...A book which has come across my desk has this title. Which reminded me that I haven't posted on this blog since I was 7.5 months pregnant. Well, now our daughter is almost 15 months, I'm working a little bit again, and for the love of God, surely I can get myself back into the world of blogging about organizing information. Right?
So, in that vein, I want to write some about a project I was recently involved with. Since I am not working full time any longer, I took on a side project, archiving the personal papers of a successful businessman here in town. His dad was very famous as a businessman, as well, and some of his papers were also included in this job. The total amount was probably 20 linear feet or so.
The interesting thing about this project was how basically different it FELT than the professional archivist jobs I've had. I went to their (very large and well-appointed) home once a week, and worked out of their dining room. His wife would periodically come in, not to check on me, but to relate some historical factoid, or to show me something that she found, or to ask if she framed something correctly. Your own personal archivist! And, I found I did not have the same kind of mental freedom that I had while working in an institution. If I found something in a collection that I knew was superfluous and common, like, say, an envelope with no letter and no address, I could put it in a stack of things to get rid of. Not so with these papers, because the owner was working in his office down the hall, and he was a pack rat, and when I showed it to him, he'd say "we should keep it, I suppose."
It's interesting to be able to go to the creator and say "what is this? what were you doing at this time?" instead of just having to guess and research.
Showing posts with label archives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label archives. Show all posts
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Friday, August 08, 2008
Finnish archives
Sometimes I come across books that make me very painfully aware of how little I know about archival theory. Today, that lesson was hit home when I had a book called "Records, Rules, and Speech Acts" come across my desk. It's by a Finnish archivist, Pekka Henttonen (a guy, by the way, for all of you Indo-European speakers who think that girls' names end in A).
The introduction was worth my reading (even though I'm really just cataloging the thing) because Hentonnen raised an interesting question: how do we define records, both positively (records are x) and negatively (records are NOT y). I have no idea how we define records, although I bet Hentonnen tells me by the end of this book, and somehow ties it into speech act theory, which he references in the summary, and is a linguistic theory about how saying something is doing something (example: I now pronounce you man and wife). How he connects the two, I have no idea, but I bet it's interesting. I hope that I can check this book out soon and try to plow through it.
Of course, the novelty of this archival theory book is that it's written by a Finn. Hello? Finnish people are exotic. He kindly includes some translations of terms like "records management" (asiakirjahallinto) and "archives formation plan" (arkistonmuodostussuunnitelma), which of course I just find fascinating because I'm three years old and different languages are weird and cool.
The descriptions of Finnish archival practice are really the best part, though, because they seem so modern and advanced to my North American archivally-trained brain: records management and archives are ONE profession, and these people take control of the documents throughout the life cycle. Hentonnen quotes J. Kilkki (another Finn, I believe) :"in Finland, archival fonds are not viewed from present to past, as something that is, they are viewed from present to future, as something that becomes. The accumulation of records into files, files into series, series in sub-fonds and sub-fonds into the archival fond of a records creator are all determined in advance, before the records are even created."
Does that sound like Archival Utopia to anyone else? Is Finland a magic land where archives make sense? I want to visit.
The introduction was worth my reading (even though I'm really just cataloging the thing) because Hentonnen raised an interesting question: how do we define records, both positively (records are x) and negatively (records are NOT y). I have no idea how we define records, although I bet Hentonnen tells me by the end of this book, and somehow ties it into speech act theory, which he references in the summary, and is a linguistic theory about how saying something is doing something (example: I now pronounce you man and wife). How he connects the two, I have no idea, but I bet it's interesting. I hope that I can check this book out soon and try to plow through it.
Of course, the novelty of this archival theory book is that it's written by a Finn. Hello? Finnish people are exotic. He kindly includes some translations of terms like "records management" (asiakirjahallinto) and "archives formation plan" (arkistonmuodostussuunnitelma), which of course I just find fascinating because I'm three years old and different languages are weird and cool.
The descriptions of Finnish archival practice are really the best part, though, because they seem so modern and advanced to my North American archivally-trained brain: records management and archives are ONE profession, and these people take control of the documents throughout the life cycle. Hentonnen quotes J. Kilkki (another Finn, I believe) :"in Finland, archival fonds are not viewed from present to past, as something that is, they are viewed from present to future, as something that becomes. The accumulation of records into files, files into series, series in sub-fonds and sub-fonds into the archival fond of a records creator are all determined in advance, before the records are even created."
Does that sound like Archival Utopia to anyone else? Is Finland a magic land where archives make sense? I want to visit.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Listservs
I'm on quite a few listservs. The bulk of my email every day comes from listservs. I like them, in fact. They're like little snippets of the world outside of my office. But I have to say, I'm getting kind of tired of the archivists' listservs.
How many times can we rehash the same old argument about how digitizing something does not count as "preservation"? I mean, come ON. It happens like every other week--someone writes something about using digitization as a preservation method, and then 10 people jump on that person and tell them that it's not a viable preservation strategy.
I have two problems with the above scenario. One, the person who still thinks that digitization is going to solve their crumbling paper problem. Sit down and read something, anything, about preservation that was written in the past 3 years and you will read that digitization is not a miracle cure. In fact, it's more like giving up the common cold in favor of getting tuberculosis. Sure, your stuffy sinuses will clear up, but you'll have a hacking cough for the next 10 years, and end up in a sanitarium in Colorado.
The other problem I have is the 10 other people. Seriously, one person's response is enough. Do we all need to jump on the bandwagon and let everyone else know that we know what we are doing? As some very smart person said, "Don't ever miss an opportunity to keep your mouth shut." I don't want those 10 self-congratulatory emails in my inbox. I don't really need even one of those emails, but I suppose someone has to tell the person who is considering contracting TB that they're about to get really sick.
How many times can we rehash the same old argument about how digitizing something does not count as "preservation"? I mean, come ON. It happens like every other week--someone writes something about using digitization as a preservation method, and then 10 people jump on that person and tell them that it's not a viable preservation strategy.
I have two problems with the above scenario. One, the person who still thinks that digitization is going to solve their crumbling paper problem. Sit down and read something, anything, about preservation that was written in the past 3 years and you will read that digitization is not a miracle cure. In fact, it's more like giving up the common cold in favor of getting tuberculosis. Sure, your stuffy sinuses will clear up, but you'll have a hacking cough for the next 10 years, and end up in a sanitarium in Colorado.
The other problem I have is the 10 other people. Seriously, one person's response is enough. Do we all need to jump on the bandwagon and let everyone else know that we know what we are doing? As some very smart person said, "Don't ever miss an opportunity to keep your mouth shut." I don't want those 10 self-congratulatory emails in my inbox. I don't really need even one of those emails, but I suppose someone has to tell the person who is considering contracting TB that they're about to get really sick.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
The "sundry"
The subtitle of my blog says that it is about books, technology and sundry. Well, consider this the sundry. I am trying to publish an article. I am an historian by training and inclination, and my article is historical, and it is about libraries. I have had a horrible issue with my "peers" in the peer-review process, and when I have talked about this problem with other scholars, they have all, without exception said, "yes, I had a problem like that once, too."
What is the deal, then? Why do we continue with this peer-review nonsense, if everyone agrees that it has some serious flaws? In my case, one of my readers turned out to be a person who has a very vested interest in seeing that I do not get published. I know this because the comments that this reader had about my paper were factually incorrect, bizarre, and very insulting. The editor of the journal apparently thought this was the case as well, since he personally called me to tell me that the article would now go to a third party, because one of my first readers was so off the charts with his comments.
But think, what if you were publishing some piece that was absolutely devastating to several scholars in your field, and they, being the "experts", were the one to review you? Your work is now essentially lost because everyone fears to be called out for mistakes or poor research or just oversight.
The thought that my own work could be shelved because of one person is terrifying; I can't imagine if my work was actually important.
This reminds me of Lemaitre. For those who do not know who Lemaitre was, he was a Catholic priest who was also a physicist, and who was the one to think of the Big Bang. He was a mathematician at heart, so most of his physics work was based on what the math would prove, as opposed to what he imagined. He and Einstein were pretty much on the opposite ends of the spectrum of physics research in this regard. Incidentally, Einstein believed that the universe was infinite, and static. And Lemaitre, because he kept insisting on something that Einstein said was not possible (ie, an expanding universe), was basically blackballed for a long time. Until Hubble made his discovery of the red-shift, in fact. Then all of the sudden, Lemaitre's work was validated and he was an overnight celebrity.
But he worked in isolation and without a lot of support for too long, just because someone who was supposedly the expert insisted he was wrong. To end the story on a high note, it is gratifying to know that eventually Einstein went up to Lemaitre and told him that he had been wrong, and that Lemaitre had always been right.
Comforting.
What is the deal, then? Why do we continue with this peer-review nonsense, if everyone agrees that it has some serious flaws? In my case, one of my readers turned out to be a person who has a very vested interest in seeing that I do not get published. I know this because the comments that this reader had about my paper were factually incorrect, bizarre, and very insulting. The editor of the journal apparently thought this was the case as well, since he personally called me to tell me that the article would now go to a third party, because one of my first readers was so off the charts with his comments.
But think, what if you were publishing some piece that was absolutely devastating to several scholars in your field, and they, being the "experts", were the one to review you? Your work is now essentially lost because everyone fears to be called out for mistakes or poor research or just oversight.
The thought that my own work could be shelved because of one person is terrifying; I can't imagine if my work was actually important.
This reminds me of Lemaitre. For those who do not know who Lemaitre was, he was a Catholic priest who was also a physicist, and who was the one to think of the Big Bang. He was a mathematician at heart, so most of his physics work was based on what the math would prove, as opposed to what he imagined. He and Einstein were pretty much on the opposite ends of the spectrum of physics research in this regard. Incidentally, Einstein believed that the universe was infinite, and static. And Lemaitre, because he kept insisting on something that Einstein said was not possible (ie, an expanding universe), was basically blackballed for a long time. Until Hubble made his discovery of the red-shift, in fact. Then all of the sudden, Lemaitre's work was validated and he was an overnight celebrity.
But he worked in isolation and without a lot of support for too long, just because someone who was supposedly the expert insisted he was wrong. To end the story on a high note, it is gratifying to know that eventually Einstein went up to Lemaitre and told him that he had been wrong, and that Lemaitre had always been right.
Comforting.
Monday, January 07, 2008
Medieval manuscripts and born-digital
Do you read Cataloging and Classification Quarterly? Well, I do. Sometimes there are really interesting articles like Joy Humphrey's this quarter--"Manuscripts and Metadata: Descriptive metadata in three manuscript catalogs: DigCIM, MALVINE, and Digital Scriptorium." (whew! long title, eh?)
Anyway, Humphrey makes an interesting point at the very beginning of the article about how difficult it is to digitize medieval manuscripts, and not just because they're old. Handwritten manuscripts are as valuable to researchers for their physical elements as for their content. Did the creator use different fonts, are there different authors within the manuscript, what kind of paper did they use, etc. etc. But when you digitize the manuscript and put it online, some or all of that data can get lost. There is simply no substitute for looking at the manuscript in person, if you're not as interested in content as you are in the item itself.
Which made me think a lot about born-digital materials, and how we may never see this kind of interest in the "who, what, where and why" of digital objects as we do in antiquities. I mean, most of the interest is in the content of born-digital objects, not their construction. We really care about construction when we're trying to access or migrate or emulate it. There aren't a lot of historians yet who say "remember when we were using LISP codes? Man, who were those guys? What kind of computers did they use?" There are some, but not a lot. Who will that breed of historian be? The ones who do digital archaeology and write papers about the look and feel of php databases, and who the creator was and what we can glean about them from their personal stamp on the information contained in the database. As databases and other born-digital objects become more and more the product of a community action, will the creator fall by the wayside? Will this type of diplomatics even be possible anymore?
Anyway, Humphrey makes an interesting point at the very beginning of the article about how difficult it is to digitize medieval manuscripts, and not just because they're old. Handwritten manuscripts are as valuable to researchers for their physical elements as for their content. Did the creator use different fonts, are there different authors within the manuscript, what kind of paper did they use, etc. etc. But when you digitize the manuscript and put it online, some or all of that data can get lost. There is simply no substitute for looking at the manuscript in person, if you're not as interested in content as you are in the item itself.
Which made me think a lot about born-digital materials, and how we may never see this kind of interest in the "who, what, where and why" of digital objects as we do in antiquities. I mean, most of the interest is in the content of born-digital objects, not their construction. We really care about construction when we're trying to access or migrate or emulate it. There aren't a lot of historians yet who say "remember when we were using LISP codes? Man, who were those guys? What kind of computers did they use?" There are some, but not a lot. Who will that breed of historian be? The ones who do digital archaeology and write papers about the look and feel of php databases, and who the creator was and what we can glean about them from their personal stamp on the information contained in the database. As databases and other born-digital objects become more and more the product of a community action, will the creator fall by the wayside? Will this type of diplomatics even be possible anymore?
Monday, November 05, 2007
Metadata for Manuscripts
There are lots of different kinds of metadata out there for library and archival materials. Some might say, too many kinds. There are different metadata schemes for every kind of material. There is Dublin Core, METS, MODS, even Marc for XML. All these metadatas are trying to solve an age-old problem with archival materials: they're too unique to have a standard applied to them. Books are easy; they all have title pages and authors and they're all wrapped up in neat packages that lend themselves to cataloging. Archival material, on the other hand, can be anything--and usually are. Paintings, bills of sale, letters, buttons, book manuscripts, musical instruments. The list goes on and on. And, especially with paper things like letters and bills, there is the problem of having so much paper on your hands that you cannot simply describe every single piece of paper as a single entity. So we group things, and then we catalog the groups. More or less. It's an inexact science.
At least, it was until the standards started getting made. Dublin Core and METS and MODS are all designed to help archivists catalog the things that are uncatalog-able. And now there's a new(ish) metadata standard: PREMIS.
PREMIS stands for something fancy, but at core, it is preservation metadata. Yes, now archivists can code not only information about the creator and the date and the content of a piece of paper, but also the physical condition, history of the physical condition, and any repairs that have been made to the paper.
Are we getting over-metadata'ed? Do we really need metadata, encoded into XML, that tells us if something is fragile and old? Can't we go to the paper itself and see what condition its in? Or this strictly for statistical purposes?
I've made myself a copy of the PREMIS manual--all 283 pages of it. So, we'll see what this is supposed to do/be. It can't be for the users of the material (which is generally who I consider metadata to be for), so it's not something that should be displayed to the user, probably. And a lot of archives don't even have the time to go through and process basic information, let alone preservation data. Maybe this is one of those things that is reserved strictly for libraries where everything is already processed and they have lots of extra time on their hands to go through and put in fuller, more complete information on each and every collection. Good on them, I say.
At least, it was until the standards started getting made. Dublin Core and METS and MODS are all designed to help archivists catalog the things that are uncatalog-able. And now there's a new(ish) metadata standard: PREMIS.
PREMIS stands for something fancy, but at core, it is preservation metadata. Yes, now archivists can code not only information about the creator and the date and the content of a piece of paper, but also the physical condition, history of the physical condition, and any repairs that have been made to the paper.
Are we getting over-metadata'ed? Do we really need metadata, encoded into XML, that tells us if something is fragile and old? Can't we go to the paper itself and see what condition its in? Or this strictly for statistical purposes?
I've made myself a copy of the PREMIS manual--all 283 pages of it. So, we'll see what this is supposed to do/be. It can't be for the users of the material (which is generally who I consider metadata to be for), so it's not something that should be displayed to the user, probably. And a lot of archives don't even have the time to go through and process basic information, let alone preservation data. Maybe this is one of those things that is reserved strictly for libraries where everything is already processed and they have lots of extra time on their hands to go through and put in fuller, more complete information on each and every collection. Good on them, I say.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Archives Deathmatch
For years, there have been no real archival management systems built that are specifically for manuscript archivists. There are museum systems, and obviously library systems.
And in the last year, TWO archival management systems have been released: Archon and Archivists Toolkit.
Since I am on the Archivists' Toolkit listserv, I see all the posts that get made about that particular product. AT comes from a group of universities (The University of California, San Diego, New York University, and the Five Colleges), and is supposed to revolutionize the way that archivists look at data. And I think that it does. Although to me, it looks an awful lot like a cataloging system with a really easy user interface. But I would never tell an archivist that. Archivists are notoriously touchy about being compared to catalogers (except for me, since I'm both). I've actually written about this before, in the guise of the "uniqueness" argument.
But, at any rate, archivists are trying stuff out, and it's not going so well, methinks. Lots of buggy issues with Archivists Toolkit. Some people can never get their computer to let them install the software, some can never figure out how to publish the information that they put into the database, and I don't want to think about the people who may never be able to extract the information that they put in. But of course, Archivists Toolkit is just one of the products; the other is Archon.
Archon was developed by the U of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Archon is web-based, instead of software based. I haven't played with it as much as AT, and since I'm not on the listserv I can't speak to its usefulness now that it's hit version 2.01. But from the descriptions---it just sounds so much better. Web-based? Automatic publication onto the web? Automatic search functionality? Yes, please! And they even appease archivists--"With Archon, there is no need to encode a finding aid, input a catalog record, or program a sytlesheet. " See that? NO NEED to catalog. Just like archivists like it.
We'll see which one wins. I actually put my money on AT, but only because everyone's touting it as a wonderful piece of wonderfullness that will revolutionize archival work. And they only say that because UC and NYU are involved. Not that I'm jaded or anything.
And in the last year, TWO archival management systems have been released: Archon and Archivists Toolkit.
Since I am on the Archivists' Toolkit listserv, I see all the posts that get made about that particular product. AT comes from a group of universities (The University of California, San Diego, New York University, and the Five Colleges), and is supposed to revolutionize the way that archivists look at data. And I think that it does. Although to me, it looks an awful lot like a cataloging system with a really easy user interface. But I would never tell an archivist that. Archivists are notoriously touchy about being compared to catalogers (except for me, since I'm both). I've actually written about this before, in the guise of the "uniqueness" argument.
But, at any rate, archivists are trying stuff out, and it's not going so well, methinks. Lots of buggy issues with Archivists Toolkit. Some people can never get their computer to let them install the software, some can never figure out how to publish the information that they put into the database, and I don't want to think about the people who may never be able to extract the information that they put in. But of course, Archivists Toolkit is just one of the products; the other is Archon.
Archon was developed by the U of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Archon is web-based, instead of software based. I haven't played with it as much as AT, and since I'm not on the listserv I can't speak to its usefulness now that it's hit version 2.01. But from the descriptions---it just sounds so much better. Web-based? Automatic publication onto the web? Automatic search functionality? Yes, please! And they even appease archivists--"With Archon, there is no need to encode a finding aid, input a catalog record, or program a sytlesheet. " See that? NO NEED to catalog. Just like archivists like it.
We'll see which one wins. I actually put my money on AT, but only because everyone's touting it as a wonderful piece of wonderfullness that will revolutionize archival work. And they only say that because UC and NYU are involved. Not that I'm jaded or anything.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Uniqueness
I like to talk about libraries and archives and how different they are (hello?! They are A LOT different). Of course many of the differences are directly related to the amount of stuff that archivists deal with. We’re talking about millions of pages, manuscripts, letters, objects, and now databases, webpages, emails, IMs, etc. Librarians, on the other hand, put their feet down long ago, and accept only things that are either physically or digitally contained within themselves. Librarians don’t accept anything else. A bunch of letters from George Washington? No thank you! Please publish this first, give it a unique identifier, several subject headings, and a spine label. Then we’ll talk.
I sometimes feel as though archivists took on the responsibility of preserving all the things that museums and libraries simply couldn’t be troubled with. Archives are notoriously hodge-podge; indeed, archivists seem to take a kind of perverse pleasure out of having lots and lots of things in their possession that would make a librarian or a curator throw up their hands in disgust.
The uniqueness of all of these millions of pages of documentation have made it very difficult for archivists to come together on standards. EAD IS a standard, I suppose, although a very cautious one:
“Okay, we’ll standardize what we CALL things, but don’t tell us what goes under each name!” And the result was that while I call a scope and content note one thing, someone else may use the same tag for something different.
Then along came DACS (Describing Archives: A Content Standard), which is very nice and should be wonderful, but there a lot of archivists out there who don’t use it. Show me a librarian who doesn’t use AACRII at least to some degree.
I think it’s funny that while archives have been around in Europe since before the French Revolution, and the
Monday, August 14, 2006
Treehugger v. Propellor Head
The age-old debate, right? In case you're wondering, this is a difference made by one of my professors in my graduate program. He himself was a propellor head, I think, which means he was a technology-lover. I tend to think of myself as a natural treehugger, which means that I would rather be handling old and fragile paper and books than learning SQL or building webpages.
Which is weird, right? My entire job is focused on computers, databases, and programming languages, yet in my heart of hearts, I do wish I ran a rare bookshop, telling customers all about the new first edition Wealth of Nations that just came last week and no, please, don't touch the pages, they are in good condition but I'd rather not have your finger oils all over them if you're not prepared to buy.
At any rate, the dichotomy between these two camps used to be much more prevalant than it is today, I think. Go to the Society of American Archivists conference, and you'll find nothing BUT tech seminars and digital records and EAD and whatever else is coming down the pike. Very little left on the paper that they are preserving. More and more, preservationists and archivists are moving away from their roots. I know that most of the people I graduated with, have gone into or are more interested in, digital matters.
But the thing is, most small-organization archivists don't have the time to mess around with fancy digital anything, and would rather have more information on the nuts and bolts of preservation than the newest open source software out there, or how to put all of their things online. Unfortunately, many archivists get sucked into the digital wave--our archivist is thinking of digitizing old newspapers, but without thinking that maybe the cost of digitization would outweigh the gain of having them online. Without heavy use, what's the point of putting them up on the web? Does it increase use? Maybe, maybe not. It's not like he's thinking of putting ancient Roman texts online, or the Gutenberg bible. It's just some student newspapers, and if they don't get accessed anyway, what's the benefit of making them digital now? His thought process seems to be (and I think it's this way a lot in the archives community) that any digitization is good digitization. I don't think that such thinking is productive, but it's very prevalent everywhere.
Don't get me wrong, the digital revolution is full upon us, and it's not a bad thing. It gave me a job that is interesting and fun and challenging, so who am I to complain? But I hope that the treehuggers stand firm and don't give too much ground. We need our lovely old books, too.
Which is weird, right? My entire job is focused on computers, databases, and programming languages, yet in my heart of hearts, I do wish I ran a rare bookshop, telling customers all about the new first edition Wealth of Nations that just came last week and no, please, don't touch the pages, they are in good condition but I'd rather not have your finger oils all over them if you're not prepared to buy
At any rate, the dichotomy between these two camps used to be much more prevalant than it is today, I think. Go to the Society of American Archivists conference, and you'll find nothing BUT tech seminars and digital records and EAD and whatever else is coming down the pike. Very little left on the paper that they are preserving. More and more, preservationists and archivists are moving away from their roots. I know that most of the people I graduated with, have gone into or are more interested in, digital matters.
But the thing is, most small-organization archivists don't have the time to mess around with fancy digital anything, and would rather have more information on the nuts and bolts of preservation than the newest open source software out there, or how to put all of their things online. Unfortunately, many archivists get sucked into the digital wave--our archivist is thinking of digitizing old newspapers, but without thinking that maybe the cost of digitization would outweigh the gain of having them online. Without heavy use, what's the point of putting them up on the web? Does it increase use? Maybe, maybe not. It's not like he's thinking of putting ancient Roman texts online, or the Gutenberg bible. It's just some student newspapers, and if they don't get accessed anyway, what's the benefit of making them digital now? His thought process seems to be (and I think it's this way a lot in the archives community) that any digitization is good digitization. I don't think that such thinking is productive, but it's very prevalent everywhere.
Don't get me wrong, the digital revolution is full upon us, and it's not a bad thing. It gave me a job that is interesting and fun and challenging, so who am I to complain? But I hope that the treehuggers stand firm and don't give too much ground. We need our lovely old books, too.
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