The transportation for this trip was a replay of what happened to the OCLS - take the train to Jamaica, the monorail to JFK and then fly nonstop to the West. There was some issue with the weather, so they flew us further north than usual - starting with Buffalo, I got great views of all of the Great Lakes. Made me wish I hadn't left my camera at home, but it's a digital SLR and wouldn't fit with my plan of getting everything into a single carry-on bag.
Now BART goes right up to the SF airport, so I got into that and saved Quinnipiac a good $30, and had a more fun ride to boot. I had to go on memory getting from the Powell Street Station to the Hilton but made it without a single lost step. The room was elegant but tiny, and the first big laugh of the day was the room service menu. This is home to the $42 continental breakfast. It lists for a modest $29, but if you read the fine print they charge you an extra five for the privilege and then a 15% service charge, plus whatever you tip the server yourself. That puts it well over forty bucks. In contrast there' s a donut shop across the street that will feed you just fine for three dollars.
Since I was hungry from the trip, I walked up Geary to Tommy's on Van Ness - one of those wacky San Francisco places that appeals to city insiders and tourists in equal measure. I've been coming here since 1972 but never tried their specialty buffalo stew. At 3 PM it looked like an impossible task to stay awake until 9 and avoid the dreaded jetlag. I decided to take to the road and go shopping. I walked up to Union Square and then turned left at Grant. Before the walk was over, I had found gifts
for my family members and bought a cheap camera that I could carry in my pocket. After a light snack at Foley's across the street, I had met my goal of 9 PM, and was asleep by about 9:05.
Woke up at 6 on Wednesday. A huge plate of corned beef hash and eggs at Lori's diner was considerably less expensive than the Hilton's continental breakfast, and it was also delicious. There wasn't much to do at the conference until 1, so I went down to Powell Street and bought a 3 day pass that gave me unlimited rides on all cable cars and buses - everything but BART. It was a beautiful morning at the Wharf - I walked around for a few minutes and got an Irish coffee at the Buena Vista, the pub known for bringing the drink to America.
Archivist's Toolkit new version released last January- 5 or 10 copies downloaded every day. Putting on workshops in various locations, including New York in January. Partially funded by NYU. It an open source content manager, or as they call it a collections management database. Content entry can be set up for various levels depending on the status of the inputter. Speaker was archivist at California Academy of Sciences. Managed 2500 cubic feet of materials. Used AT at a basic level. Used for name auth control, usage stats, and generating EAD finding aids. Helped her manage her collections. In both of her institutions, Excel spreadsheets were used for most tasks. Clunky - had to do the same things in triplicate. Had to spend time creating formulas in Excel. Didn't have time to design a new program. Used the original release of AT in November, 2006. Worst
part was getting her IT people to cooperate.
NYU archivist worked on the Washington Square Park image project, hoped to prove that you don't have to have a grant to begin a major project. The collection totals 1200 images of the park. Lots of aerial views.
Copyright notices were added to metadata when NYU did not own the image. Her colleague created manuals for workflow using the toolkit.
Archival history Roundtable. SAA had invested in stocks and lost more than 30,000, so they are looking at new ways to invest. They should probably buy stock in oil companies. First speaker runs a photographic archive of records of Australian aboriginals. She maintains the papers of Mr. Neville, who "protected" the aborigines from 1915 to 1940. His impact on the natives was measured by the fact that they noted that Neville rhymes with Devil. On the other hand, he kept fantastically detailed records. Different parts of the records were split up - not good. Speaker found that the records aren't as good and thorough as was thought. Big problem is there is evidence that money was stolen from the natives, but the records aren't good enough to prove who needs to be paid back.
Second speaker from UNLV, which has developed a special collection on the history of gaming - beginning with European books from the 16th century, books about mathematical probability and lots about the history of Nevada. Not much collection of artifacts. "What happened in Las Vegas stays at the UNLV archive." They set up relationships with casinos, that can be particularly valuable if the casino closes. They have a lottery ticket from the 1700s. World's largest collectoin about Whist. Gaming trade periodicals date back to very early 1900s.
Now BART goes right up to the SF airport, so I got into that and saved Quinnipiac a good $30, and had a more fun ride to boot. I had to go on memory getting from the Powell Street Station to the Hilton but made it without a single lost step. The room was elegant but tiny, and the first big laugh of the day was the room service menu. This is home to the $42 continental breakfast. It lists for a modest $29, but if you read the fine print they charge you an extra five for the privilege and then a 15% service charge, plus whatever you tip the server yourself. That puts it well over forty bucks. In contrast there' s a donut shop across the street that will feed you just fine for three dollars.
Since I was hungry from the trip, I walked up Geary to Tommy's on Van Ness - one of those wacky San Francisco places that appeals to city insiders and tourists in equal measure. I've been coming here since 1972 but never tried their specialty buffalo stew. At 3 PM it looked like an impossible task to stay awake until 9 and avoid the dreaded jetlag. I decided to take to the road and go shopping. I walked up to Union Square and then turned left at Grant. Before the walk was over, I had found gifts
for my family members and bought a cheap camera that I could carry in my pocket. After a light snack at Foley's across the street, I had met my goal of 9 PM, and was asleep by about 9:05.Woke up at 6 on Wednesday. A huge plate of corned beef hash and eggs at Lori's diner was considerably less expensive than the Hilton's continental breakfast, and it was also delicious. There wasn't much to do at the conference until 1, so I went down to Powell Street and bought a 3 day pass that gave me unlimited rides on all cable cars and buses - everything but BART. It was a beautiful morning at the Wharf - I walked around for a few minutes and got an Irish coffee at the Buena Vista, the pub known for bringing the drink to America.
Archivist's Toolkit new version released last January- 5 or 10 copies downloaded every day. Putting on workshops in various locations, including New York in January. Partially funded by NYU. It an open source content manager, or as they call it a collections management database. Content entry can be set up for various levels depending on the status of the inputter. Speaker was archivist at California Academy of Sciences. Managed 2500 cubic feet of materials. Used AT at a basic level. Used for name auth control, usage stats, and generating EAD finding aids. Helped her manage her collections. In both of her institutions, Excel spreadsheets were used for most tasks. Clunky - had to do the same things in triplicate. Had to spend time creating formulas in Excel. Didn't have time to design a new program. Used the original release of AT in November, 2006. Worst
part was getting her IT people to cooperate.
NYU archivist worked on the Washington Square Park image project, hoped to prove that you don't have to have a grant to begin a major project. The collection totals 1200 images of the park. Lots of aerial views.
Copyright notices were added to metadata when NYU did not own the image. Her colleague created manuals for workflow using the toolkit.
Archival history Roundtable. SAA had invested in stocks and lost more than 30,000, so they are looking at new ways to invest. They should probably buy stock in oil companies. First speaker runs a photographic archive of records of Australian aboriginals. She maintains the papers of Mr. Neville, who "protected" the aborigines from 1915 to 1940. His impact on the natives was measured by the fact that they noted that Neville rhymes with Devil. On the other hand, he kept fantastically detailed records. Different parts of the records were split up - not good. Speaker found that the records aren't as good and thorough as was thought. Big problem is there is evidence that money was stolen from the natives, but the records aren't good enough to prove who needs to be paid back.
Second speaker from UNLV, which has developed a special collection on the history of gaming - beginning with European books from the 16th century, books about mathematical probability and lots about the history of Nevada. Not much collection of artifacts. "What happened in Las Vegas stays at the UNLV archive." They set up relationships with casinos, that can be particularly valuable if the casino closes. They have a lottery ticket from the 1700s. World's largest collectoin about Whist. Gaming trade periodicals date back to very early 1900s.
2nd day
DAY 2
Got up at 6 and headed for breakfast at one of the many good diners on Mason Street. Today's omelette was made of shrimp and avacados - very good and different.
Lena Zentall from the California Digital Library. Untitled. [Snappy title with journey metaphor] was the title of her talk. A loittle humor goes a long way with me. Rows of archival boxes - Final resting place? No way. From archives to web. Collection begins with stuff in a box. Then archivists then made finding aids to let others know what was inside. Then they added the finding aids to the web. "Chinese in California" has homes at CDL and the Library of Congress. CDL starts with image and works back to finding aid. OAC is the reverse. Also links back to contributing institutions. More than 40% of users start with Google. They "Reel users back from Google."
Also align with other aggregators. Open Educational Resources site one good example.
They cherry-pick the standout items and get them on Wikipedia. They found out that after they had added 30 pictures to Wikipedia that others had already selected more than 50 of their pictures and added them. Will soon develop a blog to tell the story behind some of their better pictures.
Helena Zinkham from the Library of Congress. Added first 2 collections to Flickr Commons.
Most people find images on the web - we have to add content on their terms. LOC had already done a pilot project of images from the 1930s and 40s. Makes images more accessible and useful to users. LOC agreed to sign on to the Web 2.0 approach. They found that this was extremely valuable because users added tags and other accurate information to the photos, including the identity of the photographer.
Benefits.
Make collections available.
Gain new info about the collections.
Increase the visibility of specific photos.
Gain new info about the collections.
Increase the visibility of specific photos.
Risks.
Smart aleck remarks
Loss of meaning
Reduced revenue from photo sales
Excludes undigitized collections.
Less opportunity for us to have fun as history detectives.
Flickr developed the Commons in response to the needs of LOC. Launched in January 2008. In first 6 months LOC collections got 8 million views. Got 5000 comments. Added 20 % to LOCs regular image archive. Most viewed photo has been seen 75,000 times. She considers Flickr members valuable volunteers. For instance, a picture labelled something like "Street scene in Alliance Ohio," would bring comments from someone who knew the exact address, the year, and the family history of the store owner. George Eastman House just added pictures to the commons, but they have blocked printing.
Cost - $24.95 per year for Flickr Pro account.
They have to patrol comments each day for at least 10 minutes.
Project has added interactions between citizens and archival staff. New feature is "Then and Now" pictures.
OAC is for power users - links to finding aids, etc. Calisphere is more for the general public. Same content but two different views.
The keynote speech that evening was John Dean. After his Watergate days, he pursued a successful career in inves
tment banking. After his retirement, he began a writing and speaking career. While expressing his admiration for archivists who have been a major help in his writing career, he gave us the tag line, "Archivists make it last longer." Dean feels that the abuses of the Bush administration put Nixon to shame. He said that he considers himself an independent, but admitted that he isn't invited to many Republican functions lately. He maintains close contacts with Washington insiders on both sides of the aisle. One of them recently told him that while jogging near the Vice Presidential mansion, he observed trucks leaving the facility with the panels labelled : "Document destruction company." Since the administration says that they have done nothing to be ashamed of, this seems curious.
tment banking. After his retirement, he began a writing and speaking career. While expressing his admiration for archivists who have been a major help in his writing career, he gave us the tag line, "Archivists make it last longer." Dean feels that the abuses of the Bush administration put Nixon to shame. He said that he considers himself an independent, but admitted that he isn't invited to many Republican functions lately. He maintains close contacts with Washington insiders on both sides of the aisle. One of them recently told him that while jogging near the Vice Presidential mansion, he observed trucks leaving the facility with the panels labelled : "Document destruction company." Since the administration says that they have done nothing to be ashamed of, this seems curious.
