Oh yes, I am officially claiming the rights to the book title Never Enough Velcro for use on some future book about how to survive the Lone Arranger Lifestyle.

Back from MARAC in Chautauqua and I've already got the tracks of the 8-Ball having rolled over me back and forth a few times this week. :)

We have a new Director who is interested in beefing up our technology. Could be a good thing, probably more non-archival work on my plate. Too many responsibilities to fit into a 32-hour week. Of course, email stopped working and the server seized up yesterday, so I haven't had a chance to prepare for my first real meeting with the new boss (about everything).

Just a note from one of the MARAC sessions, because I don't want to forget it later. In a preservation discussion section (which was cleverly titled -- I thought that it was going to be about time management for Lone Arrangers), it occurs to me that the best place to store Disaster Recovery / Continuation of Operations (DRCOOP) would be on an online document store ... for example, Google Documents. There are two big problems with actual DRCOOP situations -- keeping the documents updated and disseminated (meaning -- getting the people who need to know where the docs are and how to get to them and actually read them before a disaster happens), and having access to the documents in an actual disaster. One disaster planning workshop I've attended recommends having "the briefcase" for each facility site. That briefcase contains all the plans, contact information, flashlight, etc. and you're supposed to keep it near an exterior door of your facility ... or at home, or both. A good idea in theory, but if you have a catastrophic disaster at 3 AM, you've lost the facility briefcase. If the fellow who has the home copy can be contacted and the briefcase is up-to-date, that is great... but why not just put all the documents somewhere where multiple people who will be called upon to respond can access and update them? Yes, you still should keep a hard-copy at home, and update it often. However, by using an online document store, it should always be possible to get to the documents (If you can't get to them at home, go to the library. If the libraries are all closed, go to a 24-hour Kinko's [perhaps I'm a bit big-city-centric here]). If the entire city gets cratered, or is quarantined (more likely to be a recoverable scenario), someone in the organization can carry on without having to don a Haz-Mat suit.

Tags: disaster_recovery

LJ doesn't support trackback (yet?) so we have to do this the hard way.

In "The Pirate Problem," Dan Cohen wrote a posting framed around his surprise that the
Piratz Tavern failed to go out of business immediately after opening because there are more pirates in the Greater Washington D.C. area than he anticipated. There has been a strong pirate community in the area, and it has been here for decades with pirate feasts and gatherings. Some pirate just recognized the business potential of catering to an underserved community.

Dan characterized himself as the pirate, relative to the "old school humanities researcher" who fears that all this new digital magic mumbo-jumbo will make their comfortable way of doing research a thing of the past. I don't see Dan is the pirate here -- I think that the historian, who described himself as a crab being lowered into the pot of boiling water, is the pirate in this scenario. As archivists, as systems designers and implementors, we tend to forget about the pirates living among us (even if they wear a suit and tie and lobby on Capitol Hill by day). There are others who would like to be pirates, perhaps just for a day, but don't know how to get past the expectations of our "Very Serious Professional" community.

When we digitize, index, data warehouse, slice and dice the intellectual content of our archives, that there will always be pirates ("old school" historians) out there who will want to study the collection using the old collection/box/folder/document metaphors. The systems we build need to do more than merely retain the contextual information, but also make it available if desired by the researcher. We can do a better job of presenting the opportunities of the technology to make their work easier. The historians in the survey were asked how they would use the digitized collection. Were they presented with a laundry-list of potential tools or views into the collection and asked "would this be useful to you too?" The old-school researcher can't imagine what can be done with a digital repository because he hasn't been properly introduced. The new technology is all about choices and opportunities. Someone has to remind the historians that we are not out to cook the crabs ... we want to give them a nice comfy habitat where they can do their thing in peace. We shouldn't care whether they want to wear pirate garb or a propellor-beanie ... we just want to help them make use of our resources.

Meanwhile, back in the so-called real world, I had a researcher visit yesterday who eyeballed the stacks and said "You must have an awful lot of stuff that is digitized now, hmmm?" My response ... "Nearly nothing is digitized here. Digitization costs money, and guess what we don't have?" [sigh]

Tags: access, archives, digitization, historians, pirates, researchers

I will be heading up to the Spring

Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference
in Chautauqua, New York by car. I can take one or two riders who are interested in
saving on transportation costs. If interested, please contact me directly.


I'm planning on driving up on Wednesday afternoon and driving back on Sunday morning.

Tags: conference, professional

For the past few weeks, I have lost the use of about 49 square feet of the stack space in one of my repositories. They were doing load-testing of the floor above and had to shore it up in my space. So, I moved ten stacks and five pallets of unprocessed materials out of their way. I had thought that I would have to close down the Archives, since there is no other space in the building to move boxes to -- I upended the patron tables and stacked up furniture in columns to the ceiling in order to make room for the boxes. I also disassembled the ten stacks of shelves and moved them into space out side the "Zone of Doom" that I had to clear.

I discovered something in the process -- if you set aside some aesthetic considerations, there is a lot of space to be squeezed out. For starters, the pallets are not effective use of floor space. a pallet can only have boxes piled, at best, five high, and that tends to damage the boxes. They (the Divine Predecessor Archivists) could have put in another bank of shelves instead of putting down pallets for the backlog. I was able to reassemble all ten stacks outside the Zone, which means that I should be able to add at least eight stacks when I get the space back. That's 144 more c.f. of records off the floor.

The building I'm in has tall, deep window sills. In fact, the window sills make very nice shelving space. I use it primarily for material that is scheduled for deaccessioning, and backlog material (it's off the pallets on the floor), but I can store between fifteen and twenty-one boxes in each window sill. Before putting anything in there, I sealed the windows up with cardboard and masking tape. The windows have been leaking light into the Archives for years and I had plenty of cardboard from non-archival boxes that were used to transfer records into the Archives. I'll leave one window undarkened for looking outside, but using the other six will get me between 90 and 126 more c.f. of records off the floor. I can get rid of all the pallets, which are made of wood.

Finally, it is possible to arrange stacks of shelves in non-traditional configurations to get more shelving space, at the expense of a little convenience for the archives staff. The current layout ran rows of shelves in parallel the length of my stack space. Two rows have back-to-back shelves, two are against the walls, and one more is a single row because a double row would block the door. So, in my emergency configuration, I've put some stacks perpendicular to the existing rows -- at the ends of the rows, or in between. Now, the result of this is that approximately 1/3 of one stack might be blocked by the perpendicular stack. In order to access a box out of the blocked area, you would have to remove one beside it and slide the box before removing it. This would be bad for a part of the collections that are handled frequently, but certainly the backlog materials, which have been sitting on a pallet for ten years, are not bein g handled much, and I'm willing to do a little bit of extra work in return for an extra 36 c.f. of records off the floor.

Now to find some more shelves to scrounge.

Tags: archives, backlog, space

Tea, brewed to a NISO standard that has yet to be written:
1. Obtain a new tea pot made from non-reactive, archives-safe materials. I'm sure there is something available from the Gaylord catalog.
2. Open a new bottle of distilled, deionized water. Pour an appropriate amount into the water boiler, and discard the rest of the bottle.
3. Select a tea bag. Carefully lay it on the processing table on top of a piece of archival buffering board for further work.
4. Remove the tag and photocopy onto acid-free cardboard. Discard the original tag.
5. Remove and discard any staples from the tea bag, and open it up.
6. Carefully transfer the tea with a clean micro-spatula into a piece of folded acid-free onion-skin paper.
7. Fold up and seal the new tea bag with a safe (archival and food) adhesive.
8. Use the same adhesive to attach a piece of unbleached cotton tying tape to the tea bag and the new tag. Place in tea pot with optional sweetener.
9. Pour boiling water over tea bag and steep for a few minutes.
10. Get distracted by co-worker with some crisis that can't wait until the tea has been tasted.
11. Return to a cup of cold nasty tea. Discard and start at step #1.

Well, the last three steps are definitely typical for me. :)

Tags: coffee tea, writer's block
Current Location: Office
Current Mood: geeky

Michael Jackson, "The Beer Hunter" has died. I wonder whether his personal papers, including his beer tasting notes, will end up. This is a sad day for beer fans.

Current Mood: sad

The flight was amazingly painless -- an MD80 that was about 1/3 full -- everyone boarded at once -- first boarding call was final boarding call. We taxied out -- we took off immediately -- we flew to O'Hare -- we landed early -- our baggage was on the carrousel just as we got to it. So far this trip must be a dream (a really good one). I was worried about cancelled and delayed flights and everything else that can go wrong at O'Hare (and usually does), and zoop - everything was perfect. We got to the hotel and the room is splendid and the view is stunning and it's all good.

... until

I unpack my laptop, and I have a mess. The collapsing hinge on the case has given up the ghost. I opened it up and up pops the button cover, exposing the guts of the chassis, and out fall a couple of pieces of plastic and metal, and the monitor is hanging precariously off one of the two hinges. I managed to put it back together mostly, but it is not going to be portable until I get the chassis repaired. I called around to try to find a shop that has the pieces I need, and got no positives, but one smart fellow suggested that I call Dell. It turns out that I have a couple of weeks left on my "Next Day" service and "Complete Care" plan, so they will be sending out a technician tomorrow to rebuild my computer chassis, in my hotel room here in Chicago. I am very very happy with Dell service (or I will be tomorrow if the tech. gets me up and running). In the meantime, I picked up a 500 Mb USB disk drive to back up everything ... just in case the tech. touches something wrong.

That being settled, we took a Lake and River cruise, which was pleasant, and walked about a bit. Unfortunately, my brand new sneakers seem to be collapsing as well.

I've been thinking a little more about the use of computer forensics tools and techniques, or customized versions of same, in order to archive "electronic personal papers." There are privacy issues: like, are the unwashed surfing log traces part of the record of an individual's activities? What about the interludes at recreational web sites in between serious research? Someone would have to sanitize (or to use the proper terminology - restrict access to) anything that is personal, or proprietary -- then assess what parts of the trace of activity is relevant for posterity and then arrange that into a context that is meaningful and usable.

Tags: chicago, murphys_law, saa2007
Current Location: In our hotel room
Current Mood: tired

This blog has been a fine candidate for Boring Magazine's "Best Blogs of 2007" so far. Perhaps I'll do better at SAA2007 in Chicago.

They have set up an Unofficial SAA 2007 Wiki. I'll be posting and updating my tentative schedule under my profile if you want to meet up at the conference.

Tags: chicago, conference, saa2007

As I may have mentioned, one of my repositories is full to the gills. The stacks are full, the map cases are full, and there are 130 boxes of records on pallets between the stacks. About 2/5 of the total volume is unprocessed. We don't have the resources to process the backlog -- our funding is earmarked primarily for providing access and maintaining the existing collections (as best as can be done in 8 hours per week). But there is something I can do to free up some space ... in my copious spare time:

( Click here to read the gory details )

Tags: backlog stomping, processing, volunteering
Current Location: In bed
Current Mood: sleepy