmaker Aaron Trinder found out for us.

Review of Celebrating Research: Rare and Special Collections from the Membership of the Association of Research Libraries

2009-11-28T21:58:00.002-05:00

My review of Celebrating Research: Rare and Special Collections from the Membership of the Association of Research Libraries. Edited by Philip N. Cronenwett, Kevin Osborn, and Samuel A. Streit. (Washington, D.C.: Association of Research Libraries, 2007).
Published in Libraries & the Cultural Record, 44(4) 2009.

To commemorate its 75th anniversary, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) published a book displaying a robust array of holdings from 118 member libraries in the United States and Canada. Celebrating Research: Rare and Special Collections from the Membership of the Association of Research Libraries presents richly illustrated and highly readable profiles selected by Philip N. Cronenwett, Special Collections Librarian Emeritus, Dartmouth College Library; Kevin Osborn, Research & Design Ltd.; and Samuel A. Streit, Director for Special Collections, Brown University Library.

In the introduction, Book Collector editor Nicolas Barker recounts ARL’s history and his experience working with many collections in the volume. He commends ARL’s leadership to “grow and develop local assets into a whole that is one of North America’s greatest cultural assets” (25). Special collections “encompass the distinctive, the rare and unique, emerging media, born-digital, digitized materials, uncommon, non-standard, primary, and heritage materials” (5). Their purpose has shifted since ARL’s 1932 founding, notes Barker: “Where once special collections were regarded as the top dressing on the solid cake of main library management, they are now regarded as distinctive signifiers, almost trademarks ... ARL libraries want to be known for their distinctive collections, not by some characteristic shared by every other library” (15). Indeed, the showcased collections are only a sampling of the substantial holdings of research libraries.

Arranged alphabetically by institution name, the two-page profiles include a description of the collection’s acquisition, development, and use, captivating photographs, and a web address. The profiles cover the range of human achievement and experience in the arts, industry, and science. The collections bear evidence of the cultural history of specific groups, including African-Americans (Emory University), Chicanos (University of California, Berkeley), German and Jewish intellectual émigrés (State University of New York, Albany), Italians (University of Wisconsin, Madison), and women (Duke University), among others. A full range of artistic expression is represented, including alternative press (University of Connecticut), comic art (Michigan State University), and New Orleans jazz (Tulane University). The eclectic and unexpected include public health films (National Library of Medicine), human sexuality (Cornell University), and the 19th century spiritualist movement (University of Manitoba).

The collection overview section summarizes the additional special holdings of contributing libraries and contact information. A subject and proper name index completes the volume, to assist in identifying similar collections at different institutions. The collections are also available online and through the volume’s companion website, www.celebratingresearch.com.

As compelling as the collections themselves are their origins from passionate individuals driven to preserve memory. For instance, the University of Alberta’s 2,300 volumes on North and South American aboriginals was collected by Gregory Javitch, a Russian Jew who fled France to Palestine to escape the Nazis, and then immigrated to Canada. His experience created sympathy to the displacement and genocide of indigenous civilizations of the Americas, and he collected rare books about them, which were donated to the university in 1980. Similarly, enthusiastic collector George Harry Beans, a seed company owner, knew no Japanese, yet composed a world-renowned collection of Tokugawa Era maps, held at the University of British Columbia Library. Stories of equally ardent librarians and archivists are also included. For instance, University of California, Irvine, librarian, Anne Frank founded and almost single-handedly nourished the school’s Southeast Asian Archive during her 40-year tenure. Donald G. Wilson, a librarian at University of California, Riverside, acquired—under initial ridicule—the J. Lloyd Eaton Collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Utopian Literature, the largest publicly accessible collection in its field. Exuberant collectors can also become curators, in the case of Professor Ruth M. Baldwin. The Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature at the University of Florida Libraries began as a birthday gift from her parents and grew to 100,000 children’s books published between 1668 to the present; Baldwin became its curator in 1977.

Celebrating Research: Rare and Special Collections from the Membership of the Association of Research Libraries represents a spectrum of collections from antediluvian items to the future of knowledge preservation such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s DSpace@MIT, a digital research repository, and Wayne State University’s Digital Dress: 200 Years of Urban Style, a digital image collection of American and European garments. The volume, highlighting the exceptional collections of North American research libraries supporting current and future scholarship needs, is recommended for academic and public libraries and museums.

What is the biggest unsolved issue for digital preservation?

2009-11-11T21:49:00.001-05:00

The biggest unsolved issue for digital preservation is advocating and enforcing better ways that it continues throughout the lifespan of a digital document. Preservation should not become an “add-on” feature for born- or made- digital items.

As Lavoie and Dempsey point out, digital preservation has been treated as a solitary, technical problem, rather than an issue of digital stewardship. They write, “…digital preservation is not an isolated process, but instead, one component of a broad aggregation of interconnected services, policies, and stakeholders which together constitute a digital information environment.” The authors believe the preservation is not about rescuing endangered materials, but about managing digital items from their creation to assure their future. Digital preservation is a social, cultural, legal, and economic process, not just a technical one.

Conway offers a similar view of preservation when he writes that, “in the digital world, preservation is the creation of digital products worth maintaining over time.” In breaking down that sentence, he notes that long-term preservation must begin at system design. In the context of digital conversion, preservation must not be a process delayed until technical solutions are developed. Instead, items that have enduring information value must be selected for preservation.

Digital stewardship comes into play because there must be strong relationships between preservation purposes of the digital product, the characteristics of source materials being converted, and the capabilities of scanning technologies available. Responsible custody of information must be present throughout the lifecycle, maintaining over time the value of the document.

Rosenthal et al. defines the goal of a digital preservation system is to make information “remain accessible to users over a long period of time.” They point out that problems stem from the fact that the time that a digital item should still be accessible will outlive computer equipment, systems, and formats.

In their summary of threats and strategies, the authors note that problems do not stem from purely technical obsolesce or failure. Natural disasters, attacks from outside and inside the system also affect preservation. Budgetary and organization problems also affect how information in digital form also influences preservation. Digital preservation costs money, especially compared to physical preservation; compare the astronomical costs of power, cooling, bandwidth, and system administration of preserving digital film as compared to preserving physical film in cold storage. Again, digital preservation must be envisioned as a strategy to create holistic, flexible systems that will continue to keep a digital item usable. Digital preservation is a commitment for the long haul, cooperatively shared by stakeholders.

Works Cited

Conway, P. “Overview: Rationale for Digitization and Preservation,” in Handbook for
Digital Projects: A Management Tool for Preservation and Access. 2003. http://nedcc.org/oldnedccsite/digital/ii.htm

Lavoie, B. and Dempsey, L., “Thirteen Ways of Looking at … Digital Preservation,” D-Lib Magazine 10:7/8 (July/August 2004). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july04/lavoie/07lavoie.html

Rosenthal, D. et al., “Requirements for Digital Preservation Systems,” D-Lib Magazine, 11:11 (November 2005). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november05/rosenthal/11rosenthal.html

Review of Navigating Legal Issues in Archives

2009-10-28T20:05:00.003-04:00

My review of Navigating Legal Issues in Archives by Menzi L. Behrnd-Klodt (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2008).
Published in Journal of Academic Librarianship, 35(3), 2009.

Navigating Legal Issues in Archives is an updated version of 1985’s Archives and Manuscripts: Law from the Society of American Archivists’ Basic Manual series. Since the earlier volume’s publication, laws have changed significantly and society has become increasingly litigious. Attorney and archivist Menzi Behrnd-Klodt created a new handbook for an intended audience of “archival professionals, including employees, consultants, and volunteers in public and private institutions; in business/corporate, religious, academic/scholarly, historical society, museum, and governmental settings; those who spend their professional lives among archival colleagues, and those who are ‘lone arrangers’” (v). In other words, anyone who works with records of enduring value will find this book useful at all stages of their career.

Aiming to provide a volume to serve archivists for decades, Behrnd-Klodt provided general legal information in succinct chapters. Divided into four sections by theme, the volume is to be “dipped into” when archivists need “complex issues … explained simply” (vi). The first section sets the legal framework for the rest of the book, explaining policies and procedures, working effectively with counsel, and explaining legal processes and civil litigation. Section 2 explores issues of acquisition and ownership, including transfer, appraisal, loans, abandoned materials, tax issues, and risk management. The third section—the largest—deals with administration and access to the archives, privacy, and confidentiality, as well as implications of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Family and Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), and cultural property laws. The final section provides advice on copyright and intellectual property law.

The chapters stand alone and are accessible as need and time permits, which enhances the book’s value as a source of timely advice flexible enough in format to serve as a ready reference book. Each chapter explains why the content is important and who will find it most useful, allowing the busy professional to select chapters relevant to their interests. For instance, laws regulate access to legal, educational, medical, public, and presidential records; those who do not work with these records may want to skim or skip chapters pertaining to them. Of particular interest to most archivists, especially in smaller institutions in which records programs are part of their duties, is the chapter on legal issues of records and information management. Also included are sample legal documents and forms, such as donor, deaccession, and loan agreements; important statues; a copyright term chart; and an extensive notes section.

Navigating Legal Issues in Archives offers vital, laconic information for the industrious archivist seeking informed discussions and practical recommendations for the myriad legal issues abounding in an increasingly complex information age. This reference book of legal information through the prism of archival management deserves a rightful place on the bookshelves of all archivists.

Reappraisal and Deaccessioning: A Literature Review Part 5 of 5

2009-10-20T13:30:00.003-04:00

This post is part of a series on a literature review of reappraisal and deaccessioning in archival collections. Click on a link below to read further:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Whatever the circumstances, reappraisal and deaccessioning are useful tools for preserving records of enduring value when used strategically rather than on a case-by-case basis. Reappraisal and deaccessioning should be “public and transparent … as normal a part of standard archives administration as cataloging and reference” (Greene, p. 8). Wojcik noted that reappraisal and deaccessioning guidelines built trust with state agencies to transfer records to the State Archives of Michigan. Knies’ project was touted to stakeholders as a way to reduce costs, although it was one of many benefits. Greene observed that donors supported deaccessioning as a tool to improve access for researchers using their records.

The articles presented reappraisal and deaccessioning projects as beneficial to archives. The goals of the projects were to make deaccessioning consistent across all collections; construct better guidelines for acquisitions, appraisal, reappraisals, and deaccessioning; achieve greater intellectual and physical control over the records; and understand why records were preserved. Materials of marginal value are deaccessioned before valuable time is invested in processing them. Archivists may then concentrate their efforts solely on records with confirmed archival value. Knies was the only author to review the success of the project after its completion. Seven years later, he notes that paper records are no longer a problem as they once were because of the growth of technology. The larger problem we face is a decline in the quality of records being captured for transfer, as well as missing documentation that exists primarily in electronic form. However, this is another issue for the professional literature to debate.

Works Cited

American Association of Museums. (1994). Code of Ethics for Museums. (Washington, DC: American Association of Museums).

Ericson, T. (1991) ‘At the rim of creative dissatisfaction’: Archivists and acquisitions development. Archivaria, 33, 66-77.

Greene, M. A. (2006). I’ve deaccessioned and lived to tell about it: Confessions of an unrepentant reappraiser. Archival Issues, 30(1), 7-22.

Ham, F. G. (1984). Archival choices: Managing the historical record in the age of abundance,” American Archivist, 47(1), 11-22.

Knies, H. M. (2006). Reappraising and reaccessioning Wisconsin state government records: An agency-wide approach. Archival Issues, 30(1), 35-43.

Pearce-Moses, R. (2005). A glossary of archival and records terminology. (Chicago: Society of American Archivists) Retrieved February 5, 2009, from Society of American Archivists Web site: http://www.archivists.org/glossary/index.asp

Wojcik, C. (2002). Appraisal, reappraisal, and deaccessioning. Archival Issues, 27(2), 151-160.

Reappraisal and Deaccessioning: A Literature Review Part 4 of 5

2009-10-10T13:27:00.003-04:00

This post is part of a series on a literature review of reappraisal and deaccessioning in archival collections. Click on a link below to read further:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 5

Interestingly enough, space seems to be the catalyst for reluctant archivists to reappraise, as in the case of the Wisconsin Historical Society, which outgrew its repository. Since the 1950s, the Wisconsin state government became a “profusion of regulatory functions, the concurrent proliferation of bureaucratic systems, and the resultant explosion of records” (p. 36). Knies describes how the collection increased based on appraisal policies that were reevaluated during reappraisal. The “Wisconsin Way” of accessioning public records while also soliciting manuscripts with “expansive and sometimes even exhaustive” documentation dates from the mid-nineteenth century (p. 37). He writes,

One finds appraisals in the archival case files describing both the content and context of records series and assigning values for acquisitions decisions that derive from the larger collecting interests of the Historical Society’s manuscripts holdings and its North American history library. For example, these [appraisal values give] primary significance to the records’ contribution to potential researchers’ understanding of topics of health, welfare, economics, crime and punishment, social mores and others. Only secondarily would the appraisal credit the importance of how the records defined the original regulatory function (p. 38).

Additionally, the public record appraisal process evaluated “individual series one at time, largely out of context, and without any supporting records management structure” (p. 37).

Similarly, Wojcik describes factors—a larger facility, professional staff increase, and vague appraisal criteria—that contributed to the considerable backlog at the State Archives of Michigan. Archivists accessioned records that were not scheduled for preservation due to poor quality retention and disposal schedules developed by records management services. Archivists also accessioned anything with potential value, planning to weed them during processing.

Reappraisal and Deaccessioning: A Literature Review Part 3 of 5

2009-09-30T13:24:00.003-04:00

This post is part of a series on a literature review of reappraisal and deaccessioning in archival collections. Click on a link below to read further:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 4
Part 5

The articles advised that a strategic reappraisal and deaccessioning plan was needed to avoid the possibility of negative reactions from resource allocators, peer institutions, donors, researchers, and colleagues. Reappraisal and deaccessioning are controversial because the archives symbolize permanence, and archivists view themselves as impartial guardians of the past, which are both illusions. Greene writes, “We have inadvertently weakened our repositories and our professional standing by our unwillingness and lack of action,” and the profession is difficult “not because we are good at saving things, but because we are able and willing to decide what does not get saved” (p. 8, 11).

He also notes that the professional literature rarely discusses reappraisal and deaccessioning. For instance, Terry Cook’s 2000 appraisal bibliography reports that 3.5 percent of the listings were about these topics. Some articles inadvertently discuss it, such as Timothy Ericson’s 1991 article “‘At the Rim of Creative Dissatisfaction’: Archivists and Acquisitions Development,” which urges archivists to define “collecting focus” for better acquisitions (p. 66). Wojcik used reappraisal strategies to define why records were preserved (the “collecting focus”) at the State Archives of Michigan.

Greene believes that archivists avoid reappraisal because reconsidering past decisions may dramatically change their collections. Wojcik reports fiery debates among her own colleagues regarding reevaluation for this reason. She writes, “The goal of these projects was not to influence a radical shift in the State Archives’ collecting practices (the scope and purpose of the collection), but to document why certain records were preserved and others were not” (p. 154). Additionally, the staff questioned reevaluating past decisions, when the backlog was believed to contain many records of marginal value. Greene writes,

Gerry Ham, who issued a famous jeremiad against archivist becoming “nothing more than a weathervane moved by the changing winds of historiography,” a decade later embraced reappraisal and deaccessioning as a “creative and sophisticated” act “that will permit holdings to be refined and strengthened. It allows archivists to replace records of lesser value with collections of more significance, and it prevents the imposition of imperfect and incomplete decisions of the past on the future.” (Ham, p. 13, as cited in Greene, p. 9).

Reappraisal and Deaccessioning: A Literature Review Part 2 of 5

2009-09-20T13:23:00.003-04:00

This post is part of a series on a literature review of reappraisal and deaccessioning in archival collections. Click on a link below to read further:

Part 1
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

In “I’ve Deaccessioned and Lived to Tell about It: Confessions of an Unrepentant Reappraiser,” Mark A. Greene discusses how the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming regularly performs reappraisal and deaccessioning based on comprehensive analysis of major collecting areas. Greene reports that 60 percent of deaccessioned records were placed at other repositories, while 20 percent were returned to donors (p. 11).

Caryn Wojcik explores reappraising government record backlogs at the State Archives of Michigan in “Appraisal, Reappraisal, and Deaccessioning.” The archivists ranked government agencies by their potential to produce archival records, similar to the Minnesota Method of appraising modern business records. They constructed an appraisal mission statement, criteria, mechanics, and methodology, which they applied against the backlog.

In “Reappraising and Reaccessioning Wisconsin State Government Records: An Agency-wide Approach,” Helmut M. Knies discusses a four-year project to reduce Wisconsin Historical Society’s collection by 40 percent. The archivists approached the records by agency, rather than by series, assuring that the project “eliminated the records of no single agency in toto, and as a general practice deaccessioned entire series only rarely” (p. 36). Knies describes the “almost archaeological quality” of constructing a “genealogy” the agencies in the context of their antecedents, related agencies, and administrative and regulatory functions (p. 36, 39).

Reappraisal and Deaccessioning: A Literature Review Part 1 of 5

2009-09-10T13:21:00.006-04:00

This post is part of a series on a literature review of reappraisal and deaccessioning in archival collections. Click on a link below to read further:

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

This literature review examines reappraisal and deaccessioning as discussed in three Archival Issues articles about multi-year projects conducted at large institutions. After describing the projects, I offer a critical assessment, exploring reappraisal and deaccessioning experiences that can better inform archivists considering such undertakings.

A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology defines reappraisal as “the process of identifying materials that no longer merit preservation and that are candidates for deaccessioning” due to flawed original appraising, collection policy modifications, or changes in the records’ perceived value (Pearce-Moses). The glossary defines deaccessioning as “the process by which an archives, museum, or library permanently removes accessioned materials from its holdings.” These records may be returned to donors, transferred to other institutions, or destroyed.

Reappraisal may lead to deaccessioning, but not always. Conversely, deaccessioning often results from reappraisal, as well as other reasons. Deaccessioning is not weeding, or the removal of unwanted documents during processing; rather, it removes entire series, collections, or record groups from a repository.

Review of M-libraries: Libraries on the Move to Provide Virtual Access

2009-09-09T21:09:00.000-04:00

My review of M-libraries: Libraries on the Move to Provide Virtual Access. Edited by Gill Needham and Mohamed Ally. (London: Facet, 2008).
Published in New Library World, 110(5/6), 2009.

Mobile devices are getting smaller and more powerful as everyday tools, even in the developing world. M-Libraries: Libraries on the Move to Provide Virtual Access, based on the 2007 First International M-Libraries Conference at the Open University (OU), United Kingdom, explores how mobile technologies have revolutionized information provision and services. With delegates from 26 countries, the conference examined how research, education, and recreation have been revolutionized by the global adoption and growth of mobile devices. To meet contemporary information needs, librarians and educators must design and deliver information on mobile phones, PDAs, palmtop computers, smartphones, and other devices. Editors Gil Needham, Head of Strategic and Service Development at the OU Library, and Mohamed Ally, Director of the Centre for Distance Education, Athabasca University (AU), Canada, emphasize the importance of developing mobile libraries (“m-libraries”) in an evolving information landscape.

Traditional libraries combined place, people, and services, vertically integrated around collections. A networked environment, however, only provides services. In the foreword, Lorcan Dempsey, OCLC’s Vice President and Chief Strategist, notes that, “The position of the library as a functionally integrated, discrete presence, whether on the web or as a physical place, becomes diffused through various manifestations (a physical space to meet, a toolbar, a set of services in the course management system, a Facebook application, a set of RSS feeds, office hours in a school or department, and so on)” (xxviii). Anytime availability challenges libraries to provide services without diluting core values of universal, equitable information access.

Moving from the general to the specific, the book is divided into four sections. Part 1 examines the changing landscapes of mobile technology and libraries in a networked society. The second part explores technology and the development of mobile information delivery. M-library initiatives, innovations, and challenges are examined in Part 3. The final part presents case studies of mobile technologies in libraries around the world.

In “Libraries in a Networked Society,” John Naughton, Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology, OU, examines media theorist Neil Postman’s theory that communication change creates cultural change. The ubiquitous Internet has changed competencies and expectations in knowledge construction and collaboration that are only just beginning to be understood. An information literacy gap has grown between those who have matured with the Internet and information professionals raised with earlier technologies. In a networked environment, librarians are no longer intermediaries between patrons and services, and they must keep pace with mobile technologies to remain relevant.

In “An Effective Mobile-Friendly Digital Library to Support Mobile Learners,” Yang Cao et al. discuss how distance education has shifted to mobile learning. The authors write, “Digital libraries delivered through mobile devices could offer increased flexibility in terms of access and forms of content; increased interaction between students, instructors and tutors; and increased hands-on learning opportunities” (109). The authors discuss how AU library systems have accommodated many devices through template-designed dynamic pages, rather than redesigned pages for every new device.

In “Open Library in Your Pocket—Services to Meet the Needs of On- and Off-
Campus Users,” Hassan Sheikh et al. discuss how OU has adapted mobile technology to deliver specialized services and content, optimized to render on smaller devices. Creating flexible, suitable materials and just in time applications for mobile users is challenging because of their unique requirements.

Mobile technology’s biggest impact will be to increase the level of education in the developing world. Mobile devices bridge the digital divide, providing educational opportunities to economically, socially, or geographically remote or disadvantaged areas. Case studies explore teacher education in sub-Saharan Africa, mobile SMS and OPAC delivery at the University of South Africa, and information access for community-based health workers.

The conclusion explores the conference participants’ opinions on the future role of libraries, technology, content, and personalization. This section could have been improved with more summation and fewer direct quotes. Throughout the book, more illustrations of information presentation on mobile devices would have been informative, especially in the case study chapters.

M-Libraries: Libraries on the Move to Provide Virtual Access offers a compelling mix of theory and practice, assisting libraries to create information systems that keep pace with technology and patrons on the move. Information professionals seeking strategies to improve access for itinerant or remote patrons would benefit from reading this volume.

Records Schedulng

2009-08-30T13:18:00.000-04:00

Archival management, as a field onto itself, originated in the 1930s with the establishment of the National Archives and the Society for American Archivists, as well as the Historical Records Survey (HRS) of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The subsequent involvement of records management as a specialized business-oriented enterprise occurred in the 1950s. The expanse of governmental activity and its subsequent records spurred a need to reduce the quantity of records while retaining the quality of records of enduring value.

Records scheduling identifies and describes records, usually at the series level, and provides information on their retention periods, which differ depending on their nature and origination. Records scheduling provides mandatory instructions for disposition, which may include the transfer of permanent records to an archives or the destruction of temporary records. Archives acquire records after their initial purpose—Schellenberg’s “primary values”—is complete. Records are retained because of their continuing informational, evidential, and intrinsic values.

Both archivists and records managers share the primary tasks of the efficient, systematic arrangement, description, and preservation of documents for future retrieval and reference. The professions of archives and records management meet at records scheduling, because consistent standards for transfer of records from an organization to an archives create better, representative collections. Archivists have discovered that traditional or analog-based records scheduling and accessioning methods have not proved effective with born digital records. A current challenge in archives and records management is the development of new skills to facilitate the transfer of electronic files and to assess file format longevity and authenticity.

Is Appraisal a Science? Part 2 of 2

2009-08-10T14:58:00.001-04:00

Eastwood (1993) agrees with the mediatory role of archivists, stating that, “Archivists do not act as historians. Archivists do act as students of the originary nature of archives in order to find ways to protect the evidence of human action. Archivists properly leave questions of the meaning of the intelligence or information communicated by the archival document to posterity to investigate” (243-4). Eastwood sharply criticizes archival theorist Brien Brothman (1991), and others who think like him, for statements, such as, “archival practice, in other words, remains an art” Brothman believes that archivists act like historians, determining history when processing records. Eastwood disagrees, stating, “The archivist is not a processor of information, as Brothman suggests, but a keeper and protector of the integrity of evidence and a mediator of the many interests wrested in the positive act of its continuing preservation” (237). He writes further, “The purpose of the archivist, and therefore of the social role of archival institutions, is to preserve the integrity of archival documents as faithful and trustworthy evidence of the actions from which they originated” (237).

These articles approached appraisal theory and methodology from many angles, while trying to answer the bigger question of defining the role of archivists. The common thread between the readings is that archivists act as mediators between creators and users. Although appraisal is not a science, a methodology that reflects current best practices yet is appropriate for the repository is needed in order to preserve historical documentation.

Appraisal theory and methodology seems to be debated in professional literature more than any other archival process. By reading some of the well-known articles on the subject, I can begin to get a better understanding of this important theoretical practice.

Works Consulted

Brothman, B. (1991). Orders of value: Probing the theoretical terms of archival practice. Archivaria, 32, 78-100.

Craig, B. (2004). Practising appraisal–common grounds and common problems. In Archival Appraisal: Theory and Practice (81-109). New York: K.G. Sauer.

Duranti, L. (1994). The concept of appraisal and archival theory. American Archivist, 57, 328-344.

Eastwood, T. (1993). Nailing a little jelly to the wall of archival studies. Archivaria,35, 232-252.

Ham, F. G. (1984). Archival choices: Managing the historical record in an age of abundance. American Archivist, 47, 12-29.

Review of Women’s Roles in Seventeenth-Century America

2009-08-01T20:35:00.003-04:00

My review of Women’s Roles in Seventeenth-Century America by Merril D. Smith (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008).
Published in ARBAonline, August 2009.

In Women’s Roles in Seventeenth-Century America, independent scholar Merril D. Smith examines how colonial beliefs about women affected their lives and demonstrates how significant women were in shaping the world around them. Smith considers the lives of white, African, and Native American women between 1600 and 1700 in the British North American colonies. She observes that while the phrase “women’s roles” connotes static responsibilities, in reality, women’s roles were fluid and overlapping in a time of change, conflict, and confusion in the Western world. As wives and mothers, women created families and preserved the social order, while being impacted by revolutions in political, religious, and scientific thought.

Readers will find the narrative chapters scholarly yet accessible, interleaved with illustrations and primary source excerpts. Historically well-known women, such as Puritans Anne Hutchinson and Anne Bradstreet, Quaker Mary Dyer, Indian captive Hannah Duston, and free black landowner Mary Johnson, are discussed, as well as the lives of everyday women recorded in court papers, ship records, church minutes, diaries, and letters. Popular culture sources, such as advice books and ballads, provide indications of gender perceptions during this period.

Chapters elucidate women’s importance in the family, law, immigration, work, religion, war, education, literature, and recreation, and a chronology and selected bibliography accompany the text. This volume is part of Greenwood’s Women’s Roles through History series, which impetus was the excellent reference Women’s Roles in Ancient Civilizations (ARBA 2000). It is highly recommended for high schools with strong history or women’s studies programs.

Is Appraisal a Science? Part 1 of 2

2009-07-30T14:58:00.001-04:00

Ham (1984) discusses problems with the age of abundance when administrating modern records, such as bulk, redundancy, and impermanence. The growing preservation demands of modern records coupled with the sacrifices made by pursuing less effective alternatives, Ham argues convincingly, require archivists to ensure optimal use is made of scarce resources through effective planning and evaluation of archival options. Ham cites six important elements in archival collections management—interinstitutional cooperation, documented application of appraisal procedures, de-accessioning, pre-archival control, record-volume reduction, and analysis and planning—which he maintains, while by no means all-inclusive, will, if applied judiciously, rationalize and streamline archival acquisition and appraisal. He states that archivists need to create practices that work for their repositories, rather than following past practices blindly.

Craig (2004) agrees with site-specific practices, as she discusses the history and uses of macro-appraisal, documentation strategy, and the Minnesota method. She compares the three types of appraisal and seeks common elements between strategies. She also stresses the need to create appraisal policies by committees, so that holdings cannot be skewed by an individual’s viewpoint.

Duranti (1994) offers a theoretical approach to appraisal, rather than methodological or practical one. She asks, “Should appraisal be made an integral and necessary component of archival science and, as such determine a revision of all its accepted methods and practices?” (330). She examines concepts of perpetual memory and public faith, ideas that originated from Roman law, and states that archivists are mediators between creators and users. Duranti follows the tradition set down by Jenkinson: the archivists’ primary duty is to preserve the evidentiary nature of the archives, known as the “moral defense of the archives” (337). Archivists would betray their primary responsibility “if [they] did not try to preserve the societal archive in its integrity, with its characteristics intact, and do so impartially…and as objectively as…possible” (343). For Duranti, archivists are not documenters, interpreters, or judges of societal deeds because they have “a responsibility to future generations of letting them…judge…society on the basis of the documents it produced” (343).

Does Archival Selection Shape History? Part 2 of 2

2009-07-20T14:52:00.001-04:00

Kaplan (2000) examines the role of archives and archivists with identity, because archivists preserve “the props with which notions of identity are built. In turn, notions of identity are confirmed and justified as historical documents validate their authority” (126). She traces the roots of the American Jewish Historical Society, founded by a diverse group of American Jews, with a common purpose to collect records to show their patriotism and value to American society. We are lucky enough to have the stenographic record of their founding meeting. Kaplan writes, “The archival record doesn’t just happen; it is created by individuals and organizations, and used, in turn to support their values and missions, all of which comprises a process that is certainly not politically and culturally neutral” (147).

Sauer (2001) reports on a survey of 80 manuscript repositories to see if they have collection development policies or cooperative collecting activities. She wanted to demonstrate the benefits of using both and to discover why some repositories did neither. She writes, “Although based on a small sample, the survey results clearly demonstrate the usefulness of written collection development policies (especially in dealing with one of the most unpredictable and untamable forces in archival collecting—donors), while engaging in cooperative collecting understandings was shown to increase the degree to which referrals for collections are made to, or received from, other repositories” (331).

Although the phrase “collection development” (and perhaps some of the theory) originated from libraries, the concept is important for archives because it guides acquisitions and the scope of the collections.

I admired how Phillips applied collection development concepts from library science to the archives, especially examining the present strengths of the collection, present collecting level, present identified weaknesses, and desired level of collecting to meet program needs.

Works Cited

Endelman, J. E. (1987). Looking backward to plan for the future: Collection analysis for the manuscript repositories. American Archivist. 50, 340-355.

Kaplan, E. (2000). We are what we collect, we collect what we are: Archives and the construction of identity. American Archivist. 65, 126-151.

Phillips, F. (1984). Developing collecting policies for manuscript collections. American Archivist. 47, 30-41.

Sauer, C. K. (2001). Doing the best we can?: The use of collection development policies and cooperative collecting activities at manuscript repositories. American Archivist. 64, 308-349.

Review of Digital Consumers: Reshaping the Information Professions

2009-07-10T21:02:00.000-04:00

My review of Digital Consumers: Reshaping the Information Professions. Edited by David Nicholas and Ian Rowlands (London: Facet, 2008).
Published in New Library World, 110(3/4) 2009.

In Digital Consumers: Reshaping the Information Professions, editors David Nicholas and Ian Rowlands, both from the School of Library, Archive, and Information Studies, University College London, create a manifesto for survival in a “ubiquitous information environment, where information professionals and knowledge providers are no longer the dominant players nor, indeed, the supplier of first choice” (5). An international group of contributors discusses how the Internet’s massive information access has affected information professionals and how they must respond to remain viable. Topics include digital consumers in the information marketplace, libraries in the digital age, information consumption trends, and the psychology and behaviors of digital consumers with a special emphasis on Generation Y.

The authors consist of members of the Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research (CIBER), University College London, including Maggie Fieldhouse, Paul Huntington, and Peter Williams, and their associates: Tom Dobrowolski of Warsaw University, Hamid R. Jamali of Tarbiat Moallem University in Tehran, Iran, and Richard Withey, former global director of interactive media for Independent News and Media.

The editors specifically employ the term “digital consumers” because all information users “…are fundamentally consumers, and learn their habits in the wider marketplace—a whole new level of expectation is being established through instant access, downloadability, the ability to time-shift consumption and involvement in the creative process” (30). Online shopping has so significantly affected how information is utilized that consumers have started to demand that information be presented similarly to online stores. Given the phenomenal success of Amazon, why don’t more library catalogs look and perform like the online giant?

In the introductory chapter, Dobrowolski, Nicholas, Rowlands, and Withey write, “Because the internet is an encyclopedic, multi-purpose platform that people use, rather like a superstore, to obtain a whole range of things…it is now almost impossible to say what information is and what it is not, what is information seeking and what is not” (1). The boundaries between information professionals are also becoming less defined, and traditional gatekeepers of information are no longer needed as digital consumers undertake information-seeking work themselves. The essayists warn, “Disintermediation has triggered an information-seeking frenzy on a truly massive scale” (5). The absence of information professionals to vet sources along with a lack of information literacy skills creates an environment of information overload.

In “The ‘Google Generation’—Myths and Realities About Young People’s Digital Information Behaviour,” Fieldhouse, Rowlands, and Williams cite that increased technology has not improved information retrieval or evaluation skills. The authors find that young people are not more digitally savvy than older people. Information literacy throughout school may relieve this problem, but for many consumers, “convenience and user satisfaction will triumph, even over content, any day of the week” (214). Consumers will satisfice, a portmanteau of “satisfy” and “suffice,” rather than search for an optimal solution. The authors add, “What we know currently about the information-seeking behaviour of today’s young people and how their practices may impact on the role of information providers and the delivery mechanisms they put in place” (159).

A pivotal chapter, “The Information-Seeking Behaviour of the Digital Consumer: Case Study—the Virtual Scholar” by Dobrowolski, Huntington, Jamali, and Nicholas, is based on the 2001-2008 Virtual Scholar research program conducted by University College London’s CIBER group. Based upon eight years of deep log analysis techniques, the researchers gauged user satisfaction and information-seeking outcomes. The team analyzed the number of page views, downloads, journals used, repeat visits, and sessions of research; time spent viewing a page and in a session; content and format type; site penetration; and searching style. The study focused on “emergent, strategic digital information communities” and found that digital scholars act more like online shoppers and characterized their information seeking activities as “frenetic, promiscuous, volatile, and viewing in nature” (114). They found that users tend to enter search terms into Google, jump around a variety of sites, scan content and abstract pages, and leave. This contrasts established literature on information seeking. For instance, the study showed “bouncing,” a form of behavior where users view only one or two pages of a site, never to return again, which may be the result of poor information literary skills and lazy searching by users and poor content and design from content providers. As content choice and routes for finding content increase, bouncing will increase as well.

Digital Consumers: Reshaping the Information Professions provokes information professionals, especially librarians, to change their mindset regarding new information-seeking behaviors. The last chapter ends with the stimulating statement: “…never forget that [digital consumers] have choice, remember that we are all part of a much bigger information universe now…the information community must stop thinking that it knows best, otherwise it will be in danger of becoming irrelevant. The consumer knows best” (216). Knowledge workers should respond to this book as a call to action if they want to stay germane and adapt to the evolving digital environment of information production, categorization, management, distribution, and consumption.

Does Archival Selection Shape History? Part 1 of 2

2009-07-10T14:51:00.001-04:00

Collection development and accessioning interests me because it is the starting point of all archival collections. I was also surprised that many institutions do not have collection policies, as noted in Sauer (2001), even though they could create drafts of their broad scope.

Sauer (2001) notes eloquently, “Written collection development policies are advocated as a way to ensure that collections have coherent and well-defined focus, while cooperative collecting practices are seen as a way to ensure that related materials are not scattered among far-flung repositories and that repositories’ scarce resources are not needlessly squandered on unnecessary competitiveness for collections” (308).

The archival profession has advanced enough that archivists have transitioned from collecting everything to choosing what to collect, given the abundance of 20th century materials. Archival selection shapes history because diplomatic choices must be made to represent the historical record.

Phillips (1984) notes collection policies seek to “eliminate future problems, lessen competition, and provide an avenue for deaccessioning,” and edits the ALA’s “Guidelines for the Formulation of Collection Development Policies” to use with manuscript collections (30). Phillips (1984) remarks that an archives acts unethically when the collecting policy is so vast that papers cannot be processed in a timely manner, effectively blocking them from research.

Endelman (1987) writes, “Use of the collection analysis methodology takes archivists away from their traditional role as custodians of the past and moves them toward a more active one as shapers of the historical record” (353). She reflects on collection analysis at Minnesota Historical Society, Sate Historical Society of Wisconsin, and Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. The studies revealed that even when archivists believed subjects were adequately covered, they were not. She mentions SAMDOK, a contemporary documentation program that led to a coordinated effort of all Swedish history museums to collect material representing the full spectrum of their national identity, which could be replicated in regional repositories in the United States.

Review of Managing Congressional Collections

2009-06-30T19:56:00.002-04:00

My review of Managing Congressional Collections by Cynthia Pease Miller. (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2008).
Published in Metropolitan Archivist, Summer 2009.

Managing Congressional Collections, a project of SAA’s Congressional Papers Roundtable funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, assists archivists who preserve the manuscripts of members of Congress. A senator generates approximately 100 boxes of archival material a year. These papers are historically significant, yet are often underused and poorly understood by researchers and repositories. Holding “tremendous, and often untapped, historic value,” congressional collections simultaneously document national, regional, and local public policy issues, displaying complex relationships between senators, representatives, and the people they serve (2).

Author Cynthia Pease Miller, former assistant of the House of Representatives, staff archivist for three senators and a Senate committee, and founding member of SAA’s Congressional Papers Roundtable, steers readers from acquisition to outreach. Chapters also focus on administration, transfer, processing, and reference. She offers advice on calculating space, personnel, and budgets; offers ideas for sustainability and external funding sources; and proposes cost-saving strategies. She also discusses access issues regarding classified, declassified, and reclassified documents.

Appendices include a chronology of advances in managing congressional collections, network information, a sample deed of gift, a congressional office staff list, guidelines for file disposition, frequently asked questions, and a bibliography.

The manual’s publication is well timed in an election year and after Congress’ resolution urging members to save their papers for public use. Beginning with the establishment of a Historical Office in the Senate in 1975, scholars, librarians, archivists, and administrators have advocated improving the management and use of these records of enduring value. House Concurrent Resolution 307, included in the volume, was passed by the House on March 5, 2008 and the Senate on June 20th. The resolution states that congressional papers should be properly maintained; that each member should take necessary measures to manage and preserve their papers; and that they should be encouraged to donate their papers with a research institution that is properly equipped to preserve them and to make them available for use. While the resolution does not define the content or scope of the papers, it states the members’ belief in the manuscripts’ value “as indispensable sources for the study of American representative democracy” and in the importance of preserving documentary evidence that results from national service.

Managing Congressional Collections benefits all archivists, who encounter in their collections similar difficulties that congressional manuscripts present, as they “epitomize every management problem associated with twentieth and twenty-first century records,” including high profiles, elevated donor expectations, significant costs, and obstacles to access (5). Congressional papers are the fabric of our democracy, the primary sources of our nation’s history. As archivists, we must rise to the challenge of preserving and presenting congressional documentation.

Annotated Bibliography of Archival Description Part 6 of 6

2009-06-30T10:11:00.002-04:00

This post is part of an annotated bibliography about archival description. Please click below to read further:

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Pitti, D. (2005). Technology and the transformation of archival description. Journal of Archival Organization 3(2/3), 9-22.

Pitti, Associate Director, Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, University of Virginia, suggests liberating archival description from the limits of traditional media through technology by integrating the functional strengths of markup and database technologies. Traditional archival description has employed a “single records-oriented apparatus,” such as the finding aid, which describes all records with a common creator, which can be complicated for mixed-provenance records. Pitti notes that by developing semantics and structures for records and their complex interrelations, flexible, dynamic, and sustainable descriptive systems can be created which are more useful than traditional finding aids.

Yeo, G. (2008). Custodial history, provenance, and the description of personal records. Libraries & the Cultural Record 44(1), 50-64.

Yeo, Lecturer, Department of Information Studies, University College London, argues that traditional methods of description do not capture the complex provenance of personal papers, such as those of Sir Richard Fanshaw (1608-66). Archivists need to reinterpret traditional binary distinctions between “organic” fonds and “artificial” collections with more complex relationships of the records; fonds are groups determined by context of creation, while collection is determined by custodianship. To assess the challenges of description, Yeo surveyed 120 description projects at 46 UK archival institutions by University College London graduate students from 2003 to 2007. He found that their provenance lacked information about the nature and historical development of the collection and its custodial history.

Works Cited

MacNeil, H. (1995). Metadata strategies and archival description: Comparing apples to oranges. Archivaria 39, 22.

Annotated Bibliography of Archival Description Part 5 of 6

2009-06-20T10:10:00.002-04:00

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Millar, L. (2006). An obligation of trust: Speculations on accountability and description. American Archivist 69(1), 60-78.

Millar, an archival and information management consultant and educator, considers the role of archival description for organizational and social accountability. Comparing the answerability of traditional post-hoc archival description to continuum-based records management, she finds that while they are suitable for their fields, neither ensures the wider accountability of institutions to themselves or to the community at large. She envisions blending the accountability strengths of the post-hoc and continuum-based models into a larger, more holistic framework. This description architecture will support expansive institutional and social accountability to ensure the integrity of records of enduring value and the larger spectrum of functions of the organization responsible for creating and preserving those records.

Peters, V. (2005). Developing archival context standards for functions in the higher education sector. Journal of the Society of Archivists 26(1), 75-86.

Peters, Research Archivist, Glasgow University Archive Services, discusses a research project, which used records of Scottish higher education institutions and made the results available on GASHE (Gateway to Archives of Scottish Higher Education). Believing that archival description based on traditional principles of provenance and original order is limited, Peters borrows from records management practices in which the fundamental relationships of records are their functions and activities, rather than their creators. Description of function is more helpful for archivists and researchers, rather than description based on a single, static arrangement, such as administrative structure, which cannot fully preserve the context of the records. This functional provenance approach allowed records of Scottish institutions, dating back to 1215, to be described seamlessly with current records.

Annotated Bibliography of Archival Description Part 4 of 6

2009-06-10T10:09:00.002-04:00

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Hedstrom, M. (1993). Descriptive practices for electronic records: Deciding what is essential and imagining what it is possible. Archivaria 36, 53-63.

Hedstrom, Associate Professor, School of Information and Library Studies, University of Michigan, questions whether traditional approaches to description are applicable to electronic records. She suggests using the challenges of digital records to define the purposes of creation; to reassess description’s objects, agents, and timing; and to develop approaches that exploit technology while aligning with archival practice. Description’s essential purposes must allow users to identify, access, understand, authenticate, and interpret meaning. Unfortunately, digital environments focus on data structures and content, not contextual information adequate to support the records’ use as evidence. Hedstrom assesses that the gap between existing practice and the potential for electronic data will narrow with the possibility of exploiting metadata in automated systems, so archivists can capture, rather than create, descriptive information.

Hurley, C. (2005). Parallel provenance: (1) What if anything is archival description? Archives and Manuscripts 33(1), 110-145.

Hurley, a thirty-year veteran of archives programs in Australia and New Zealand, notes that through description, archivists create a single perspective of provenance and a fixed internal structure for the collection. Hurley views provenance as more than simple relationships between units that tell stories of context and structure. He argues that the dynamic relationships and formation of records and the functions in which they took part cannot be properly described within the narrowness of the internationally standardized idea of archival description. Instead, he suggests a parallel provenance that contextualizes alternative narratives about the records into a single ambient description with multiple provenances that enriches the evidential meaning of the records.

Annotated Bibliography of Archival Description Part 3 of 6

2009-05-30T10:08:00.002-04:00

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Duff, W. M., & Harris, V. (2002). Stories and names: Archival description as narrating records and constructing meanings. Archival Science 2(3), 263-285.

Duff, Professor, Information Studies, University of Toronto, and Harris, Archivist, South African History Archive, advocate descriptive standards that allow for a plurality of representation. Archivists must relinquish their control of access to and interpretation of records through description. Although the authority of archivists remains an obstacle for implementing descriptive architectures that allow user annotation, the authors believe that the benefits of presenting a more complete historical record outweigh the costs. User-created annotations in archival description provide opportunities for the marginalized to be heard in addition to authoritative, standardized archival-provided description. Duff and Harris demonstrate the importance of balancing the integrity and authority of archivists, while allowing for alternative voices in description.

Hadley, N. (2001). Access and description of visual ephemera. Collection Management 25, 39-50.

Hadley, Senior Archivist, College of William & Mary, states that description of ephemera varies between institutions, depending on the types of access points and the levels of description required. Using examples from the Houston Metropolitan Research Center of the Houston Public Library (HMRC), she notes that description is determined by the aesthetic and artifactual aspects of the materials, as well as if the ephemera collections are provenance based, artificially created, or within larger collections. Descriptive systems should explicitly reflect the presence of ephemera, be firmly linked to other description systems in the repository, be consistent across holdings, provide the type and level of description appropriate to the nature of the materials, and anticipate their likely use.

Annotated Bibliography of Archival Description Part 2 of 6

2009-05-20T10:07:00.002-04:00

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Beattie, H. (2008). Where narratives meet: Archival description, provenance, and women’s diaries. Libraries & the Cultural Record 44(1), 82-100.

Beattie, Archivist in Description and Client Services, Hudson Bay Company Archives, discusses how archivists can improve description of personal papers and diaries by expanding provenance to include the writer’s motivation, intended audience, custodial history, and the archivist’s representation. Although archivists tend to remain neutral custodians of the historical record, Beattie urges using description methods and aspects of provenance taken from the humanities, which offer richer portrayals of diaries—women’s diaries, in particular. Deeper contextual information, rather than literary, overly subjective interpretations and descriptions, will assist users to better understand these intimate records. Beattie illustrates her points with passages from three women’s diaries at the Hudson Bay Company Archives and the Archives of Manitoba.

Chaudron, G. (2008). The potential of “function” as an archival descriptor. Journal of Archival Organization 6(4), 269-287.

Chaudron, Assistant Professor, Manuscripts, Mississippi State University, notes that while functional analysis has been used for appraisal methods, such as documentation strategy, the Minnesota Method, and macroappraisal, it can also be used for description. Influenced by records management practices, functional analysis allows archivists to examine the structures, processes, and activities of the organization beyond record creation, providing users with a broader view of how records reflected, and were part of, the functions of the organization. However, function cannot be applied as the principal descriptor for all records; while it works for institutional records, it has limited use with manuscripts. When used with traditional descriptive methods, however, functional descriptors can enhance information quality and access.

Review of Information History—An Introduction: Exploring an Emergent Field

2009-05-15T21:39:00.004-04:00

My review of Information History—An Introduction: Exploring an Emergent Field by Toni Weller. (Oxford: Chandos, 2008).
Published in Journal of Documentation, 65(5), 2009.

Information History—An Introduction: Exploring an Emergent Field investigates how the values of our contemporary information society have guided scholars to examine our data sensemaking throughout history. Emergent is a key word, as the field has only begun to formulate itself. Author Toni Weller, associate lecturer and honorary fellow at City University, London, creates a historiography, exploring how different schools of thought have investigated the social, technological, economic, and cultural constructs of information. Using an interdisciplinary approach of historical and information science research, the book is aimed at undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals in History and Information Science.

The first chapter introduces the concept of information history, tracing its development and the current dominance of British, Nordic, and North American scholarship. Weller writes, “Information history is the study of information in past societies—how it was understood, used, organised, managed, collected, censored, feared, revered, published, disseminated, presented, displayed ... [It is] strongly related to the disciplines of library and information science, which emphasise the role of information in contemporary society and from which the first movements of the field of information history emerged” (4). Although a fledgling field, information history has validity as an area of study.

Information professionals will be interested in reading about the significance of information history in their vocations in the second chapter. Weller writes, “Although information history is academically attractive as a field of historical, sociological or philosophical enquiry, it must also be shown to be relevant to students and funding bodies in a climate that often emphasises and values the skills and ‘usefulness’ of degree content” (50). Universities must respond to the marketplace by teaching “economically valuable skills,” as the Leitch Review of Skills (2006), a study of the UK’s optimal skills mix for 2020, recommended (30). These competencies include retrieving and filtering information, judging provenance, organizing and analyzing content, and evaluating information design and presentation. She writes, “Not only could the profession itself, and those working within it, benefit from having a more holistic sense of its own development and history, but also such an understanding could affect in a very real and positive sense the way in which information professions contribute to the debate and policy of the contemporary world of information” (47-8).

Key schools of thought in current scholarship are discussed in the third chapter, the highlight of the book. Library and book history, one of the oldest academic traditions of the five discussed, is the area where the first movements of information history materialized. Information systems and infrastructure history has an overly technological interest in history. Much has been written about the cultural impact of the telegraph, what science and technology journalist Tom Standage termed the “Victorian Internet.” Some scholars believe information systems appeared as recently as the 1990s with the popularization of the Internet. Others, such as Daniel Headrick, Professor Emeritus of Social Science and History, Roosevelt University, Illinois, argue that it emerged in the Age of Reason with the communication, display, and storage of information through maps, dictionaries, and graphs. History of the information discipline is the practical history of how information is used, understood, and developed in social and professional capacities, as the disciplines matured and created bodies of professional literature. It explores the work of those in libraries, museums, and archives, with growing interest in female information pioneers. Social and cultural explorations of information considers how information affects and is affected by human society and culture. Weller notes, “While exploring the infrastructures of information and the history of information technologies and disciplines is important and necessary, we must not become blinded by technology and forget that these aspects of information are all essentially part of humanity and its development” (73). The origins of information society concentrates on fundamental characteristics of the modern information society, with specific focus on its economic origins. For example, in 1870, English, French, and German news agencies Reuters, Havas, and Wolff agreed to pay today’s equivalent of £15,000 pounds per month for telegraphed information—an astonishing amount that points to information’s value.

The fourth chapter reviews the practice of information history. Essential questions to shape study are “How can we look for information in the past?” and “How do we avoid imposing modern understandings of information on past societies?” Since information history allows interdisciplinary approaches, professors can adapt its study to their expertise. The field will mature through teaching, and Weller offers several exercises for class discussion.

The final chapter forecasts the next ten years of scholarship, understanding that only in the last decade of the 20th century did information history begin to be theorized and conceptualized. The future will see more scholarship on information history from regions beyond the Western world. Assisting the next generation of information discourse, new topics of study, and issues of the information age that have not yet surfaced will also be studied.

Information History—An Introduction: Exploring an Emergent Field is an accessible overview of information history. The book is an amuse-bouche; it provides just enough satisfaction, but leaves the readers craving more. Scholars will be interested in exploring the references section, which includes many contributions from Alistair Black, Professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois, formerly of Leeds Metropolitan University, a vocal advocate of information history as a theorized field of study. It is surprising that the field has only recently developed, and this book is the first solely dedicated to its historiography. Here’s hoping for many more.

Annotated Bibliography of Archival Description Part 1 of 6

2009-05-10T10:05:00.002-04:00

This post is part of an annotated bibliography about archival description. Please click below to read further:

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Part 5
Part 6

“Description…captures and communicates knowledge about the broad administrative and documentary contexts of records creation within an organization as a whole as one moves further away from the original circumstances of creation. Its purpose is to preserve, perpetuate, and authenticate meaning over time so that it is available and comprehensible to all users—present and potential” (MacNeil 1995, 22).

Principles of original order and provenance aim to achieve the objectives of archival arrangement and description, which preserve the context of the archives and safeguard their evidential value and historical authenticity. Most archivists agree that descriptions of collections are often inadequate to capture the complexity of the records. Both an expanded understanding of the provenance and function of records and an acknowledgment that archivists are co-creators of the records could greatly enhance current description practices.

The articles discuss the universal theoretical underpinnings of description, rather than specific descriptive standards. Representing current scholarship in the field, the articles were written in the 1990s and 2000s, with a majority published in the last few years. Articles, rather than monographs or websites, were chosen for their timeliness and their international perspective on description.

The following countries’ perspectives on description were represented by the selected journals: Australia (Archives and Manuscripts), Canada (Archivaria), the United Kingdom and Ireland (Journal of the Society of Archivists), and the United States (American Archivist, Collection Management, and Libraries & the Cultural Record). Archival Science and Journal of Archival Organization are considered international journals by their editorial boards.

Descriptive systems for institutional records, digital records, personal papers, diaries, and ephemera are discussed. The intended audience is archivists at all experience levels, as the articles discuss theoretical approaches that may influence current practices at archival institutions. Archivists informed with current research can create descriptive systems with expended contextual information to assist users to better understand and interpret records.

The “Margins of Archivy”: Archival Description of Visual Materials Part 7 of 7

2009-04-30T09:35:00.002-04:00

This post is part of a series exploring archival description of visual materials. Please click below to read further:

Part 1
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Part 6

Archival Description for Visual Materials

Archival description of images has sought to combine traditional library and archival practice with the more focused descriptive practices found in the museum and visual resources communities. Description of images remains challenging. Due to the nature of visual material, a standardized approach for description is ideal, but compromises must be made. All images cannot be indexed completely, nor can all resources be expended on indexing only a few collections. Approaches should be equitable, reasonable, and within the means of the institution. While there are challenges to be found when working with visual materials, these objects hold a wealth of information that justifies the additional effort needed to make them accessible. Archivists must draw visual materials from the “margins of archivy” and establish them in their rightful place as records of enduring value and primary sources of informational and evidential importance for future generations.

Works Cited

Alexander, A., & Meehleib, T. (2001). The thesaurus for graphic materials: Its history, use, and future. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 31, 189-212.

Armitage, L. H., & Enser, P. G. B. (1997). Analysis of user need in image archives. Journal of Information Science 23(4), 287-299.

Baxter, G. (2003). The historical photograph: Record, information source, object, resource. Art Libraries Journal 28(2), 4-12.

Burke, P. (2001). Eyewitnessing: The uses of images as historical evidence. Picturing history series. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Dooley, J. M. (1995). Processing and cataloging of archival photograph collections. Visual Resources 11(1), 85-101.

Finnegan, C. A. (2006). What is this a picture of?: Some thoughts on images and archives. Rhetoric & Public Affairs 9(1), 116-123.

Goodrum, A. A. (2005). I can’t tell you what I want, but I’ll know it when I see it: Terminological disconnects in digital image reference. Reference & User Services Quarterly 45(1), 46-53.

Green, M. A., & Meissner, D. (2005). More product, less process: Revamping traditional archives processing. American Archivist 68(2), 208-263.

Huyda, R. (1977). Photographs and archives in Canada. Archivaria (5), 5-16.

International Council on Archives. (2000). ISAD(G): General international standard archival description. Ottawa: ICA. Retrieved May 7, 2009, from the International Council on Archives Web site: http://www.ica.org/sites/default/files/isad_g_2e.pdf

Kaplan, E., & Mifflin, J. (2000). “Mind and sight”: Visual literacy and the archivist. In R. C. Jimerson (Ed.) American archival studies: Readings in theory and practice. Chicago: Society of American Archivists.

Norris, T. D. (1985). Processing extremely large collections of historical photographs. The Midwestern Archivist 10(2), 129-134.

O’Toole, J. M., & Cox, R. J. (2006). Understanding archives & manuscripts. Archival fundamentals series. Chicago: Society of American Archivists.

Panofsky, E. (1939). Studies in iconology; Humanistic themes in the art of the Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press.

Pearce-Moses, R. (2005). A glossary of archival and records terminology. Chicago: Society of American Archivists. Retrieved May 5, 2009, from the Society of American Archivists Web site: http://www.archivists.org/glossary/index.asp

Pugh, M. J. (2005). Providing reference services for archives & manuscripts. Archival fundamentals series. Chicago: Society of American Archivists.

Ritzenthaler, M., Munhoff, G., & Long, M. (1984). Archives and manuscripts: administration of photographic collections. Chicago: Society of American Archivists.

Ritzenthaler, M., & Vogt-O’Connor, D. (2006). Photographs: Archival care and management. Chicago: Society of American Archivists.

Schellenberg, T. R. (1965). The management of archives. New York: Columbia University Press.

Schmidle, R. (1996). The smile and promise of digital imaging: Preserving photographs in a digital world. Library Hi Tech News, (130), 14-16.

Schwartz, J. M. (2002). Coming to terms with photographs: Descriptive standards, linguistic ‘othering,’ and the margins of archivy. Archivaria 54, 142-171.

Teper, J. H. (2004). Newspaper photo morgues—a survey of institutional holdings and practices. Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Services 28(1), 106-125.

Turner, J. M. (1993). Subject access to pictures: Considerations in the surrogation and indexing of visual documents for storage and retrieval. Visual Resources 9(3), 245-247.

Weinstein, R. A., & Booth, L. (1977). Collection, use and care of historical photographs. Nashville: American Association for State and Local History.

Zinkham, H. (2006). Description and cataloging. In M. L. Ritzenthaler & D. Vogt-O’Connor (Eds.) Photographs: Archival care and management. (pp. 164-206). Chicago: Society of American Archivists.

The “Margins of Archivy”: Archival Description of Visual Materials Part 6 of 7

2009-04-20T09:33:00.002-04:00

This post is part of a series exploring archival description of visual materials. Please click below to read further:

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Part 7

Image Description Examples

Teber (2004) discusses a survey that the Audio-Visual Archives (A-V Archives) at the University of Kentucky conducted of 24 institutions with newspaper photo morgues. Each institution reported different degrees of arrangement and description, with 18% reporting that the collections were unprocessed. Of the processed collections, both the interpretation of “full processing” and the resources expended differed by institution. Full processing can range from EADs, item-level description, and rehousing to brief, folder-level description. Although survey responders did not define their interpretation of fully processed, 25% have fully processed collections (with 11% of that total with EADs), 14% had collections that were over half-processed, and 43% had less than one half of the collection processed (p. 114).

Respondents noted that because the collections have high local interest and repetitive images (especially with the advent of roll film), description was often minimal. Ideally, each series of photographs should have the location, date, and subject, searchable by a finding aid or a database. This is especially important if the collection is maintained in the original order produced by the newspaper, which may not easily serve users’ purposes. Although newspaper photo morgues represent a specific type of image collection, with its own distinct attributes and challenges, the results of the survey provided real-world insight into the description of visual collections.

Alexander and Meehleib (2001) note that the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division (P&P) catalogers employ practices from libraries, museums, and archives. They evaluate the appropriate description treatment for a given group of materials: whether the images should be cataloged at the item, group, or collection level. P&P catalogers create catalog records and finding aids, frequently using a combination of description levels to facilitate access. This blended approach allows broad control over the holdings at the group level as well as specific control over individual images at the item level. This is especially important for high-demand images, images used in exhibits, or images with high intrinsic or market value. Although P&P represents a large image collection with vast resources, this example demonstrates that evaluative methods determine the level of description required.

Review of Social Implications of Data Mining and Information Privacy: Interdisciplinary Frameworks and Solutions

2009-04-15T20:13:00.000-04:00

My review of Social Implications of Data Mining and Information Privacy: Interdisciplinary Frameworks and Solutions. Edited by Ephrem Eyob. (Hershey, PA: ICI Global, 2009).
Published in Online Information Review, 33(4), 2009.

In Social Implications of Data Mining and Information Privacy: Interdisciplinary Frameworks and Solutions, editor and Virginia State University engineering professor Ephrem Eyob selected fourteen peer-reviewed papers on current research in data mining, the discovery of actionable information patterns using statistical and artificial intelligence tools. The volume assists researchers, teachers, students, and practitioners to understand data mining’s “competing goals” of collecting data and preserving privacy (xiv). Topics include team building for business, agriculture production, location-based services, national security, and social networking in urban neighborhoods.

Philip Brey, University of Twente, explores principles of information ethics that are universally valid in “Is Information Ethics Culturally Relative?” The concept of privacy has broad historical roots in sociological and anthropological discussions about its attributes and preservation in various cultures. Brey argues that the values of privacy are distinctly Western and culturally relative. Globalization and the emergence of the Internet have created a worldwide community, which requires a moral system that has yet to be developed.

In “Legal Frameworks for Data Mining and Privacy,” Robert Sprague, University of Wyoming College of Business, notes the lack of legal frameworks to restrict data mining, transmission, and warehousing. As technology becomes enmeshed in the daily lives of individuals, information on their activities is being stored, accessed, and used. Society is developing new definitions of privacy in this information environment, but norms have changed enough that data collection has been accepted without much opposition or change to applicable laws governing such issues.

The increasing use of data mining tools in both the public and private sectors raises concerns regarding the potentially sensitive nature of the data being mined. “Business Collaboration by Privacy-Preserving Clustering” discusses a clustering method to protect the underlying attribute values of datasets with high accuracy and low cost. Authors Stanley R. M. Oliveira, Embrapa Informática Agropecuária, Brazil, and Osmar R. Zaïane, University of Alberta, note that privacy preserving data mining achieves the paradox of enabling data mining algorithms to use data without accessing it.

Social Implications of Data Mining and Information Privacy provides an interdisciplinary discussion of contemporary data mining, recommendations, and future trends. As the field matures, individuals, governments, and corporations will continue to find common ground, balancing the individual’s right to privacy and government’s and industry’s need to disseminate information necessary to best serve public interests. Data mining techniques of the future should be effective without dismissing the need to preserve privacy, a fundamental element of free societies.

The “Margins of Archivy”: Archival Description of Visual Materials Part 5 of 7

2009-04-10T09:30:00.002-04:00

This post is part of a series exploring archival description of visual materials. Please click below to read further:

Part 1
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Part 4
Part 6
Part 7

Challenges of Image Description Part 2

The lack of visual literacy by both archivists and researchers presents difficulties for archival description of image collections. Since the mid-to-late twentieth century and the rise of the history of social movements and under-represented segments of society, historians had neglected non-textual sources in their research (Kaplan & Mifflin, 2000). Burke (2001) writes of the training of historians:

The criticism of visual evidence remains undeveloped, although the testimony of images, like that of text, raises problems of context, function, rhetoric, recollection whether soon or long after the event, secondhand witnessing and so on (p. 15 as cited in O’Toole & Cox, 2006, p. 200 n. 54).

Similarly to historians, archivists have been under-schooled in visual literacy. Library science and archival programs devote little attention to visual materials in the curriculum, although professional development classes in photographs are offered by SAA (Kaplan & Mifflin, 2000).
Schwartz (2002) argues that current descriptive practices relegate images to the “margins of archivy” through the archival profession’s

ideas and standards, practices and actions, whether consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or unintentionally, overtly or systemically … By embracing a textual model of recorded information and by adopting a bibliographic model of image classification, [archivists] continue to fixate on the factual content rather than the functional origins of visual images (p. 142-3).

Schwartz notes that it is difficult to apply traditional hierarchical description to visual materials and to understand that hierarchical levels of description are intellectual constructs that may not have material equivalents. She writes:

Traditional item-level description of photographs, indexed by subject and credited to the photographer, but without adequate contextual information about their functional origins and provenance, or clear links to such contextual information, transforms photographic archives into stock photo libraries, reducing photographs to their visible elements, and conflating photographic content and photographic meaning (p. 157).

Schwartz’s criticisms demonstrate deficiencies in archival theory and practice, which remain unable to address the unique challenges of archival description of image collections

The “Margins of Archivy”: Archival Description of Visual Materials Part 4 of 7

2009-03-30T09:28:00.002-04:00

This post is part of a series exploring archival description of visual materials. Please click below to read further:

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Part 7

Challenges of Image Description Part 1

Like all other archival materials, images are organized and made accessible based on their original order and provenance, but because of their uniqueness, value, subject matter, and historical significance, they present challenges for description. Unlike archives and manuscripts, visual collections often do not have a clearly defined or pre-existing organizational structure, individual titles, or creator names by which they can be described (Ritzenthaler & Vogt-O’Connor, 2006). Baxter (2003) notes that the use of visual collections shaped their description. For instance, early photography collections held at the New York Public Library were treated at bibliographic materials before their recognition as archival resources (Weinstein & Booth, 1977, and Ritzenthaler, Munhoff, & Long, 1984, as cited in Baxter, 2003).

Additionally, when images are indexed, they may not only be described in terms of being “about” a subject but also “of” a subject and, as a result, descriptive access points can be numerous. This knowledge hierarchy is similar to Panofsky’s (1939) preiconographic, iconographic, and iconology levels and traditional subject-headings like broad term, near term, and related term.

Finnegan (2006) argues that image description is inherently subjective, requiring complex conceptual and ideological processes to determine the subject. “Image archives … function as terministic screens, simultaneously revealing and concealing ‘facts,’ at once enabling and constraining interpretation” (p. 118). Interpretation is needed because, as Huyda (1977) writes, “existing captions are often incomplete, inaccurate, deliberately distorted or irrelevant” and that “the attribution of photographs to particular photographers or studios is a complicated process” (p. 10). Additionally, visual materials have lacked description and lagged behind their textual counterparts in automated access because they have held a lower priority in archives (Turner, 1993).

Description is subjective because information is assigned to images, as they are usually not accompanied by textual information. Image retrieval, therefore, translates the users’ cognitive visual needs to descriptive systems entries. Archivists must be able to assist users articulate their information needs, as well as be able to match that expression to an existing image. Image description surrogates, such as keywords, titles, captions, or cataloging records, act as attributes against which a query may be matched and provide support for browsing, navigation, relevance judgment, and query reformulation (Goodrum, 2005).

The “Margins of Archivy”: Archival Description of Visual Materials Part 3 of 7

2009-03-20T09:27:00.004-04:00

This post is part of a series exploring archival description of visual materials. Please click below to read further:

Part 1
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Current Practices of Image Description Part 2

Collection-level description can be useful for images of the same subject, but problematic for collections with a variety of subjects, as it neither improves retrieval nor limits handling of the originals. Ritzenthaler and Vogt-O’Connor (2006) agree that group arrangement and description are necessary and acceptable for large photograph collections or when resources are limited. Norris (1985), in his case study of two very large photograph processing projects, states that “something is better than nothing” for description at the group or collection level (p. 133).

However, item-level description is more common with visual materials than with textual materials. This is especially true for digital images, which by their nature, mandate it. Archivists must evaluate their visual collections to determine if item-level description is warranted. Critics like Dooley (1995) call item-level description of visual materials “insupportably expensive and unnecessary” and a “relic of a more leisurely past” (p. 88). Although it is time consuming, item-level description makes images searchable, and, with digital images, viewable without having to retrieve the originals. However, resources are seldom adequate to catalog all collections to the item level, and item-level handling should exist within a framework provided by group-level description. Repositories with limited budgets may digitize one or two representative images, while noting that there are additional unscanned images (Ritzenthaler & Vogt-O’Connor, 2006).

Access to image collections is usually provided through finding aids, which only include subject indexing for large collections, if at all. Studies indicate that, among a variety of libraries and archives, the most frequent approach to image retrieval is by subject (Armitage & Enser, 1997). However, archival practices vary considerably, depending on the repository, the resources available, the size and requirements of the collection, and user needs.

With the advent of computers, some institutions used MARC records to provide subject indexing for large pictorial archives through individual collection-level records (Ritzenthaler & Vogt-O’Connor, 2006). The MARC records point users to a finding aid for a particular collection for more detailed information. Since the finding aids were generally paper-based, and often only available locally at the institution, users would have to view them in person.

Item-level MARC cataloging of images, while in some cases desirable, was often neither warranted nor economically feasible (Ritzenthaler & Vogt-O’Connor, 2006). The hierarchical format and electronic access capabilities of the Encoded Archival Description (EAD) finding aid, however, offers the possibility of a more powerful, flexible alternative. EADs index image collections by providing access points at the collection or item level, depending on the needs of the institution, collection, and users. As the tools for accessing finding aids become more sophisticated, EADs’ content-specific indexing capabilities will make it a powerful resource for standardized, integrated access to primary source visual collections.

Review of Encyclopedia of Gender and Society

2009-03-14T20:17:00.003-04:00

My review of Encyclopedia of Gender and Society. Edited by Jodi O’Brien. (Washington DC: Sage, 2009).
Published in ARBAonline, March 2009.

Alpha males, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Personal is Political,” quilting, and Sojourner Truth. These topics and more are covered in the Encyclopedia of Gender and Society. This comprehensive two-volume encyclopedia covers the major theories, research, and issues in contemporary gender studies, providing comparative analysis of the experiences of men and women around the world. Editor Jodi O’Brien, Chair of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Seattle University, assembled 300 international experts in the field to write more than 500 entries.

Offering current scholarship in contemporary gender studies ranging from individual to global issues, the encyclopedia demonstrates how gender shapes our lives, cultural beliefs, and social and economic organization. Rather than covering all gender topics, the encyclopedia provides a lens on recognized areas of social research. Well-trodden issues, like Barbie, body politics, and patriarchy, and relatively new aspects of globalization, like microlending and maquiladoras, receive cutting-edge theoretical treatment.

Topics include crime and criminal justice; economics, international development and human rights; religion; and science and technology. Entries range from about 600 to 2000 words, with related entries, further readings, and websites noted. Entries are listed alphabetically and by theme, and an index completes both volumes. Several longer framing essays provide an overview of contemporary research. Addressing complex gender topics, the Encyclopedia of Gender and Society is a cohesive, usable reference source for both public and academic libraries, well worth its high price.

The “Margins of Archivy”: Archival Description of Visual Materials Part 2 of 7

2009-03-10T09:24:00.002-04:00

This post is part of a series exploring archival description of visual materials. Please click below to read further:

Part 1
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

Current Practices of Image Description Part 1

Libraries organize published, non-unique items (such as books and serials) using standards such as MARC and AACR2 with LCSH descriptors. Archives, museums, and visual resource collections create lengthy, detailed descriptions of unique materials or their representations (such as slides and digital images), which can be expressed as both collection- and item-level records.

Description expands upon information gleamed during appraisal and arrangement, which produces preliminary descriptive forms, such as container lists; summarizes the context and content of archival materials at multiple levels; and adds usage restrictions and access points for creators and subjects (Zinkham, 2006).

Description often includes provenance, style or genre, history and use of the item, preservation details, various views of the item, and controlled vocabularies. Description presents information not otherwise provided on the images; often there are no identifying texts. Without description, archivists must rely on staff memory or browse through images, which is time consuming and weakens images from handling. Undescribed images are vulnerable to theft and misfiling (Zinkham, 2006).

Schellenberg (1965) devotes the final chapter of Management of Archives to the arrangement and description of visual materials. He notes, “The methods of arranging and describing pictorial records have not been fully defined, much less standardized” (p. 322). Since the publication of his seminal book, formal standards, such as Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS), Graphic Materials, and Rules for Archival Description (RAD), have been developed for archival description of visual materials. For example, the ISAD (G): General International Standard of Archival Description defines multilevel principles, such as moving from the broad to specific, linking hierarchical levels, and basic descriptive elements. These elements include creator names, titles, dates, administrative history, scope and content, and locations of originals and copies (International Council on Archives, 2000). While descriptive standards offer consistency, repositories employ descriptive systems suited to their holdings, not universal access, and archival description continues to be idiosyncratic (Pugh, 2005).

In their literature review, Greene and Meissner (2005) found that “[f]rom the mid-1960s to the present, archival authors have dismissed arrangement at the item level as having little utility and being thoroughly impractical for modern collections” (p. 213). Despite the literature, their repository and grant proposal surveys found that a large proportion of archivists have adhered to item-level description, even though it is contrary to the traditional archival practice of collection-level description. The same discrepancy between literature and practice appears to be true for visual collections.

Review of American Women Leaders: 1,560 Current Biographies

2009-03-01T21:58:00.002-05:00

My review of American Women Leaders: 1,560 Current Biographies by Carol Hooks Hawkins. (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2009).
Published in ARBAonline, March 2009.

In this volume, Hawkins compiles profiles of contemporary female leaders marked with career accomplishments, milestone achievements, or major honors to serve as role models for American girls. The 200-word entries, with portraits, contain biographical information on educational, career, and leadership success of women representing a variety of ethnic and regional backgrounds. Appendices of occupational and geographic listings are also included.

The profiles of the political, business, educational, and cultural leaders are for the most part objective and well researched, although there are coverage issues. Aerospace and medicine are well represented, but more emphasis is needed on female scientific and technological achievements. Additionally, profiles of religious leaders—all Christian—are abundant, at the expense of others. For example, Taffi L. Dollar, wife of televangelist Creflo Dollar currently under Senate investigation for financial malfeasances, is included, while Teach for American founder Wendy Kopp, one of 2008’s Time 100 World’s Most Influential People, is not.

Despite these issues, the volume may still useful for most libraries, especially considering the number of profiles of present-day leaders. Due to an editorial team and a rigorous select process, the 5-volume Notable American Women series (see ARBA 72, entry 221; ARBA 82, entry 771) may be a better choice, especially the recent volume on distinguished women who died in the twentieth century (see ARBA 2006).

The “Margins of Archivy”: Archival Description of Visual Materials Part 1 of 7

2009-03-01T09:19:00.006-05:00

This post is part of a series exploring archival description of visual materials. Please click below to read further:

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

Introduction

While libraries have developed structured rules for cataloging print materials, these rules have not fully addressed the needs of image collections. Museums, on the other hand, have acquired great expertise in describing their unique holdings, but these practices vary because of the diverse nature of individual museums and their collections. Even with the emergence of online catalogs, web accessible collections, and improved information searching and navigation, access to visual collections has remained limited due to a lack of standardized description and integrated modes of access.

Increases in visual literacy, the use of photographs as primary sources, and technology’s ability to provide access to images over the Internet have created an impetus for many archival institutions to provide deeper descriptive information for their visual holdings (Kaplan & Mifflin, 2000). The Society of American Archivists (SAA) defines description as:

the process of creating a finding aid or other access tools that allow individuals to browse a surrogate of the collection to facilitate access and that improve security by creating a record of the collection and by minimizing the amount of handling of the original materials (Pearce-Moses, 2005).

Archivists describe their collections based on the principles of provenance and original order. However, unlike textual records, visual materials are often removed from their original locations and filed in subject files without further description. The context and purpose of an image is often not conveyed to those who were not present at the time of the event being captured. Thus, without an accurate record of the names, dates, and events depicted, an image holds little historical value. Schmidle (1996) notes, “Stripped of its original context, an old photograph is reduced to mere curiosity” (p. 14).

These series of posts discusses archival description of visual materials. SAA defines “visual materials” as “a generic term used to collectively describe items of a pictorial nature, including prints, paintings, photographs, motion pictures, and video (Pearce-Moses, 2005). Visual materials are synonymous with “nontextual records,” which “include records formats that are not principally words on paper, such as maps, photographs, motion pictures and video, sound recordings, and the like” and “nonprint materials” which are “items that are not books, periodicals, or pamphlets; nonbook materials” (Pearce-Moses, 2005). The majority of archival literature on nontextual records discusses photographs, but my arguments can be extended to all visual materials as defined by SAA. Current practices, challenges, and examples of image description will be explored. The archival profession has described visual materials inconsistently, making access difficult and regulating visual collections to the “margins of archivy” (Schwartz, 2002, p. 142).

What’s Past is Prologue: The Role of Archivists

2009-02-20T23:49:00.000-05:00

The role of archivists has always been in flux, responding to the needs of the information world and providing the unique skill sets that librarians, historians, and records managers may understand but do not hold. In his essay, “Dear Mary Jane: Some Reflections on Being an Archivist,” John Fleckner (2000) writes, “Part science, part art, and—when done properly—part showmanship, our ability to quickly understand and evaluate the record—especially when it is old, large, or complex—is a unique facet of our craft” (p. 24). He believes that archivists are colleagues to librarians, historians, and records managers, but are a distinct class unto themselves.

In the second chapter of Understanding Archives & Manuscripts, James O’Toole and Richard Cox discuss how archives were first developed, stemming from historical societies at the end of the eighteenth century, research libraries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the rise of universities, which have employed many archivists. A theme throughout their discussion of the profession is that archives reflect the culture and technology of the times. For instance, historical societies were established as part of the historical manuscripts tradition, which collected public records as well as personal papers. This happened in part because the development of the postal service created growth in correspondence.

In the United States, the archival profession first laid roots in the late 1890s within the American Historical Association (AHA), forming the Conference of Archivists in 1909. In the early 19th century, the fields of history and archives advanced enough that one organization could not serve both. In the mid-thirties, the National Archives and the Society of American Archivists were formed, providing a professional identity to archivists. This was an important vocational moment because archivists were formally differentiating themselves from historians.

The rise of social history, new repositories, and professional associations fueled an influx of archivists in the 1970s. Today, the profession is in transition, as Baby Boomers retire, to be replaced with Generation X and Y. The A*CENSUS, a comprehensive nationwide survey of the profession conducted in 2004, found that the amount of people working in American archives “has roughly tripled [since the 1970s], a direct reflection of this expansion” (Beaumont & Walch, 2004, p. 313).

From the 1970s on, another crucial development of the profession was standardization, which “had always been problematic for archivists because they placed such emphasis on the idea of uniqueness” (O’Toole & Cox, 2006, p. 74). Collection distinctiveness is the point where librarians and archivists differ professionally. Although libraries may house rare or special collections, the majority of their holdings are published monographs, which have copies around the world with similar cataloging. Archivists, however, preserve and protect unique records, without counterparts. Additionally, while archivists deal with records only, librarians deal with many types of material. Archivists are responsible for information within a controlled environment, and librarians routinely handle information that crosses many technological and administrative barriers in the course of its life cycle. Since archival content differs at each repository, archivists must employ some type of standardization or best practices to provide access and give meaning to the collections.

As the technology of the 20th century allowed more records to be kept, there also became the need to distinguish between records managers and archivists. Archivists work with the permanently valuable records of an organization that no longer needs them for business purposes. Archivists make records available to researchers to document the history of the organization as well as the larger society. Records managers work with records no longer needed for everyday use, which may be temporary, awaiting a destruction date in congress with local, state, and federal law, or permanent, awaiting transfer to an archives. Traditionally, records managers do not grant access to these records for research because the organization still has legal control of them, thus controlling access to the records.

Despite the distinct professional identity that archivists hold, the profession is not as well known as similar professions like librarianship. Archivists face complex communication challenges within and outside of their organization. The absence of a standard university degree and a distinct career path affects how others with limited knowledge of the field perceive them. In my experience, I often have to explain what an archivist does to those I encounter. “It’s kind of like a librarian or a curator,” I explain. “I process files.” This, of course, does not convey the enthusiasm, stimulation, and fulfillment I feel as I work with records of enduring value. O’Toole and Cox (2006) sum it up best when they write, “The transition from archival monks to archival missionaries is by no means complete, but archivists have come to realize the importance of sharing the excitement of what they do with those who use archives—or would do if they understood them better” (p. 85).

Works Cited

Beaumont, N. P., & Walch, V. I. (2004). A*Census: Archival Census and Education Needs Survey in the United States. The American Archivist, 69, 291-618.

Fleckner, J. A. (2000). Dear Mary Jane: Some reflections on being an archivist. In R. C. Jimerson (Ed.), American archival studies: Readings in theory and practice (pp. 21-28). Chicago: Society of American Archivists.

O’Toole, J. M., & and Cox, R. J. (2006). Understanding archives & manuscripts . Chicago: Society of American Archivists.

Review of Leading and Managing Archives and Records Programs: Strategies for Success

2009-02-15T19:48:00.002-05:00

My review of Leading and Managing Archives and Records Programs: Strategies for Success. Edited by Bruce W. Dearstyne. (London: Facet, 2008).
Published in Journal of Documentation, 65(2), 2009.

In Leading and Managing Archives and Records Programs: Strategies for Success, editor Bruce Dearstyne, Adjunct Professor at the College of Information Studies, University of Maryland, solicited essays from accomplished American and British information professionals in government, commercial, and nonprofit organizations to assist archivists and records administrators to lead effectively. Future leaders in the field need to advocate for increasing the public use and appreciation of archives, as well as understand technology, administration, strategic planning, and fundraising issues. With this book, readers will discover better solutions for creating mission statements, marketing services, weathering institutional change, and overcoming human resources and budgeting challenges.

The difference between managing and leading, which requires “envisioning, changing, inspiring, and transforming,” is vast (293). Dearstyne finds that “Too often, programs are tolerably well managed and deliver acceptable levels of service, but they fall short of their full potential for success and outstanding achievement due to lack of leadership” (293). To remain funded, archivists and records managers should not maintain the status quo but be innovative and adaptable, traits that they are not known for traditionally.

Leadership fosters intentional transformations directed at valued objectives. Therefore, everyone at any career point has the potential to be a change agent. In “The Records Management Leader,” Eugenia K. Brumm, a twenty-year veteran of records administration, notes that becoming a leader is “an ongoing, never-ending process of moving towards a goal, but never quite achieving it. The lessons are cumulative and evolutionary, changing with each new experience and affiliation” (33). Leon Stout of Penn State University Libraries, in “Leading from the Middle: Building a University Archives,” writes about his mid-level leadership experience, taking advantage of opportunities in historical outreach, service, and strategic initiatives.

Mark Greene, President of the Society of American Archivists and director of the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming, adds, “…Leadership can and should exist at all levels of an organization” (137). His essay discusses how he led a team to transform the American Heritage Center from a dysfunctional repository to an archival powerhouse. Skills to achieve this began as a lone arranger at a college archive and developed with each position in his career.

Leaders demonstrate the wider business benefits of a dynamic program by emboldening the professional development of their team. United Kingdom records leader Peter Emmerson writes, “Managers are prepared, often under pressure from the substantial marketing budgets of technology vendors, to invest in equipment and software for managing record-keeping but not the essential professional expertise to ensure the investment is fully realized” (112). Effective leaders understand that human assets are just as important as technological innovations.

In “Stranger in a Strange Land: The Archivist and the Corporation,” Philip F. Mooney, Director of the Archives Department at Coca-Cola, outlines principles for success culled from three decades of experience. He advises that archives should never be linked to a single function, but serve a “broad portfolio of users,” with services marketed to a constantly changing work force (202). Leaders use success stories to build strategic, visible programs that track against larger corporate goals, because “the days of quietly processing collections and hoping someone will recognize the work are gone” (203). Despite mergers, turnovers, and downsizing, archives continue to protect institutional memory and prevent intellectual and financial loss.

Leaders advocate for the usefulness of their programs and personify organizational missions to resource allocators, decision makers, and external constituencies. Relevance is key, remarks James E. Fogerty, Head of Documentary Programs at the Minnesota Historical Society. In his essay, “Competing for Relevance: Archives in a Multiprogram Organization,” he writes that “archival management must be adept in creating relevance through use of the archives’ holdings and its staff expertise, and equally adept in advancing the perception of relevance to both internal and external clients” (133). Relevant programs align with organizational priorities, while following archival and record-keeping principles and practices.

In “Managing Change at the Vermont State Archives: A Continuing Issue,” Gregory Sanford and Tanya Marshall note that archivists and record managers must integrate “special knowledge of record keeping, institutional memory, and of access and preservation into our service to our institutions and the publics they serve” (226). They advise that leaders should understand the organization’s culture before changing it, establish relationships with record creators and users, and create a brand and mission statement to promote their programs.

Archives and records managers face complex communication challenges because their programs involve many aspects of an organization. One of the many ways to alleviate this problem is to adapt records management standards as the baseline for creating or improving programs, which uses best practices from other successful institutions and fosters a collaborate, professional environment. The absence of a standard university degree and a distinct career path for information professionals affects how they are perceived by others with limited knowledge of the field. Brumm cites an instance when a large, international pharmaceutical company promoted an employee without previous records administration experience or a college degree to a director of records management position. This would never happen in a field with a more established path to career advancement, such as finance.

Dearstyne bookends the volume with essays that first provide context and then summarize issues raised by the contributors. He also discusses ways to identify and implement successful leadership strategies, issues for further consideration, and management and leadership sources. His choice to include essays on records management standards and the technical challenges at The National Archives seems disparate because the role of leadership is less articulated than the other essays.
Excellent books abound on the theory and practice of archives and records administration, but few offer the insight on leadership and program development included in Leading and Managing Archives and Records Programs: Strategies for Success. Archivists and records managers interested in developing and leading programs should consult this book for a fair assessment of the challenges and opportunities they will encounter in their new endeavors.

World War II Rationing Ephemera

2009-02-10T20:51:00.003-05:00

The Ames Historical Society has a collection of World War II rationing ephemera online. The site explains,

During the Second World War, you couldn't just walk into a shop and buy as much sugar or butter or meat as you wanted, nor could you fill up your car with gasoline whenever you liked. All these things were rationed, which meant you were only allowed to buy a small amount (even if you could afford more). The government introduced rationing because certain things were in short supply during the war, and rationing was the only way to make sure everyone got their fair share...

Types of rationing included: Uniform coupon rationing (sugar is an example) provided equal shares of a single commodity to all consumers; Point rationing provided equivalent shares of commodities by coupons issued for points which could be spent for any combination of items in the group (processed foods, meats, fats, cheese); Differential coupon rationing provided shares of a single product according to varying needs (gasoline, fuel oil); and Certificate rationing allowed individuals products only after an application demonstrated need (tires, cars, stoves, typewriters).

Explore World War II Rationing

Nixon Archives and Enemies List

2009-01-30T20:44:00.005-05:00

Meghan Lee, archivist at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace, holds some of the Jeb Stuart Magruder papers recently added to the library's holdings. The library also released about 198 hours of tapes from the Nixon White House dating to November and December 1972 and consisting of nearly 1,400 conversations.

In a recent LA Times article, Christopher Goffard writes about the Nixon Presidential Library & Museum's holdings, some of which involve the creation of the president's infamous enemies list.

As part of a release of archival tapes and documents Monday, the Nixon Presidential Library & Museum revealed fresh records that reflect the 37th president's heated campaign to investigate, intimidate and smear political rivals and opponents of the Vietnam War.

Among the documents is a handwritten note from Nixon's top aide, H.R. Haldeman, on June 23, 1971, which may shed light on the origins of Nixon's infamous "enemies list." In the note, Haldeman records Nixon's order to bring the weight of the IRS down on attorney and former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, who had been critical of Nixon's Vietnam policy, and on the antiwar movement.

"Pull Clark Clifford & top supporters of doves," Haldeman writes. "Full list . . . full field audit."

In the next paragraph, Haldeman reminds himself to take action against "TK," believed to be Sen. Ted Kennedy. Haldeman writes: "Get him -- compromising situation . . . Get evidence -- use another Dem as front."

Read Nixon archives shed light on his campaign to investigate enemies

Flowing Data

2009-01-25T20:08:00.000-05:00

Recently, my brother sent me a link to Flowing Data, a website that "explores how designers, statisticians, and computer scientists are using data to understand ourselves better - mainly through data visualization."

There I learned about Britain from Above, a BBC series which displays the routes of taxis, airplanes, telephone, and Internet traffic. Flowing Data chose it as the best data visualization project of the year.

Read 5 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year

Postmodernism and the Archives

2009-01-20T23:44:00.003-05:00

Members of my archives class were discussing postmodernism recently. Postmodernists believe in the subjective nature of the world and, more specifically, the subjective nature of written documents. In Understanding Archives and Manuscripts, O’Toole and Cox assert that, in the literary world, “we can be more definite about things” (4). Moreover, they claim that with the advent of writing, “knowledge can be objective rather than subjective, acquiring an existence of its own, apart from the knower” (5). Not everyone in the class agreed with these statements.

The idea of postmodernism and the archives led to discovering Thomas Bartlett’s article, "Archive Fever." It discusses the battle over Jacques Derrida’s papers between his family and the University of California at Irvine. Postmodernist or not, every archives needs a clear, specific deed of gift!

In his final interview, given to the French newspaper Le Monde in the spring of 2004, Jacques Derrida spoke of death and writing: "I leave a piece of paper behind, I go away, I die: It is impossible to escape this structure, it is the unchanging form of my life." He worried that everything he wrote would simply disappear after he was gone.

"Who is going to inherit, and how?" he wondered. "Will there even be any heirs?"

It was a strange anxiety for a man whose role as a pioneer of literary theory brought him international fame. Best known as the father of deconstruction, a playfully aggressive method of analyzing texts, Derrida was also keenly interested in what people leave behind, and how it is stored and remembered. He even devoted one of his many books — Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, published in 1996 — to the subject.

And the philosopher himself left behind a lot. Along with his intellectual legacy, a voluminous paper trail of Derrida's thought remains. Most of those papers — 116 boxes and 10 oversized folders taking up 47.8 linear feet — are housed at the University of California at Irvine. Derrida, who held a professorship at Irvine, had, more than a decade before his death in 2004, chosen the university's library as the final resting place for his manuscripts. But there are more papers that remain in the office and attic of his house outside Paris, including his later writings, letters to colleagues, books from his personal library, and so on.

Last fall the university sued Derrida's widow and his children after they refused to turn over the remainder of his papers. It was a startling move, considering the almost casual way in which the deal was struck: Neither Derrida's initial gift of his papers to Irvine, nor an amended version of it, was witnessed by a lawyer or notary public. The dispute between Derrida's heirs and the university had gone on in secret for more than two years. The lawsuit brought it into the open and, at the same time, infuriated scholars who were close to him.

It was a decision that may have ended up doing more damage to the university than did the loss of Derrida's remaining papers. While decades of his thought have been exhaustively documented, what exactly he intended to give to the university remains unclear. That has left the heirs he longed for to squabble over larger questions about the nature of archives — and the slipperiness of language — that Derrida himself might have pondered.

Continue reading "Archive Fever"

Review of Information Literacy Programs in the Digital Age: Educating College and University Students Online

2009-01-20T21:45:00.005-05:00

My review of Information Literacy Programs in the Digital Age: Educating College and University Students Online. Compiled by Alice Daugherty and Michael F. Russo (Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2007).
Published in Journal of Academic Librarianship, 35(1) January 2009.

In Information Literacy Programs in the Digital Age: Educating College and University Students Online, Louisiana State University information literacy librarians Alice Daugherty and Michael F. Russo solicit academic librarians to describe the emergence, implementation, and appraisal of their online bibliographic instruction programs. The resulting twenty-four case studies of for-credit courses, discipline-integrated classes, and general and subject-specific tutorials serve as a resource for institutions with Web-based instruction, as well as those considering initiating programs.

Academic librarians are challenged with teaching basic information seeking skills to students who are writing college-level research papers, navigating academic libraries, and taking online classes for the first time and must consider that personality traits shape students’ reactions to Web-based pedagogy. Those who enjoy personal interactions feel more comfortable in the real-time classroom, while others with self-discipline and independence thrive in asynchronous, online environments. Programs should be crafted with the audience in mind: consider how the information needs and experience differ between on-campus undergraduates and distance education adults. Offering physical and digital options responds to a wider range of learning styles and better promotes library services.

Online information literacy programs enable collaborative teaching models and community building, especially because stakeholder support is vital to their success, because programs are shaped by institutional circumstances, mandates, and facilities. In “Online Information Literacy Course at UIS: Standing the Test of Time,” librarians Pamela M. Salela, Denise D. Green, and Julie Chapman write, “As our student population becomes increasingly diverse, as well as dispersed across time, space, and cultural perspectives, it will become increasingly important to devise ways of enabling community building in the online classroom” (70). This burgeoning environment develops dynamic relationships between librarians, IT staff, and faculty.

In “Sophisticated Simplicity in e-Learning: Online Instruction at UNC-Chapel Hill,” librarians Suchi Mohanty, Lisa Norberg, and Kim Vassiliadis discover three principles applicable to any online program: simplicity of design, focus on key issues, and reusable, scalable modules. Since content is updated continuously due to the constantly shifting information environment, the delivery system must be intuitive and flexible to respond to changes without reprogramming.

Online information literacy programs assist students in understanding the multifaceted, iterative nature of information retrieval and the strategies and competencies involved. Information searching is an intellectual process that remains similar despite institution, discipline, or academic level. Research universities, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges are well represented throughout the book, with the “Lessons Learned” section of each essay offering strategic planning advice unique to school and program types. In reading Information Literacy Programs in the Digital Age: Educating College and University Students Online, academic librarians will discover an institution and curriculum that fits their needs and receive essential counsel for developing and implementing a bibliographic instruction program that serves their students.

Understanding Archives and Manuscripts: Chapter 1 Summary

2009-01-15T15:24:00.007-05:00

The Society of American Archivists published the Archival Fundamentals series, which outlines essential archival concepts in an engaging, informative way. Understanding Archives and Manuscripts by Richard J. Cox and James M. O’Toole is the first in the series.

The first chapter discusses motives for creating records. Understanding these motives help place records in context, so archival functions of appraisal, arrangement, and description may be carried out. Motives include:

Economic: Records document how money is acquired, managed, and spent.

Legal: Records document the protection of rights, proof of ownership, etc.

Instrumental: Records serve specific functions, such as a blueprint assisting in construction.

Personal: Records document life events and memories, such as letters and diaries.

Social: Collective activities produce documents such as membership rosters and meeting minutes.

Symbolic: Records display cultural values. A diploma, for example, is more symbolic than practical.

O’Toole and Cox also discuss the characteristics of contemporary records:

Abundance: This means both ease of creation and ease of duplication. This is where More Product, Less Process comes into play.

Collective: Along with abundance is the emphasis on records and papers in the aggregate. Appraisal, arrangement, description, and even preservation and reference focus on groups of materials, not individual items.

Decentralized: Archivists no longer collect only the papers and records of the elite. History demands a more democratic approach to archival acquisition and preservation. But changes in record keeping practices and technology have altered how records are created and stored. The days of secretaries typing the letters and central storage files are over. People create their own documents and keep them on their own computers.

Interrelated: Government, corporate, and non-profit organizations are connected and interrelated. Archivists need to work with their colleagues as the records of any organization are likely to be spread among repositories.

Social Nature: The decentralized and interrelated nature of records creation and communication have emphasized the role they play in communication among people. O’Toole and Cox remind archivists to pay heed to the ways in which records represent social interaction and community building.

Shifting Usefulness: Records are created by individuals and organizations in the course of doing day-to-day business. They are used for the function for which they were created for a period of time. At some point they are no longer needed for that initial function, and archivists must decide if the records have enduring value for other reasons and use.

Black Ops and Material Culture

2009-01-10T14:17:00.002-05:00

Trevor Paglen, an artist, writer, and experimental geographer, wrote I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon's Black World.

Here's the book description:

They’re on the shoulder of all military personnel: patches that symbolize what a soldier’s unit does. But what happens if it’s top secret?

Shown here for the first time, these sixty patches reveal a secret world of military imagery and jargon, where classified projects are known by peculiar names (“Goat Suckers,” “None of Your Fucking Business,” “Tastes Like Chicken”) and illustrated with occult symbols and ridiculous cartoons. Although the actual projects represented here (such as the notorious Area 51) are classified, these patches—which are worn by military units working on classified missions—are precisely photographed, strangely hinting at a world about which little is known.

By submitting hundreds of Freedom of Information requests, the author has also assembled an extensive and readable guide to the patches included here, making this volume one of the best available surveys of the military’s black world—a $27 billion industry that has quietly grown by almost 50 percent since 9/11.

Here's a three-part series where Paglen describes the patches (including the one above):

Black World - Black Projects

Black World - Symbology

Black World - The Culture

The third video discusses how the patches, representing confidential projects that cannot be discussed, serve as records of enduring value that can only be interpreted correctly by a select group. They reveal everything and nothing. I would love to accession these babies!

Read the New York Times article, Inside the Black Budget, which has more photos of the patches with explanations of their meaning.

Yale's Family and Community Archives Project

2009-01-05T22:29:00.001-05:00

In the November/December 2008 issue of Archival Outlook, Nancy Lyon and Christine Weideman write about the Family and Community Archives Project (FCAP) jointly launched by Yale archivists from the Manuscripts and Archives Department and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The project introduced the archives profession to local highschool students by training them to be archivists for their own familes and communities.

What most impressed me was that they created lesson plans that explained archives in a simple, elegant way. Although I grew up with libraries and worked in them, I was only introduced to the archives as a graduate student in History. Outreach is needed to make the archives more accessible to those outside academia.

Explore the FCAP wiki of lesson plans, handouts, and resourses here.

The Society of American Archivists has also created an online resource, "Celebrating the American Record with Young People" here.

Review of Carl Larsson: An Annotated Bibliography

2009-01-05T20:52:00.000-05:00

My review of Carl Larsson: An Annotated Bibliography by Ann J. Topjon (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2008).
Published in College & Research Libraries, 70(1) January 2009.

Ann J. Topjon, Associate Professor and Librarian Emeritus at Whittier College, California, spent more than twenty years researching Swedish artist Carl Larsson. Topjon wrote exhibition catalog bibliographies for the 1992 retrospective in Stockholm and 1997’s “Carl and Karin Larsson: Creators of the Swedish Style” in London and consulted Swedish archives, libraries, and museums to create Carl Larsson: An Annotated Bibliography, a well-researched guide to his life and work.

Carl Larsson (1853-1919) is best known for his watercolors of domesticity and nature, which “represented the traditions of a peaceful and rural Swedish countryside as well as an uncomplicated existence, an idealized world” in the midst of the Industrial Revolution (vii). One benefit of this modern, mechanizing force was new color reproduction techniques in the 1890s, which brought his eight published albums of art and text into European homes. The German-published Das Haus in der Sonne (The House in the Sun), an amalgamation of three albums, became a 1909 bestseller and Larsson’s first international success.

Born into poverty, Larsson worked as a newspaper illustrator and photograph retoucher to support his family. He struggled at the Royal Art Academy in Stockholm and as an artist in Paris, dealing with depression and rejection from the art community, until he was finally recognized in the early 1880s. At Grèz-sur-Loing, a Scandinavian artists’ colony outside Paris, he painted breakthrough watercolors, abandoning his earlier oil painting style, and met his wife, artist Karin Bergöö (1859-1928). Larsson and Bergöö had eight children and inherited a house, Lilla Hyttnäs, in the small village of Sundborn in Dalarna, Sweden. Their lives and art have characterized the image of Sweden at home and abroad to this day.

Due to a rainy summer in 1894, making plein air painting impossible, Larsson’s energetic family life became the subject of his warm, bright watercolors of domestic comforts, epitomized in his first well-known album Ett Hem (A Home). The “Larsson style” of interior decorating, known for “freshness, light, clear colors, and ‘Swedishness’,” as compared to the dark, dignified Victorian interiors of the time, is the “apotheosis of Swedish design both nationally and internationally” (vii, 143). As well as contributing to design and interior decorating, Larsson was a master of all mediums and was influenced by British Pre-Raphaelitism, the 18th century provincial Gustavian period, Art Nouveau, Japonisme, and traditional Swedish arts and crafts.

The annotated bibliography contains his chronology, publications, book illustrations, and periodical writings and illustrations, as well as works about him, such as monographs, incidental works, encyclopedia entries, exhibition catalogs, and journal, yearbook, and newspaper articles. Sixteen color plates display his considerable skills.

Included is his last monumental, controversial work, “Midvinterblog” (“Midwinter Sacrifice”), a mural for a stairway at the National Museum of Stockholm, which was rejected by the its board of directors in 1916 for its dark subject matter. The “massive paean to paganism” depicts the Norse legend of King Domalde, who sacrificed himself to avert famine (223). Although Larsson’s work is sunny and sentimental, his dark side was demonstrated by his suicidal thoughts as a young man and his struggles with “Midvinterblog,” which some critics assert broke him psychologically.

The work differs from his other frescos for the museum, such as the triumphant, nationalistic “Gustav Vasas intåg i Stockholm 1523” (“The entry of Gustav Vasa into Stockholm, 1523”), also included in the book. One of the criticisms of “Midvinterblog” is that it is not historically accurate, but neither is “Gustav.” The controversy over the work culminated in 1987 when a Japanese executive purchased it, and again in 1997 when the museum bought it back and displayed it where it was originally intended.

Through the bibliography, one traces his narrative through art history. His impact on the Swedish national conscience is noted by the outpouring of grief after his 1919 death. Interest waned until 1953, when a new edition of Jag, his autobiography, was published and a retrospective was mounted in Stockholm to commemorate his hundredth birthday. While earlier works explored Larsson’s formal art, a new generation of scholars shifted their focus to Carl and Karin’s design aesthetics and influence. Also traceable is the “Midvinterblog” controversy, starting in 1911, with peaks during the 1987 auction and 1997 museum purchase.

Carl Larsson: An Annotated Bibliography is an accomplishment, with almost 6,000 entries from around the world, spanning his lifetime to the present. To “engender further interest in scholarly research on Carl Larsson to ensure his continued and rightful place in the history of art,” Topjon skillfully and systematically documents and annotates works of and about the artist (viii). The book is recommended for art history libraries, as well as institutions that focus on interior decorating and design, due to the Larssons’ enduring impact in these areas.

Libraries and Archives Depicted on Most Evil

2008-12-15T20:18:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite shows is Most Evil on the Investigation Discovery Channel. Forensic psychiatrist Michael Stone from Columbia University researches and rates murderers, serial killers, and sociopaths on a scale of evil.

I have been interested in true crime since I was a child, which I am often teased about because you wouldn't expect me to have such dark interests. For instance, the first grown-up book I read was Wasted: The Preppie Murder when I was 9! I also wrote my Master's thesis on the media representation of serial killer Aileen Wuornos. I rattle off details about killers the way others talk about athletes.

Of course, I am also drawn to the show because Dr. Stone attempts to code and classify disordered, abhorrent human behavior on a hierarchical scale of depravity. On opposite sides of the spectrum are those who kill in self-defense, the least evil, and psychopaths who torture and kill, the most evil. But who is to say that "Criminals who kill in self-defense, but are extremely provocative toward the victim" (Level 4) are less evil than "Traumatized, desperate persons who kill" (Level 5)?

Between crime reenactments, the show depicts Stone using library and archival materials, such as microfiche, card catalogs, and files. In reality, most of the research is probably conducted by Stone and his assistants through digital means. For instance, newspaper articles are more easily retrieved through the Internet, rather than microfiche.

The use of these traditional resources connote Ivy-League academic research more readily than electronic files. It is more dramatic and visually stimulating to show the face of a serial killer via overhead projector than on a computer screen or Stone researching in a noble, wood-paneled library. Perhaps I am the only one to notice because I have always loved the physical space of archives and libraries? I am interested in how we will visually represent research in the future as we become more used to the Internet as a primary research tool.

Explore Dr. Stone's Evil Scale

Wineville Chicken Coop Murders Historical Photos

2008-12-05T17:24:00.003-05:00

The "murder farm" of Gordon Stewart Northcott near Wineville in Riverside County. The panorama shows in detail the exact places where dark deeds transpired, according to Deputy District Attorney Earl Redwine and Sanford Clark, Northcott's 15-year-old nephew, whose story brought about Northcott's arrest at age 24 in Canada. Clark accused Northcott of mistreating, murdering and burying boys in quicklime. Two boys were murdered and three buried in the chicken houses in the background. Arrow at right shows a coop where Clark asserted Northcott imprisoned Walter Collins, kidnapped Los Angeles boy, and finally killed him with an axe. Collins was held captive in the coop, slept there on a rude cot, and could only look into the pens at right. Slaying and burial sites of the Winslow brothers are noted.

As regular readers know, I love true crime. Ads for the film The Changeling noted that the movie was based on true events: the 1928-1930 Wineville Chicken Coop Murders, a case so notorious that the town changed its name to Mira Loma in 1930.

From Wikipedia:

"In September 1928, the Los Angeles Police Department, acting on a tip as to the whereabouts of a missing Canadian boy in the area, went to the Northcott Ranch, a small chicken farm located in present day Mira Loma, California. There they discovered the missing boy, Sanford Clark. Under questioning, Clark claimed that he had been kidnapped by his cousin, Gordon Stewart Northcott, the son of the farm's owner. Northcott had apparently kept Clark prisoner on the ranch, physically abusing him and threatening to kill the boy if he fled. Clark claimed that Northcott had abducted and murdered as many as twenty children between the ages of nine and twelve. Clark was able to lead police to the graves of some of the victims. Northcott was arrested near Vernon, British Columbia, after having fled to his native Canada...

...The Los Angeles Police Department was also involved in a scandal as a result of this case. Arthur Hutchens, Jr., a runaway from Illinois but who was originally from Iowa, claimed he was the missing Walter Collins so he could get a free trip to California. The police considered the case closed and tried to convince Walter's mother, Christine Collins, that Hutchens was her son. When she refused to believe it, she was placed in the psychiatric ward of the Los Angeles County General Hospital. Only after Hutchens admitted he was not Christine Collins' son, ten days later, was she released."

The Los Angeles Public Library has a photo collection which includes 121 photos associated with the case. Enter "Northcott" as a keyword.

Read more about the case here

Digitized Japanese Internment Camp Yearbooks

2008-12-01T16:57:00.005-05:00

Aquila was a yearbook for Japanese-American high school students interned in a camp during World War II. The University of California has scans of two editions here.

This facinates me for several reasons: the banality of evil, maintaining traditions during unusual (to say the least) circumstances, and, of course, the capability of digital archives to reach users across time and space.

Old book sheds new light on Great Lakes shipping history

2008-11-25T21:49:00.000-05:00

Debra Majer, Archivist for the Diocese of London holds a captain's log from the early 1800's.
Photograph by: Jason Kryk, The Windsor Star

An archivist who was digging through old documents in the basement of a Harrow church says she has unearthed a 19th century ledger that provides a rare glimpse into Great Lakes shipping history.

"It was as I went through the book and went closer to the back ... I realized this was something unbelievable and exceptional," Debra Majer said Wednesday.

The Catholic diocese of London archivist was holding a treasure trove: a ledger dating to the 1800s with hundreds of names of ships' captains and vessels with the dates they sailed and their fates. She held 255 pages detailing brigs, tugs and steamships that sailed the Great Lakes.

Read more

Review of Patriotic Information Systems

2008-11-20T20:09:00.000-05:00

My review of Patriotic Information Systems. Edited by Todd Loendorf and G. David Garson. (Hershey, PA: ICI Publishing, 2008). Published in Online Information Review, 32(6), 2008.

In Patriotic Information Systems, editors Todd Loendorf and G. David Garson, both from North Carolina State University, present ten papers exploring the intersection of the Patriot Act and civil liberties. Although citizens forfeit some freedom for society’s protection in times of crisis, privacy and information access rights are jeopardized in a post 9/11 world.

Divided into sections, “Freedom of Information and Access” and “Security, Technology, and Democracy,” the book questions the survival of egalitarian values in a surveillance society. Garson’s introductory chapter discusses democratic and technological issues elaborated on in later essays and calls for a comprehensive civil remedies statue, noting that “the scales have tipped so heavily in favor of surveillance and security and so much against privacy and freedom, that proposals for reform seem almost utopian” (18). Loendorf’s concluding chapter, “Out of Control? The Real ID Act of 2005,” opposes the implementation of a national ID card due to financial, security, and privacy concerns. Other papers discuss Internet surveillance, radio frequency technology, Freedom of Information Act restrictions, the Patriot Act’s impact on libraries, and information system dismantlement due to perceived security threats.

Describing the Patriot Act as “one of the greatest assaults on personal privacy ever launched upon the citizens of our nation,” the authors castigate the Bush administration’s interpretation and enforcement of privacy and freedom of information laws (vii). They write that “…information gathering [and] sophisticated information gathering tools serve as an important myth promoting greater legitimacy and confidence in the government’s ability to provide security to the citizens” (117). Conflicts between privacy rights and public interest are inevitable, but the shift from transparent policies to massive classification portends a dismal future when IT systems may be “less hospitable to the democratic visions which some theorists once anticipated would be among the most important contributions of information technology to society” (x).

Librarians balance issues of privacy and intellectual freedom with government requests for information. In a chapter discussing studies from the University of Illinois’s Library Research Center, researchers note that “whatever the immediate impact the terrorist attacks had on libraries, it has stayed roughly the same 1 year later, and perhaps demonstrates more long-term effects of September 11 and the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act” (87). Another chapter, “Watching What We Read: Implications of Law Enforcement Activity in Libraries Since 9/11” found that budget cuts impacted libraries more than legislation and librarians were hesitant to disparage the act for fear of losing patron support.

Patriotic Information Systems is suggested for information professionals concerned with the compromise of information systems through the interpretation of the Patriot Act. The editors remain hopeful that the upcoming change in administration will lead to truly patriotic information systems that fight terrorism abroad while defending freedom at home.

The Semantic Web, A Case Study at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

2008-11-20T19:43:00.002-05:00

Recently, I attending the Museum Computer Network Conference in Washington D.C. I was impressed by the presentation The Semantic Web, A Case Study at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, presented by Koven Smith, Associate Manager of Interpretive Technology and Don Undeen, Senior Information Architect.

Here's the workshop description:

"What is the Semantic Web and why should you care? This session will answer these questions and more by presenting a case study of several prototype Semantic Web applications currently in development at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The presentation will focus on the practical issues associated with deploying semantic technologies in a museum environment including creating triple stores and finding new data relationships using natural language processing and clustering techniques. The panelists will introduce the languages and tools of the Semantic Web including RDF, OWL, and SPARQL and will present several real-world demonstrations using museum data."

Read the PowerPoint here.

Artifact thief to serve prison time

2008-11-15T21:17:00.001-05:00

All too often, it seems like archivists only make the news when they steal the holdings of the institutions they work for. I've been following the case of Daniel D. Lorello, an archivist at the New York State Library and Archives, who stole more than 1,600 artifacts over eleven years.

From a recent article:

ALBANY — A former state archivist and Civil War expert who stole hundreds of historical documents and artifacts belonging to the New York State Library and sold some of them over the Internet for personal profit was sentenced on Thursday to two to six years in prison.

Daniel D. Lorello, 54, of Van Leuven Drive, Rensselaer, apologized to his family and co-workers at his sentencing appearance before Albany County Court Judge Thomas Breslin.

In addition to prison time, he must pay $125,500 in restitution, to be divided among people who unknowingly bought stolen property from him and later returned it to the state.

He must also forfeit his personal collection of historic artifacts and documents, valued at approximately $80,000, to the New York State Library and Archives.

Lorello was arrested in January and pleaded guilty to second-degree grand larceny on Aug. 8 for stealing more than 1,600 artifacts from New York state between Jan. 1, 1997, and Jan. 24, 2008.

The Attorney General’s Office said on Thursday that more than 1,600 stolen items have been recovered.

“In serving as a guardian of New York’s historical treasures, Mr. Lorello abused his position to steal priceless artifacts instead of protecting them for future generations,” Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said in a statement.

Lorello, in a hand-written statement submitted to the court earlier this year, said he stole the items in part to pay $10,000 in credit card bills run up by his daughter. He admitted he took things when he needed to pay family bills for house renovations, car bills, tuition and his daughter’s credit card problem. He took between 300 to 400 items in 2007.

The thefts were discovered after the state Library was contacted by Joseph Romito, a history buff from Virginia, who alerted state authorities to a pending sale of an item Lorello posted on eBay, and which he believed belonged to the library.

The item was a four-page letter to a New York general by John C. Calhoun from 1823. Calhoun was the seventh vice president of the United States, serving under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, and was an avid secessionist.

Lorello also admitted stealing two copies of the Davey Crockett Almanac, a Poor Richard’s Almanack, published by Benjamin Franklin, which he sold for $1,001, and a visiting card portrait of Civil War Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock.

State Education Commissioner Richard Mills in a statement said: “Access to the historical collections of the nation is a fundamental right in our democracy. When someone steals from those collections, we are all harmed. Fortunately, most of the items stolen by Mr. Lorello have now been recovered.”

Lorello, who resigned from his position at the Department of Education, had worked at the state archives since 1979 and oversaw the movement of records during renovation. He worked on the 11th floor of the Cultural Education Center, the same building where the State Museum is located.

Source

Review of Archival Internships: A Guide for Faculty, Supervisors, and Students

2008-10-25T22:55:00.004-04:00

My review of Archival Internships: A Guide for Faculty, Supervisors, and Students by Jeannette A. Bastian and Donna Webber (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2008).
Published in Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals, 4(4) Fall 2008.

While the importance of internships has been recognized since the archival profession’s establishment in the 1930s, a lack of research and standards has hindered their development. Jeannette A. Bastian and Donna Webber’s Archival Internships: A Guide for Faculty, Supervisors, and Students addresses this problem by imparting a holistic view of internships from the perspectives of faculty advisors, site supervisors, and students. Bastian, Associate Professor and Archives Program Director at Simmons College, and Webber, Simmons College Archivist, have years of experience placing and supervising interns. The manual developed from their need for overarching internship criterion when they discovered that sites had different business rules that produced inconsistent practica for students.

The authors conducted two years of research via focus groups, questionnaires, e-mail interviews, and web surveys; they also cite past research. The book provides site supervisors and faculty advisors with best practices, as well as assisting students with realistic expectations for internships. Although the book’s focus is on academic internships, a chapter focuses on the merit of independent paid opportunities—often the only option due to geography or finances. The guide also includes case studies that illustrate problems and solutions, appendices of sample forms and procedures, and a selected bibliography.

Through practical experience, students demonstrate their comprehension of archival principles and receive structured feedback on their newly acquired skills. Theory and practice meet during experiential learning, a microcosm of professional work where faculty, students, and site supervisors build consensus around processes, goals, and achievable outcomes. The authors state, “Cooperatively planned, [internships] can be ideal blends of giving and getting, a way for the profession to continually renew itself” (83). As archives become more technologically based, students will apply their knowledge of current and future trends, assisting working archivists in maintaining cutting edge procedures.

The tension between theory and practice runs throughout the text. The authors write, “Too great an emphasis on internships may reduce archival education to mere training, but with no practical learning at all, students are ill-equipped to enter a workplace that places a high value on experience” (15). Before the development of graduate-level archival education, historians with master’s or doctorate degrees became archivists through on-the-job training. Internships were a core component of early graduate programs, but became elective in some programs since the 1970s. Today, graduate education, work experience, and continued professional development is the ideal blend for attaining archival knowledge throughout one’s career.

The place and design of internships in programs is debatable, but as graduate archival education becomes a professional requisite, it will inevitably produce more interns. Educational offerings, especially multi-course curricula, have expanded in recent years, and some institutions offer master’s degrees in archival studies. These opportunities allow students to explore their interests beyond an educational core. The increase in eager neophytes could transform internships from individualized transactions to institutionalized programs that are “rigorous and designed with care” (13). Although the book does not resolve the debate between the two recognized career paths (education with experience or experience alone), continued demand for internships may lead to studies on their responsibility in educating beginner archivists.

The authors recommend measures, based on SAA’s 2002 Guidelines for a Graduate Program in Archival Studies, which established minimum educational standards for curriculum, faculty, and structure. Internships should augment, not replace, training and be structured, monitored, and evaluated by faculty advisors, and supervised by mentoring archivists. Academic programs should also be responsible for student placement, communication with site supervisors, and record maintenance. Ideally, each program should have at least one internship of 120 to 180 hours in the middle of the course of study with specific project deliverables.

Many guidelines omit site supervisors, the most critical part of internships, as multiple surveys have demonstrated. “The challenge [is to] fulfill both academic requirements and practical needs,” state the authors (15). Ideally, institutions and students enjoy a mutually beneficial internship. Given the realities of archives, intern-appropriate work may be more important to the institution than engaging for the student. Best practices call for a project that can be completed fully, giving the intern a sense of accomplishment. The book is especially useful to institutions considering hosting internships as it provides guidelines and standardized forms to minimize administration time.

Although some of the advice in Archival Internships may be common sense, this all-purpose volume for faculty, supervisors, and students should produce fieldwork that is more consistent and benefit new archivists. Internships are one way that archivists can encourage the continued development of comprehensive educational programs with a wider variety of master’s degree programs. These much-needed guidelines both define the academic preparation needed to meet these new challenges, and the obligation of the professional community to create rigorous and challenging internships for the archivists of the future.

Inspirational thought

2008-10-10T21:37:00.000-04:00

For some of us, books and libraries symbolize some of the very qualities and modes o being that are threatened in our fast-paced instrumental lives. Books speak of time and depth and attention. They speak of a slower rhythm of life. And in their weighty physicality, they draw us back to our own materiality, and to the materiality of the world. Libraries are places not just where books can be found, but where people can temporarily remove themselves from the speed and busyness of life, where they can read and write and reflect. They are (or can be) shared sacred places in a secular, common world.

Levy, D. M. (2001) Scrolling Forward – Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age, Arcade Publishing, 197.

Online Collections

2008-10-05T23:38:00.000-04:00

The rise and rapidity of the Internet has made unique, personal collections of material culture instantaneously accessible. One that I've visited recently is No ID No Skate, a collection of skatepark ID cards from the 1970s and 80s. There are almost 400 IDs from 75 parks in 18 states.

Visit No ID No Skate

What do employers want?

2008-10-01T21:07:00.000-04:00

Recently, I attended a discussion panel of local library employers. (Although I am committed to being an archivist, I find some library-related career advice helpful). Representatives from academic, public, and special libraries answered questions about what they are looking for in new hires and what skills are in demand in today’s library job market.

Most of the advice was obvious, but some statements stood out for me:

Trust the process: take direction from the job description and be patient.

The best time to apply for jobs is in the middle of the academic semester, especially for public libraries. New library science graduates apply at the end of the semester which creates a glut of talent. It's easier to stand out when the hiring pipeline has been cleared.

Treat the receptionist well. (Conversely, how the receptionist treats you as an interviewee says a lot about an employer too).

Icebreakers are important because it shows how you interact with others. Are you someone that they want to have morning coffee with?

Even more recently, on the advice of my faculty adviser, I met with an archivist who's been working in the field for more than thirty years. We discussed the profession in general, and he gave me two critiques on my resume. I should include professional associations because it says that I am willing to invest in my career. I should also highlight the finding aids I created. I am always amazed and grateful that the archivists I have reached out to have always been willing to take time from their busy schedules to advise someone new to the field!

Review of Subject Access to a Multilingual Museum Database: A Step-by-Step Approach to the Digitization Process

2008-09-25T21:41:00.004-04:00

My review of Subject Access to a Multilingual Museum Database: A Step-by-Step Approach to the Digitization Process by Allison Siffre Guedalia Kupietzky (Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2007).
Published in Journal of Academic Librarianship, 34(5), September 2008.

Cataloging items for museums and other cultural institutions may be problematic due to their visual nature and uniqueness. Libraries have benefited from cooperative cataloging and data standardization because books are text-based, often in one language, and have objective attributes repeatable among copies. Objets d’art, however, are distinctive and subjective; they lack language but must be cataloged to exceed cultural and linguistic boundaries. Allison Siffre Guedalia Kupietzky, Collections Database Manager for the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, addresses these challenges by creating a valuable guide that simplifies and regulates cataloging procedures for multilingual digital assets. To “fulfill its pedagogic and preservation missions,” a museum must integrate art history, museology, computer science, and project management to create a holdings management system (ix). Museum professionals may lack the necessary skills to accomplish this, but this didactic volume trains readers to become collections database managers.

Kupietzky reviews related literature and theoretical issues and addresses the problems of digital documentation of museum objects. She presents a comprehensive survey of curatorial systems from the mid-1960s to the present, noting their strengths and weaknesses and presents a case study of the computerization process of Jerusalem’s Israel Museum. No common platforms for data standards or schema exist, although the Getty’s art history lexicon is widely used and some metadata can be crosswalked between schemas. She stresses that a cultural heritage institution’s individuality requires custom methods, but that cross-institutional sharing can save time, money, and energy.

The highlight of the book is a set of systematic procedures and guidelines for implementing a holdings database—the Six-step Activation Guideline for E-Kulture (SAGE-K) method. The steps include museum characteristics definition, database selection, digitalization preparation, needs analysis, data standardization, and pilot project testing. Two critical elements must exist: a multilingual lexicon and a collections manager knowledgeable in museology and computer science. The guidelines for digitizing text and images used by the Israel Museum can be adapted to suit other museum’s needs.

Appendices include museum and cultural heritage standards and organizations, online monolingual lexicons, museum code of ethics, a list of museum database programs, methodological notes, a digitized collection example, digitization guidelines, and a glossary.

This book’s limited focus is on medium to large museums. Smaller institutions may lack the labor and funding to embark on a digital, let alone multilinguistic, endeavor. However, with a little creativity, the SAGE-K method can be adapted to smaller museums, as well as libraries and archives.

This book compliments another Libraries Unlimited title: Howard F. Greisdorf and Brian C. O’Connor’s Structures of Image Collections: From Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc to Flickr (2008). While Structures presents an intellectual and theoretical framework of image collections issues, Subject Access provides practical advice on the execution of a digital collection.

Dick Cheney ordered to preserve records

2008-09-25T21:00:00.001-04:00

Vice President Dick Cheney stands with hand over heart for the playing of the national anthem, Wednesday, May 21, 2008, during the U.S. Coast Guard Academy commencement ceremony in New London, Conn. White House photo by David Bohrer from http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/

A federal judge has ordered Vice President Dick Cheney to preserve all records that relate to his office and official duties pending the outcome of a lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, D.C., the Society of American Archivists, and other historical and academic organizations. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly noted in her decision the possibility of “irreparable injury” to the historical record if the vice president’s office destroyed or failed to preserve records while the case proceeded.

Read Cheney Ordered to Preserve Records in Case Closely Watched by Academic Groups

Read Cheney Ordered to Preserve Records

Banned Books Week Banner

2008-09-20T22:38:00.001-04:00

Look what the Dayton Metro Library East Branch created:

During Banned Books Week, we show our support of the intellectual freedom and the freedom to read. One of the reccuring images we have used each year is this banner we created with 99 of the 100 most banned books for the years 1990-2000. There are a surprising number of literary classics, children's books and books we've all grown up reading at home, in the library and at school. Authors like Roald Dahl, Stephen King, Judy Blume and Chris Crutcher even have several titles on this list!

Visit the Banned Books Week Banner and click on the covers to reveal their titles.

Banned Books

2008-09-15T22:57:00.001-04:00

I've spent entirely too much time trying to find what books Sarah Palin wanted banned from the Wasilla library. Although lists have circulated, there's no evidence that she wanted those specific books removed. Rather, I would guess that whatever books she wanted banned were ones that were frequently challenged by others.

For instance, the American Library Association's 10 Most Challenged Books of 2007 were:

1. “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
Reasons: Anti-Ethnic, Sexism, Homosexuality, Anti-Family, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group

2. “The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Violence

3. “Olive’s Ocean,” by Kevin Henkes
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language

4. “The Golden Compass,” by Philip Pullman
Reason: Religious Viewpoint

5. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain
Reason: Racism

6. “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language

7. “TTYL,” by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

8. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou
Reason: Sexually Explicit

9. “It’s Perfectly Normal,” by Robie Harris
Reasons: Sex Education, Sexually Explicit

10. “The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

Banned Books Week runs from September 27 to October 4.

Check out Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. How many have you read?

Browsing spines

2008-09-10T22:00:00.000-04:00

Lisa Chellman, a writer and children's librarian, wrote an excellent post about the spines of books being even more important than their covers for browsing, especially for young, reluctant, readers.

I often weave my way around the shelves of my local library, slowing near the true crime section and the biography shelves. An interesting title, artistically presented on the spine, will make me investigate further.

"When readers are faced with rows upon rows of spine-out books, what draws them to a particular volume, causes them to pull it off the shelf so they can then be enticed by the cover design and the jacket copy?

I believe it's two interrelated variables: the title and the spine design. The title is the spine's most important content. First and foremost, the title should be easy to read. Readers should be able to identify the book without squinting or pulling it off the shelf. That's something the old-style, no-nonsense, K.I.S.S. spines had going for them: pure functionality. Artistry is important, but it should come in a rather distant second."

Read the rest of her post, Spinal Exam

Library Deaths

2008-09-01T22:48:00.000-04:00

Pattee Library stacks at Penn State

Murders in libraries are a common theme in detective and mystery novels. But what about in real life?

Recently, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote an article about Betsy Aardsma, a graduate student who was stabbed to death at Penn State's Pattee Library in 1969. Her murderer was never found.

Cheri Jo Bates was beaten and stabbed to death by the Zodiac Killer outside the library of Riverside City College in 1966. A morbid poem about the murder was etched into a desk in the library soon after.

Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer who murdered 10 people in Wichita between 1974 and 1991, sent taunting letters to the police and the media. His first communication, sent in 1974, was left in an engineering book in the Wichita Public Library. In 2004, he dropped another letter in the book return box of a downtown branch.

In 1999, the Columbine massacre concluded in the school library, where 10 people were killed and the shooters committed suicide.

In 2003, two students fell to their deaths off the balcony in NYU's Bobst Library. One was a suicide; the other was a drug-induced accident.

Looking through ALA's American Libraries' archive, I found these stories:

Murder-Suicide at Atlanta Public Library

Library Clerk Murdered Leaving Job at Night

Are there other well known deaths that occurred in libraries?

Read more about the death of Betsy Aardsma.

Pay your library fines or go to jail

2008-08-25T21:25:00.000-04:00

Heidi Dalibor's booking photo from The Smoking Gun

The Smoking Gun reported on the arrest of Heidi Dalibor, a 20-year-old Wisconsin woman who failed to respond to letters and phone calls about two overdue books. While I understand that libraries have the right to retrieve their materials or be compensated for their replacement, stories like this fuel stereotypes that libraries are old-fashioned, overzealous, and punitive. It doesn't help that the fines were $30, but the cost of bailing her out of jail was around $170.

It reminds me of the Seinfeld episode with Mr. Bookman, the Library Detective:

Read more about the arrest at The Smoking Gun

At Wal-Mart, copyright lasts forever

2008-08-20T22:13:00.000-04:00

In a followup to my post about a digital slider for copyright, a post on BoingBoing linked to a Flickr discussion about Wal-Mart not letting a customer scan family photos, some a hundred years old, because the employees believe that studio photography is under copyright forever.

tstamps says:

"Has anyone else run into this?

Several times I have heard of people attempting to get (family) photos copied at Wal-Mart and refused because they were "copyrighted" - because they were made by a photograph studio. Even if the person who OWNS the copyright were to ask a Wal-Mart photo manager to copy it, they would refuse. They misinterpret the word "copyright" to mean "copywrong," That is to say: Copy?..... wrong!...

A cousin just informed me that a one-of-a-kind rare photo of my grandfather and grandparents was in his collection, and is over 100 years old. Unfortunately he only had time to stop at Wal-Mart and will be on vacation for the next two or three weeks.

He was informed by the Wal-Mart "genius" that since the photo was taken by a studio, it was "copyrighted" which "meant it was not allowed to be copied" by anyone, at any time, period."

Read more, followed by lively commenting.

Review of Film Preservation: Competing Definitions of Value, Use, and Practice

2008-08-15T21:23:00.004-04:00

My review of Film Preservation: Competing Definitions of Value, Use, and Practice by Karen F. Gracy. (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2007).
Published in Metropolitan Archivist, Summer 2008.

In Film Preservation: Competing Definitions of Value, Use, and Practice, film historian and academic Karen F. Gracy presents a robust ethnographic survey of American individuals and organizations that conserve moving images. In response to the paucity of research in the field, Gracy analyzes “film preservation in action,” which she delineates as the historic, economic, and theoretical frameworks within the film archiving and preservation community, examining it as a sociocultural phenomenon, a “separate social universe, with its own structure, dynamics, and conventions.”

Over the last thirty years, film has increasingly been recognized as a valuable cultural heritage object. Films are “signifiers with multiple referents whose multiplicity of value [can be] historical, cultural, social, aesthetic, educational, economic, or entertainment…” However, moving images face inimitable preservation challenges. Decomposition, due to film’s delicate nature, is the foremost problem. Studios and production companies own copyright to the material and must be consulted before use—even preservation; historically, owners have been reluctant to release their rights. Limited funding also challenges archives: one film can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars. The definition of preservation itself has become “multi-layered and supersaturated” with meaning, transitioning from simple activities like copying a film to a more stable format to theoretical issues of values and policies debated among archivists.

Film Preservation is influenced by social theorist Pierre Bourdieu’s work on “the field of cultural production,” whereas institutions “consecrate a certain type of work” by the authority to define and control what is worth protecting. Film archives work inversely, often ceding their authority over selection, preservation, and access to studios that hold intellectual property rights. Film archives also differ from other cultural heritage institutions because of their interest with mostly popular, rather than high, arts.

These issues contribute to the instability of film archives within the hierarchy of cultural institutions. The text’s crux is, “Without the exclusive authority to control the work of film preservation and restoration, what are the ultimate consequences for the cultural imperatives of preservation and access to moving images?” This concern pertains to other archival areas because cultural institutions may relinquish their authority due to copyright law issues and technological advances in the future.

Film Preservation is especially valuable because of the author’s ethnographic fieldwork conducted within the archival environment. Gracy documents the decision-making process of film preservation in a series of flowcharts, illustrating selection, fund raising, inspection and inventory, laboratory preparation, duplication, storage, cataloging, and access. Although the text emphasizes social activities over techniques, the charts provide a meaningful assessment of information about the film preservation process, which is often not as extensively documented as it should be.

Archivists, of both film and other mediums, will be interested in this text, as it balances theory with practical advice. Film Preservation teases out the challenges of archiving and preserving moving images with a sense of optimism for the future, providing a solid foundation of subsequent ethnographic work in this field.

Nonprofits and Cultural Heritage

2008-08-10T19:42:00.001-04:00

While reading Bill Ivey's Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights for ARLIS/NA Reviews, I was particularly stuck by this passage (pp. 45-47):

“Most of America’s twentieth-century culture was produced by for-profit arts industries, and much of our cultural heritage has been no better treated than assets such as buildings and furniture. But what about the network of orchestras, dance companies, theaters, and opera companies—organizations that grew up on the nonprofit side of America’s cultural playing field? And what about libraries, archives, and personal collections—have they managed to serve the public interest by preserving intangible heritage and making it available to citizens? When it comes to preserving work they create, nonprofits haven’t done very well, and our underfunded public and private archives have struggled to keep up with expanding collections, expensive technologies, and an increasingly burdensome intellectual property environment.

As record executive Dan Sheehy notes, tapes and films are “much more ephemeral than most other broad categories of human achievement,” and, although operating under public service charters, most nonprofit cultural organizations have simply never had the resources required to adequately manage historical materials generated by their own work. Often boxed in by restrictive union regulations, orchestras, opera companies, and nonprofit theatrical production companies have often found it difficult or impossible to legally memorialize their own work. Even when recordings of productions are generated, it’s far too costly for the typical nonprofit to maintain archives of those film or tape recordings that can be authorized. Consider that the New York Philharmonic generates fifteen hours of new recordings each week; multiply that total by the two hundred or so orchestras that archive their own work, and add the fields of dance and theater, and the scope of the ongoing preservation challenge emerges.

Even museums and historical societies, nonprofits with stated preservation and public access mandates, have done a far from optimal job of preserving creativity from the past. This is intangible heritage we’re talking about, sounds and images captured on discs, tapes, films, or hard drives that have value only because of their content. Museums and historical societies have had their hands full simply dealing with buildings, artifacts, and monuments—tangible things you can walk up and touch. In 2005 Heritage Preservation (a Washington-based heritage advocacy organization) surveyed 30,000 collections in museums, libraries, and archives and discovered that more than half had suffered damage from water or light and that ‘many institutions lack basic environmental controls that prevent photographs from losing color [and] keep rare books from crumbling to dust.’

Financial pressures have not only prevented museums from protecting collections; they have encouraged museums to continually look to their holdings as potential sources of income. Tight preservation budges mean that sometimes holdings are simply sold, usually after a committee has quietly declared them ‘surplus,’ arguing that the artworks don’t line up with core collection policies of the museum. New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman pummeled the New York Public Library following the deaccessioning (sale) of the Asher B. Durand painting Kindred Spirits. Noting that little public debate had preceded Sotheby’s auction of the piece (which was purchased by the Arkansas-based Walton Family Foundation, of Wall-Mart fame), Kimmelman concluded that today, “in America, celebrity and money are the measuring sticks of cultural value.” Historical assets attached to nonprofits that aren’t in the culture business have fared even worse: witness the dismal handling of speeches, letters, and other documents by the Martin Luther King Jr. estate. After decades of attempting to earn royalties by licensing the civil rights leaders’ words, the King collection was on the verge of being liquidated by, you guessed it, Sotheby’s. (A consortium of Atlanta-based universities stepped in to acquire the King material at the last moment.) Although nonprofit status exists to serve the public interest, financial constraints, union policies, and contractual commitments have made it difficult for tax-exempt institutions to set a standard of preservation and access significantly better than what has evolved in for-profit arts industries."

More Product, Less Process

2008-08-05T21:54:00.002-04:00

I recently attended the Metro workshop, Archival Processing: Implementing New and Efficient Strategies, presented by Dan Santamaria, Assistant University Archivist at Princeton’s Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library.

A 2005 American Archivist article, “More Product, Less Process: Pragmatically Revamping Traditional Processing Approaches to Deal with Late 20th-Century Collections,” by Mark A. Greene and Dennis Meissner, took the archival world by storm the moment it was published.

The authors found that the rate of processing 20th century collections cannot keep up with the growth of collections, resulting in inaccessible backlogs. Processing practices, developed primarily for 19th century collections, are not sufficient to deal with the size and scope of modern collections. Archivists tend to process at an ideal level, rather than focusing on a “golden minimal” of processing necessary to make collections available. The least amount of work should be done to adequately meet user needs. Arrangement, description, and preservation work should all be done at the same level, which is usually the series level. In other words, accessibility triumphs all.

Some choice quotes from the article:

"Truly, much of what passes for arrangement in processing work is really just overzealous housekeeping, writ large. Our professional fastidiousness, our reluctance to be perceived as sloppy or uncaring by users and others has encouraged a widespread fixation on tasks that do not need to be performed."

"A competent processing archivist ought to be able to arrange and describe large twentieth-century archival materials at an average rate of 4 hours per cubic foot."

"Unprocessed collections should be presumed open to researchers. Period."

"We must get beyond our absurd over-cautiousness that unprocessed collections might harbor embarrassing material not accounted for in deeds of gift, and we must stop fretting over what users might think about us if given a dirty, disorganized collection."

The second half of the workshop was devoted to Princeton case studies where Greene-Meissner was applied.

In my own personal experience, discovering Greene-Meissner early in my archival career was a blessing. I knew that I couldn't be the only one who thought some archival rituals were too time-consuming and took away from easy access. I was able to decrease of a three-year backlog of 50 feet of documents and 10,000 digital photos, prints, and slides in one year applying Greene-Meissner!

Read "More Product, Less Process: Pragmatically Revamping Traditional Processing Approaches to Deal with Late 20th-Century Collections"

Tomes and Talismans Episode 1

2008-08-01T20:08:00.001-04:00

How do you teach children to use the library? A post-apocalyptic library education show from the 1980s called Tomes and Talismans, of course!

From Wikipedia:

"In 2123 humanity is evacuating Earth for the White Crystal Solar System, due to an attack carried out by the nefarious Wiper race, a group of aliens that appear to be little more than run-of-the-mill trailer trash. A special group is preparing a complete library of all Human knowledge which is hidden underground. Here, all fiction and non-fiction books are sorted by an alphabetical and numerical ordering system but an important volume is missing. A desperate search for it begins in the library in the outskirts of the city. The library team leader Ms. Bookhart, played by Niki Wood, is stranded in her bookmobile and is suddenly metabolically suspended for 100 years by a being known only as 'The Universal Being.' She awakens in a world under the control of beings known as 'The Wipers' and is discovered by another group of extraterrestrials in the form of four children known as 'The Users.' The children, along with Ms. Bookhart, rediscover the hidden library and in the course of the series she teaches them how to use it. In turn, they discover how to defeat 'The Wipers' and create a communicator to call the Human refugees back to Earth."

Episode 1, Part 1

Episode 1, Part 2

Episode 1, Part 3

On a related note, does anyone remember the school filmstrip about taking care of books with happy and sad books? The scene where the frowning book is left in the rain made me feel awful!

Digital Slider for Copyright

2008-07-25T22:06:00.002-04:00

One of my listservs alerted me to a handy new gadget: a digital slider to look up copyright terms for works created at different times and under different conditions.

Recently, the American Library Association urged Congress to change the law that states that sound recordings made before Febrauary 15, 1972 won't enter public domain until 2067. To quote their press release:

"This places historical recordings at significant risk of loss by thwarting preservation programs because of the uncertainty over whether creating preservation copies would violate copyright law.

Unlike books, paintings, photographs and other creative works, sound recordings are technology dependent, so that if a pre-1972 sound recording is not reissued in a contemporary format (digital file or compact disc), the content is generally not accessible to the public or scholarly community."

This is just one example of the complexity of copyright law that affects information professionals and those involved in preserving our cultural heritage.

View the Digital Slider

Web Trigrams

2008-07-20T19:53:00.000-04:00

I love envisioning information, and the Internet has made this infinately easier. My brother passed on a link to Chris Harrison's experiments in visualizing Google's n-gram data. From Harrison's site:

"Back in late 2006, Google released a massive set of web n-gram data (basically pieces of sentences). A trigram (n=3), for example, might be "I like food" or "frog is tasty." Each n-gram is also labeled with the number of times it appeared in Google's corpus. The entire archive, which is almost 100GB uncompressed, has unigrams (n=1) through fivegrams (n=5). The data set is offered through the LDC for those who are interested (link).

As soon as I got my hands on the data, I quickly got to work on some straight forward visualizations. The first type compares two sets of trigrams, each starting with a different word. One visualization compares 'He' with 'She', while the other uses 'I' and 'You'. In the case of the 'He' vs. 'She', the top 120 trigrams for each were identified. The frequencies of the second word in the trigrams were combined and sorted, and rendered in decreasing frequency-of-use order. A similar process was used to create a ranking for the third (and final) word in the trigrams. Words are sized according to the square root of their use frequencies. The color-coded lines act like paths (a tree structure), enumerating all of the trigrams. The process was identical for the 'I' and 'You' version, except that only the top 75 trigrams were used.

These visual comparisons allow us to see differences in how the two subjects are used - both where they are similar and diverge. For example, among the top 120 trigrams, 'He' and 'She' have many common second words. However, they differ on some interesting ones, for example, only 'he' connects to 'argues', while only 'she' connects to 'love' (within the top 120)."

Visit Chris Harrison's Web Triagrams.

Found in Books

2008-07-15T22:20:00.005-04:00

Abebooks.com asked some of its booksellers, "What's the strangest thing you found in a book?"

Aside from all the letters, torn out newspaper articles, shopping lists, business cards, and postcards (send and unsent), other objects discovered by AbeBooks.com booksellers include a World War II US ration book (with stamps remaining), World War II discharge papers, a pair of scissors, a valid driver’s license, a marriage certificate from 1879, a holographic image of a lady who sheds her clothing, theater playbills, a condom (unused), a cockroach (dead), and a strip of bacon.

Read more about odd items found in books:

Intralibris: things found within books
Things found in used books
Things found in books

"For Posterity": The Personal Audio Recordings of Louis Armstrong

2008-07-05T21:22:00.000-04:00

The Spring/Summer issue of The American Archivist has a fascinating article about Louis Armstrong's personal audio recordings and collages. The collages intrigue me because they are "visual jazz" and use enormous amounts of scotch tape, the bane of archivists! How are they being preserved?

From the abstract:

"Louis Armstrong exerted a defining influence on one of the most influential products of the American imagination: jazz. As noted by one of Armstrong's biographers, however, Armstrong's character was 'buffeted by the forces of racism and commercialism.' From the perspective of the archives, Armstrong's reaction to these influences was a form of psychological withdrawal that often coalesced around this interaction with recording technologies. Armstrong developed an intimate relationship with audio recording and relied upon its particular form of capture to shape a posthumous identity that was beyond the distortive influences that shaped his public and commodified image, and that was appreciably honest in its relationship with, to use Armstrong's word, 'posterity.'"

The PDF of "For Posterity": The Personal Audio Recordings of Louis Armstrong is available from The American Archivist online.

Visit Satchmo.net, the official site of the Louis Armstrong House and Archives.

The Paris Review offers some pictures of the collages.

A Surprise Bequest

2008-06-30T22:09:00.003-04:00

Librarian's life story has rich twist at the end from the Columbus Dispatch:

Before her death at age 57, Carol Sue Snowden lived in a condominium on the East Side and drove a used Chevrolet.

She worked for 30 years in the Whitehall branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library, rarely indulging in anything except her passion for books.

The daughter of parents who survived the Depression, Snowden -- who never married or had children -- was the picture of frugalness.

That's why 50 friends and library colleagues who gathered late last month for her memorial were so stunned to learn that she was a millionaire.

And Snowden, who died of ovarian cancer in January, left her money to the libraries she loved.

She willed $530,000 to the Whitehall branch and $70,000 each to the libraries of seven Columbus-area schools -- for a combined gift exceeding $1 million.

"You should have heard the gasp in the room," recalled Kim Snell, spokeswoman for the Columbus Metropolitan Library. "And then to follow it up with seven announcements of $70,000 for seven schools in the community -- it was just unbelievable."

The donation is the largest in recent memory for the Columbus Metropolitan Library, Snell said, and by far the largest given to the Whitehall branch.

"It's not like we're paid huge amounts of money, so it was quite a shock," said Deborah Replogle, the branch manager. "It was an incredibly generous gift."

Snowden amassed her fortune through thriftiness and wise investments, one of her three sisters said. Still, even her parents and siblings were shocked at the money she'd amassed.

"It's just a testimony to how you can save if you just do it every day," said Susan Snowden, 52, of Chicago.

Before her death, the reserved Carol Sue Snowden had asked for her family's blessing in leaving her money to the libraries.

"We think it's wonderful -- it's a legacy," Susan Snowden said. "Just imagine the children and parents ... how many people it will benefit for years to come."

Her sister earmarked the Whitehall branch money for a teen and children's activity center whenever a new library is eventually constructed. (Library officials are researching what to do about future facilities for all branches, Snell said, so a new building could be possible but is not yet planned.)

The seven schools that received money are places where Snowden had read: Etna Road Elementary, Kae Avenue Elementary and Beechwood Elementary in the Whitehall district; Broadleigh Elementary and Fairmoor Elementary in the Columbus district; and Holy Spirit and St. Catharine in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus.

She asked that 90 percent of the money be used to enhance print collections and 10 percent to buy computer-related material.

Snowden also left money to the libraries she used growing up in Peoria, Ill., including $10,000 to her grade-school library, $10,000 to her high-school library and $10,000 to her local library.

In addition, she left $10,000 to a colleague to pursue a master's degree in library sciences.

Her family presented giant checks to each library during the memorial, relishing the excitement that Snowden knew she wouldn't get to see. Susan Snowden wonders whether her humble sister would have liked such an event, but she wanted to celebrate what her sister had done, she said.

Replogle -- and her young readers -- will inevitably celebrate for years to come.

"It's a very low-income community," the Whitehall branch manager said. "She had worked here for so many years. She knew the teachers. She knew the people who walked in here every day. ... She just felt there was something she could do to help."

And she did, in true librarian fashion: quietly.

Correctional Photo Archives

2008-06-25T21:44:00.000-04:00

While surfing for interesting photo archives online, I discovered the Correctional Photo Archives. From the site:

The American Prison Society Photographic Archive records collection was acquired by the Eastern Kentucky University Archives in 1984 through the auspices of Dr. Bruce Wolford of Eastern's College of Law Enforcement. Dr. Wolford received the photographs in 1979 from William Bain, instructor at the Kentucky Bureau of Training. In the 1960s Mr. Bain, a former staff member of the American Correctional Association, conceived the idea of a pictorial history of the American prison. With the aid of David A. Kimberling, a prison inmate and photographer, Bain had photographs copied from the American Correctional Association archives plus ones he received from various federal and state correctional facilities throughout the United States. In addition to the copies, which comprise the negative part of the collection, he acquired many original black and white photographic prints. Finally in 1978 through the work of Anthony P. Travisono, executive director of the American Correctional Association, Bain's dream, The American Prison: from the Beginning. A Pictorial History, was published.

The photographic collection is rich in its depiction of early twentieth century prison life and conditions. The collection covers numerous subjects such as prison living conditions, recreational activities, industries, hospital care, corporal punishment, work gangs on the farm and quarries, vocational activities, weapons confiscated, prison architecture, and the death house. A few of the images are of prison officials, primarily in the federal penitentiary system.

A source of contemporary prison photographs is Richard Ross's Architecture of Authority and its online gallery.

Review of Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights

2008-06-15T21:25:00.000-04:00

My review of Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights by Bill Ivey (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008).
Published in ARLIS/NA Reviews, June 2008.

In Arts, Inc., Bill Ivey, former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, has written an engaging memoir that merges his personal and professional experiences to evaluate the state of art and culture in America. He argues that copyright extension, the desertion of art and culture as a diplomatic tool, and corporate avarice and negligence have undermined our uniquely American cultural heritage. He devotes a chapter to each aspect of his proposed Cultural Bill of Rights, which encompasses heritage, artists in public life, creative private lives, American artistry abroad, art of lasting value, and robust, reliable institutions.

Ivey explores the rise of corporate art ownership and the fall of cultural institutions designed to enrich public life. He writes, “Most of America’s twentieth-century culture was produced by for-profit arts industries, and much of our cultural heritage has been no better treated than assets such as buildings and furniture” (45). Corporations are wary of preservation because, “by revealing how much has been lost, how much has never been released, and, following decades of mergers and relocations, just how little record, film, and television companies know about what they do or do not own, the truth would produce public outrage” (48). Even worse, “nonprofits are too often careless with historical assets, risk averse, and…drawn to projects that have no real importance beyond an impact on the bottom line” (217).

He calls for the reformation of intellectual property rights in the United States, so that works are properly preserved and do not remain commercial assets in perpetuity. Ivey archly illustrates his view of this issue by including usage fees in his photo captions.

He heralds “citizen artists” and a more creative life for Americans. “Participation is the hallmark of a vibrant cultural scene, not just participation for the trained and well-heeled but participation that’s available to just about everybody” (262). With this populist viewpoint, for example, he asserts that orchestras should mimic NASCAR promotions, making classical music accessible to average Americans.

Ivey envisions a harmonized vision for art and culture, “the birthright of citizens in our enlightened democracy” (xix). A revival of the Arts and Crafts movement, which reacted to the Industrial Revolution with authentic and meaningful styles, may be one solution. Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights is an important read for information professionals involved in preserving heritage and those interested in the “cultural rights” of all Americans to an expressive life in a post-consumerist age.