AMPed - Latest Comments

Re: An Archivist’s Brand New Hat – New Beginnings for My Family History

Edward — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:10:52 -0000

I am trying to get some of my family photos from my stepmother who has no clue of any of these people nor does she care about them. I admire you for taking on this arduous task and wish you the best in achieving it.

Re: Is Preservation Cost Prohibitive?

Shari Grantham — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 01:53:45 -0000

Such a tough topic. When I began the process of preserving and providing access to a large collection of television commercials I would have thought Kim's comments here were crazy, but as she mentions, once I saw where the budgets were headed, you can't help but become more of a realist and do what you can to save what you can, which is nowhere near everything.

Re: Your Virtual Front Door: Defining the Use of Social Media for Archives and Libraries: Part III

itil change management — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 07:33:40 -0000

I’m a big proponent of email lists and I know that many other people are as well. Why? Email lists are great for those of us who are not diligent in visiting a website, logging into Facebook or reading RSS feeds on a regular basis. Creating and maintaining a mailing list is an excellent way to keep in touch with your patrons without depending them to come to you for that information. When creating social presences, we often think that if we are on X social networking site, so too will the people we wish to engage with will be as well. This is not necessarily true. I have friends who refuse to use Facebook, refuse to use Twitter and only read my blog via RSS feed.

Re: Documenting the Movie Industry’s Paper Promotional Materials

Rachaclark — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 18:17:36 -0000

Dear Ed,
Thank you for reading my post about LAMP! You and Sue are doing a tremendous service by documenting and preserving important, esoteric information. The academic website you are developing sounds very exciting. I look forward to seeing it. I am grateful for your generous offer to show me more about LAMP and will be in touch to arrange something soon.

Sincerely,

Rachael Clark

Re: An Unsound Future

Fred — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 09:49:33 -0000

Very interesting read, well written Molly.

Re: Documenting the Movie Industry’s Paper Promotional Materials

Ed Poole — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 14:00:27 -0000

Greetings,
Thank you for this article on LAMP. As owners of LAMP, Sue and I appreciate the taking of your time to peruse our website. While your article mentions a few of the areas of interest, it only addresses a small portion of the site. While there are thousands of pages of information available to the public, there is a huge advanced research area that was not covered. We have produced 9 reference books so far that are currently used in some of the largest and most respected facilities in the world.

We have dedicated our time trying to focus on documenting and preserving information that is currently being lost in vast amounts, such as lithographer information (logos, addresses, plate numbers, etc). You mentioned artist information. This is rapidly disappearing. In our member area, we have the largest compilation of thousands of signatures worldwide to help identify artists, plus lots of information and listings of their work. Production codes to identify unknown stills, we have 30,000 production codes and also compiling studio portrait codes.

We are currently working on an academic website to provide advanced research in these forgotten areas. It is scheduled to go online early next year.

If you would like to take a BETTER look at what we're doing and how it will help researchers, please contact me and I'll be glad to take you 'on the inside' of LAMP.

I also welcome ANYONE else, that is interested in taking a look. We are proud of what we have achieved so far, but there is a massive amount that still needs to be done.

ed Poole
edp@LearnAboutMoviePosters.com

Re: Is Preservation Cost Prohibitive?

R Michael Stillwagon — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:42:01 -0000

Kim - did you see this in ComputerWorld:

"A 2007 study by the Academy found that the long-term cost of archiving the master material of a commercial movie on film is $1,059 per year. In digital format, the cost is 11 times higher -- $12,514 per year."

You can read the whole article here: http://goo.gl/QEQZ

Does this mean I should back up my digital home videos on Super 8?

Re: QotW: August 8, 2010

E Keathley — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:32:27 -0000

I would say we're on the edge of a breakthrough; with Internet collaboration between repositories, cross referencing separate collections will soon no longer require travel. With the Digital Asset Management field expanding, good metadata creation skills allow another job market for librarianship as academic and public positions continue to be cut.

Re: QotW: July 13, 2010

Julia — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:37:58 -0000

I guess it depends on the institution, and how preservation fits into its wider goals. I would argue that preservation is important and the cost is not as high as replacement, but I also come from a historical society/special collections background.

Re: Documenting the American South

Kim Schroeder — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 07:13:27 -0000

One of the powerful aspects of this digitization is the sheer number of people it reaches now. I believe that they mentioned that they had 6 researchers a year coming through to look at the slave diaries before digitization and now they reach hundreds more a year! It is life-changing content to read and I am so pleased that I was able to do so.

Re: An Archivist’s Brand New Hat – New Beginnings for My Family History

Emeri Gent [Em] — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 11:57:32 -0000

Ruth, I don't see it as much as being in touch with my inner-archivist as much as it is the relationship between order and chaos within :-)

We have in our world today many fads that promote short-term thinking. Some of it is driven by time deficiency but most of it is driven by the failure to make time. That is the primary hotspot where we need to be in touch with our inner archivist.

I have made it a purpose in my online journey to both be on the lookout what professional thinking can offer me as new perspective and also about embracing diversity by being a virtual butterfly rather than a "community member" or "social media" or a
"conversation" (whatever those things might mean to people).

Whatever it is I land on I invariably discover its temporal shelf-life and the short-term nature of our disposable culture, which now even disposes "thoughts".

So what is that "inner-archvist" but a dedication to the long-term. What is most required in our short-term fixated culture but a return to long-term thinking and long-term appreciation. Archivists by the nature of their profession must at least have this appreciation or sense of long-term value.

Personally for me, this long-term attitude boils down to practical wisdom. I am by nature someone who when reading a newspaper takes a pause and break to reflect on the obituary column. There I often see the pictures of people who have left this world much too young. Rather than I say "there is nothing I can do about it", there is something I can do - I can learn to pay my respects.

This is what I mean by long-term values, even in a brief moment of silence which is the patience to read a few lines of what loved ones have written about someone that meant something deeper than whatever short-term flight of fancy happen to grab the daily feast of attention.

"The Archivist" then is something I view as a part of my inner-DNA. It is there, it is there in people who don't think they have it - but without immersing myself in this world, I won't get to know what it looks like in terms of practice.

It is not my purpose to write this in an empty handed fashion, I am not only archiving thoughts that are pouring from my head and heart as I write this, but I am also thinking deeply how the professional values of an archivist can help me improve my own personal life.

In four weeks I have changed some of my personal arrangements, which means that when I am preparing for something in the future, not only am I improving long-term values, I can find things more readily and I am avoiding the repetition i.e. such as finding that passport at the last minute, only to discover it should have been renewed two months ago.

For me life engagement isn't about a great response but continually learning how to be responsive. So this represents a learning journey for me, a learning that never ends, but in the process of passing as ships of humanity in the cyber day or night, a little bit more wisdom rubs off on me.

My archivist-DNA is that much more enlightened and responsive, my life changes that little bit much for the better and so it is, I renewing learning both how to care but also how best to move on with my life.

We therefore are all born with an inner-archivist within us, many of never find out, some don't care and few are so good at it, they become consummate professionals. The mere fact that we are surrounded by media means we become archivists by default, but what I want to do here, is to think about it because thinking about it helps me to achieve my prime purpose, which is to change my own life and enjoy this journey I happen to call my life.

Ruth I must part ways now and continue on my journey, but I thank you humbly for both responding and more importantly inspiring me to flow further forth into the resulting emergence of phronesis.

[Em]

Re: An Archivist’s Brand New Hat – New Beginnings for My Family History

Ruth — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:45:18 -0000

Emeri Gent, I think you are definitely in touch with your inner-archivist! You make many very good points and you've touched upon so many issues that archivists face. Great response.

Re: An Archivist’s Brand New Hat – New Beginnings for My Family History

Ruth — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:34:27 -0000

I can't tell you how many archivists I've spoken with who have mentioned personal collections that they just haven't had time to process properly. Why is that? I think we owe it to ourselves and our profession to treat our own collections with the care and thoughtfulness we give our clients' and organizations' materials.

Your father sounds like such a great guy and the passion and interest for your his collection comes through so clear in your post. I am anxious to see how this evolves! Let's hear more about that "hat" collection soon!

Re: History is Big Business

Ruth — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:25:24 -0000

This is a great topic. I think many archives may be missing opportunities to generate income for their archives. You're absolutely right. The interest is out there! I understand the need for keeping an iron-clad grasp on an organization's material, but there is a way to share the great information that is out there and protect it from being misused!

Re: An Archivist’s Brand New Hat – New Beginnings for My Family History

Emeri Gent [Em] — Mon, 17 May 2010 14:33:27 -0000

One of the biggest lessons of data I received is when my failure to back things up were put into perspective when my laptop stopped working with a mechanical rather than drive failure. That I managed to get a replacement laptop and get the hard disk transferred to the new laptop did not take away the visceral sense of what loss of data would mean to me.

While I am not in the librarian profession, I like diving into other professional areas to get a sense of how people inside those professions see their world and then I have a different perspective for my own learning that I can shape, apply or work with.

The cassette story example reminds me also that technology platforms are themselves not fallible, that one medium can be quickly replaced by a different medium i.e. tapes to cassettes, cassettes to CD's etc etc

That there is still precious media of the personal kind on old video's not to mention my own wedding video from 25 years ago, the importance of archiving is often given short shrift or the purview of rightful importance - not that is until one realizes the perils of not backing up their data, information or artifacts.

At the grand scale of an archival administrator it is interesting looking at the scale and quantity of data to be moved from one state to another, but this also reminds me the arguments that now are developing in the realm of cloud computing vs. traditional legacy data centers.

I don't know if the concept of virtualization runs parallel with archival administration today or whether they will sit in different domains, but the role of virtualization is simply the speed that data can be moved from one system to another while also changing the paradigm of storage itself.

As far as I am concerned (and I always write for myself at the most personal level in the form of monologue) the importance and spread of information is one of those facets of our life that changes not only our workplace habits but extends the notion of family as an accessible personal history.

It is a tremendous thing I find to note what was said in Ms. Williams posting that a grand-child can access the thoughts or media-treasure of a grandparent's life and if archiving becomes an art at the most personal level, to start curating an entire history of ones family now that it is entirely recordable.

This ability to record and bring the past alive used to be the domain of the wealthy and the most elite. That the common man is now going beyond the idea of his home as a castle, but can (at least it is possible to do) orchestrate genealogy as a "personal media" means that history itself becomes a personal network that is a "familynet" rather than an internet.

I think using the words "Digital Preservation" is problematic term because it spells more connotations to a cemetery of media rather than a rebirth of medium.

Of course the term "Digital Resurrection" goes to far the other way, but whatever term archivists eventually come to describe this new transition of personal media magnitude, it has to have a sense that this is something that will become as much a part of life as the Internet, a Television and a Radio is. It therefore isn't even archiving but perhaps the best word for it is digital restoration.

Our century itself is a century of restoration - and this idea of restoration links those in archival administration to the fabric of life itself.

I am buzzed when I talk about this, maybe I should go to Library School too but that is simply a sentiment of enthusiasm for having thought about this topic of "New Beginnings" though novus ordo seclorum will mean that I have pushed my thoughts here too far :-)

[Em]

Re: Saving It Because I Can

Brian — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 20:04:53 -0000

Very cool!

Re: Twitter hits its 10 billionth tweet: What this means for you

Adam — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:06:44 -0000

You bring up a good point, and the archival of Twitter is something that is starting to be required by regulatory bodies.

With new regulations like FINRA Regulatory Notice 10-06, tweets are now data that needs to be captured and available for retrieval, just like email. Financial advisors are essentially faced with the situation: if I tweet, it needs to be archived.