Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Allen Weinstein at UMD 10/10--Save the date!
We interrupt this SAA blogging to bring you the following exciting announcement: Allen Weinstein, Archivist of the United States, will be speaking on the University of Maryland Campus on October 10, 2006! Unfortunately, that's all I have for you right now, but more details will be forthcoming here as they come in!
Saturday, August 05, 2006
Link Dump
Grargh. I have many notes but am far too tired to post them. Meanwhile, here are some other SAA conference-related links:
Jeanne Kramer-Smyth, a fellow CLIS archives student, has posted some initial impressions about SAA at her blog, Spellbound. Thus far she only has the first session covered but I imagine she'll have more so you should check it out.
Geof Huth at The Anarchivist has much, much material on SAA on his respective blog. Definitely go check this out.
The unnamed admin at Foldering.com (I actually met her at the Archon section but forgot her name-- d'oh) has some other coverage of the event.
Most of these sites have content which I didn't go to, so they're going to be worth looking at even after I get my notes in blog form.
OK, that's it. I'm going to go sleep until school starts now.
Jeanne Kramer-Smyth, a fellow CLIS archives student, has posted some initial impressions about SAA at her blog, Spellbound. Thus far she only has the first session covered but I imagine she'll have more so you should check it out.
Geof Huth at The Anarchivist has much, much material on SAA on his respective blog. Definitely go check this out.
The unnamed admin at Foldering.com (I actually met her at the Archon section but forgot her name-- d'oh) has some other coverage of the event.
Most of these sites have content which I didn't go to, so they're going to be worth looking at even after I get my notes in blog form.
OK, that's it. I'm going to go sleep until school starts now.
Friday, August 04, 2006
More Sessions: “Big Bird’s Digital Future” and “Secrecy vs. Access”
Dear sir, I wish to register a complaint. I was promised Big Bird in the session on digital preservation of A/V materials, and yet, with one exception, the large yellow avian was nowhere to be found. I think I should get my money back. Please send the registration fee to the registrant address found on my form. Yours Sincerely, Me
Actually, the session was pretty good, though my least favorite of the three I attended and thus the one about which I have the least to say. Tom Connors gave an interesting presentation about the collection archives side of this, and in particular on the methodology he used in the Public Broadcasting Archives to appraise materials for preservation. He was (rightly I think) skeptical of the claim by Brewster Kahle that inpreservation of every piece of human information is a) possible and b) preferable. (Among other things, such preservation would involve saving this blog, which I don’t really think anyone wants that much.) I was also intrigued by the criteria which Connors used to determine the worth of preserving an item.
Lisa Carter’s presentation was mainly an advocacy piece—it documented the current sad state of archiving in TV stations, examined the challenges inherent in doing archival work specifically for such an organization, and gave some suggestions to archivists as to how they could undertake this process and (more importantly) how to convince station management that the process is necessary. Really, it annoys me that in this day and age it’s still necessary to go through that second step—as she pointed out, all of the tapes, etc. are going to have to be archived anyway, and until they are they’re just taking up office space—why NOT let an archivist get to the stuff ahead of time, thus saving them and you time in the long run? This, I think, is possibly the most frustrating part of being an archivist—people seem almost willfully ignorant of good recordkeeping processes, even when you tell them how to do it repeatedly, which ends in more work for both you and them when it comes time to put those records in an archives. (This may be me being bitter after working in Federal Records Management for 2 ½ months.)
Unfortunately my notes are not very good on Leah Weisse’s presentation—maybe someone else who was there can fill us in?
The “Secrecy vs. Access” session was interesting, if perhaps predictable. It won’t surprise anyone, of course, to hear that the GW Bush administration is the most secretive administration since the height of the Cold War; what DID cause me to look at it in a different way was Tom Connors’ noting of the fact that while more secrets are created now than ever before, simultaneously more documents are available to the public than ever before, thanks to the internet and electronic copies of documents. In addition, noted Ira Chinoy, this trend towards secrecy is not a new thing with the Bush Administration; Clinton also took a number of steps towards limiting access to information, and even LBJ, who originally signed the Freedom of Information Act, only did so reluctantly. However, for the most part the panel was critical specifically of the Bush administration’s overabundance of secrecy. Tom Blanton, for example, talked up the absurdity of the flap over the NYT disclosure of the wiretapping program: “There ARE real secrets”, Blanton noted, “but the Deputy Attorney General’s thoughts on the legality of wiretapping should not be so.”
Another interesting point brought up by the panel was the idea that the overabundance of security may not actually make us safer. As an example, Blanton cited the refusal of Homeland Security to disclose port information on the grounds that terrorists might then target the weaker ones; in fact, the real reason the information was not disclosed was because NONE of the ports had adequate security. My personal favorite example used by Blanton was actually literary (sort of): he used the example of the climax of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to show how keeping secrets could have fatal consequences. This being an, ahem, well-read crowd, this example was well-received.
I should note that this seems to have been one of the more popular sessions in the 3rd slot—the audience was standing-room only, and in fact a few people were turned away. This comforts me somewhat, though it is not really surprising—one would expect that archivists would be in favor of as much open access as possible. Otherwise, what are you doing in the profession? (Unfortunately, this is not as much of a rhetorical question as it sounds, based on what I read in the literature, though it is getting better, I think.) I did have a conversation with a gentleman on the way out regarding the lack of an alternative perspective on the issue of secrecy, which I admit confused me at first—what do you argue from the other side? As he pointed out, there is a need for secrecy sometimes, which neither I nor the presenters would argue with. Rather, I think that the ‘secrecy’ line is drawn too broadly and not always for good reasons, which in turn dilutes the value of classification altogether. Certainly, though, the line is hard to find on certain documents.
Other things—Student Forum and Student Mixer
Very briefly—the Student Forum was held at lunch on Thursday and was, I think, very productive—we broke up into focus groups and came up with a number of things SAA was doing right for students and things on which they could improve. Among the suggestions (from memory, as I didn’t take good notes, alas) were a week of “Archivists without Borders”, where institutions gave students off a week to do archives-building projects in places like New Orleans and the like, and the institution of a student calendar on the SAA websites to let student chapters know what their obligations are and when they are due. Again, other contributions to this are welcome.
Wednesday Night was the SAA student mixer, and Thursday Night the Maryland Alum mixer, both of which were organized by SAM and/or SAM alumni and both of which were big successes. Many thanks to Sara and Megan Smith for their work ironing out the details of the former, and to Rob Jensen for booking the space and organizing the latter.
Whew. Day one is done, and it only took 2 days to write up! (Oy.) Stay tuned for the rest of the thing.
Actually, the session was pretty good, though my least favorite of the three I attended and thus the one about which I have the least to say. Tom Connors gave an interesting presentation about the collection archives side of this, and in particular on the methodology he used in the Public Broadcasting Archives to appraise materials for preservation. He was (rightly I think) skeptical of the claim by Brewster Kahle that inpreservation of every piece of human information is a) possible and b) preferable. (Among other things, such preservation would involve saving this blog, which I don’t really think anyone wants that much.) I was also intrigued by the criteria which Connors used to determine the worth of preserving an item.
Lisa Carter’s presentation was mainly an advocacy piece—it documented the current sad state of archiving in TV stations, examined the challenges inherent in doing archival work specifically for such an organization, and gave some suggestions to archivists as to how they could undertake this process and (more importantly) how to convince station management that the process is necessary. Really, it annoys me that in this day and age it’s still necessary to go through that second step—as she pointed out, all of the tapes, etc. are going to have to be archived anyway, and until they are they’re just taking up office space—why NOT let an archivist get to the stuff ahead of time, thus saving them and you time in the long run? This, I think, is possibly the most frustrating part of being an archivist—people seem almost willfully ignorant of good recordkeeping processes, even when you tell them how to do it repeatedly, which ends in more work for both you and them when it comes time to put those records in an archives. (This may be me being bitter after working in Federal Records Management for 2 ½ months.)
Unfortunately my notes are not very good on Leah Weisse’s presentation—maybe someone else who was there can fill us in?
The “Secrecy vs. Access” session was interesting, if perhaps predictable. It won’t surprise anyone, of course, to hear that the GW Bush administration is the most secretive administration since the height of the Cold War; what DID cause me to look at it in a different way was Tom Connors’ noting of the fact that while more secrets are created now than ever before, simultaneously more documents are available to the public than ever before, thanks to the internet and electronic copies of documents. In addition, noted Ira Chinoy, this trend towards secrecy is not a new thing with the Bush Administration; Clinton also took a number of steps towards limiting access to information, and even LBJ, who originally signed the Freedom of Information Act, only did so reluctantly. However, for the most part the panel was critical specifically of the Bush administration’s overabundance of secrecy. Tom Blanton, for example, talked up the absurdity of the flap over the NYT disclosure of the wiretapping program: “There ARE real secrets”, Blanton noted, “but the Deputy Attorney General’s thoughts on the legality of wiretapping should not be so.”
Another interesting point brought up by the panel was the idea that the overabundance of security may not actually make us safer. As an example, Blanton cited the refusal of Homeland Security to disclose port information on the grounds that terrorists might then target the weaker ones; in fact, the real reason the information was not disclosed was because NONE of the ports had adequate security. My personal favorite example used by Blanton was actually literary (sort of): he used the example of the climax of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to show how keeping secrets could have fatal consequences. This being an, ahem, well-read crowd, this example was well-received.
I should note that this seems to have been one of the more popular sessions in the 3rd slot—the audience was standing-room only, and in fact a few people were turned away. This comforts me somewhat, though it is not really surprising—one would expect that archivists would be in favor of as much open access as possible. Otherwise, what are you doing in the profession? (Unfortunately, this is not as much of a rhetorical question as it sounds, based on what I read in the literature, though it is getting better, I think.) I did have a conversation with a gentleman on the way out regarding the lack of an alternative perspective on the issue of secrecy, which I admit confused me at first—what do you argue from the other side? As he pointed out, there is a need for secrecy sometimes, which neither I nor the presenters would argue with. Rather, I think that the ‘secrecy’ line is drawn too broadly and not always for good reasons, which in turn dilutes the value of classification altogether. Certainly, though, the line is hard to find on certain documents.
Other things—Student Forum and Student Mixer
Very briefly—the Student Forum was held at lunch on Thursday and was, I think, very productive—we broke up into focus groups and came up with a number of things SAA was doing right for students and things on which they could improve. Among the suggestions (from memory, as I didn’t take good notes, alas) were a week of “Archivists without Borders”, where institutions gave students off a week to do archives-building projects in places like New Orleans and the like, and the institution of a student calendar on the SAA websites to let student chapters know what their obligations are and when they are due. Again, other contributions to this are welcome.
Wednesday Night was the SAA student mixer, and Thursday Night the Maryland Alum mixer, both of which were organized by SAM and/or SAM alumni and both of which were big successes. Many thanks to Sara and Megan Smith for their work ironing out the details of the former, and to Rob Jensen for booking the space and organizing the latter.
Whew. Day one is done, and it only took 2 days to write up! (Oy.) Stay tuned for the rest of the thing.
I am a bad SAM president
Instead of attending either the Plenary session of the SAA conference or the Cokie Roberts talk (which, I should note, Dr. Davis was very upset she had to miss and thus I feel especially bad about missing myself), I am sitting in a coffee shop in Dupont Circle and updating this blog. Well, at least I'm doing SOMETHING related to my presidential duties. (Also I have no internet at home presently, so this is the only means I have of feeding my addiction)
Anyway! SAA is very hectic from what I've seen thus far. Not that I'd expect anything else-- I mean, it IS the national conference of the national archivist organization-- but it's still a little overwhelming, particularly for people (like myself) who haven't been to one of these things before. I have not been doing as much of the connection-making thing as I probably should be, but it sounds like the other SAM folk at the conference (Of which there are many, thanks to proximity to UMCP) have been, so when in doubt I can ask the membership for help. Hurray for delegation!
Sessions attended by Brad
"The Archival Pharmakon"
Veeery interesting session. The premise of the thing was that archives, which in an ideal world should be used exclusively for good, had the potential to also be used in the service of, not evil exactly, but less-than-moral purposes-- and often were, particularly by the government. Rand Jimerson, former president of SAA (and particularly interesting with respect to this session because he was in that role when Allen Weinstein was confirmed), took the more optimistic view of the two speakers, noting that while there are many historical examples of governments using records to their particular advantage (the most cogent example he used was that of the Apartheid Regime in South Africa), they could also be forces for good, and that it was the job of the archivist to make them such. In particular, Jimerson pointed out 4 functions of archives in this regard: 1) To hold politicians accountable; 2) To address social injustices; 3) To help represent the unrepresented and minority groups in society; and 4)To make records available without the influence of political pressure. He noted that archivists have to be careful to examine our own cultural and societal biases when deciding what is to be saved and how to describe it, which is certainly good advice. I was a bit more struck by his quoting of Verne Harris, however, when he noted that "Our most important accounting is to the call of justice" and postulated that in cases such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiments it is the responsibility of the archivists to call attention to such records. Hm. I wonder. Certainly we need to make them available if at all possible, but is it really the job of the archivist to do advocacy on the contents of his/her own records? Doesn't that compromise some of the objectivity that we need to maintain? (On the other hand, as a history student and activist I'm all for this kind of action-- maybe not as a professional though.)
Roy Turnbaugh's commentary on the issue was much more inflammatory, and for that reason I thought much more interesting. His talk began with a radical statement, "Archives in America have little power because history has little power," and he spent most of his time attempting to prove that statement. He noted, fairly I think, that NARA has a weak hand in regards to autonomy because it's an executive office (something which I've always wondered about myself... why make the guy in charge of establishing archives policy for the ENTIRE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT a political appointee) and that it's been further weakened by various executive orders taking power from the hands of archivists and put into the hands of politicians. He asserted that the national archives were, by and large, used to buttress the power of the current order rather than to provide any meaningful accountability (a word which he took exception to anyway, calling it "a stand-in for justice") and said that the historical narrative put forth by NARA was by and large in support of a "Bankrupt Nationalism." Turnbaugh said that the people themselves had to deal with this problem, but that "If there is a way out, it's not through an archives." Again, I find my professional self at odds with my activist self-- I'm right with him on the way that national archives "filter meaning" to serve their own ends, but I'm not sure if I agree with his comment during the question time that there would be "no difference on a macro level" to government accountability if the national archives didn't exist. Perhaps because I am just starting out I am naive, but I think what the National Archives chooses to display is very different from what is actually available, and that with the right diligence people can find the truth behind the filtered narrative. (Whether they can get the public to listen is another question-- Look at Howard Zinn, for example, who is (rightly or wrongly) reviled as a nutcase by much of the historical 'establishment'.) Certainly, though, it is incumbent upon us as a profession to work on it-- we cannot, as he said, "keep supporting the complacency of our government and its leaders."
Aack. These take longer than I thought. More later when I don't have to run to a section roundtable. Meanwhile, comments welcome!
Anyway! SAA is very hectic from what I've seen thus far. Not that I'd expect anything else-- I mean, it IS the national conference of the national archivist organization-- but it's still a little overwhelming, particularly for people (like myself) who haven't been to one of these things before. I have not been doing as much of the connection-making thing as I probably should be, but it sounds like the other SAM folk at the conference (Of which there are many, thanks to proximity to UMCP) have been, so when in doubt I can ask the membership for help. Hurray for delegation!
Sessions attended by Brad
"The Archival Pharmakon"
Veeery interesting session. The premise of the thing was that archives, which in an ideal world should be used exclusively for good, had the potential to also be used in the service of, not evil exactly, but less-than-moral purposes-- and often were, particularly by the government. Rand Jimerson, former president of SAA (and particularly interesting with respect to this session because he was in that role when Allen Weinstein was confirmed), took the more optimistic view of the two speakers, noting that while there are many historical examples of governments using records to their particular advantage (the most cogent example he used was that of the Apartheid Regime in South Africa), they could also be forces for good, and that it was the job of the archivist to make them such. In particular, Jimerson pointed out 4 functions of archives in this regard: 1) To hold politicians accountable; 2) To address social injustices; 3) To help represent the unrepresented and minority groups in society; and 4)To make records available without the influence of political pressure. He noted that archivists have to be careful to examine our own cultural and societal biases when deciding what is to be saved and how to describe it, which is certainly good advice. I was a bit more struck by his quoting of Verne Harris, however, when he noted that "Our most important accounting is to the call of justice" and postulated that in cases such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiments it is the responsibility of the archivists to call attention to such records. Hm. I wonder. Certainly we need to make them available if at all possible, but is it really the job of the archivist to do advocacy on the contents of his/her own records? Doesn't that compromise some of the objectivity that we need to maintain? (On the other hand, as a history student and activist I'm all for this kind of action-- maybe not as a professional though.)
Roy Turnbaugh's commentary on the issue was much more inflammatory, and for that reason I thought much more interesting. His talk began with a radical statement, "Archives in America have little power because history has little power," and he spent most of his time attempting to prove that statement. He noted, fairly I think, that NARA has a weak hand in regards to autonomy because it's an executive office (something which I've always wondered about myself... why make the guy in charge of establishing archives policy for the ENTIRE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT a political appointee) and that it's been further weakened by various executive orders taking power from the hands of archivists and put into the hands of politicians. He asserted that the national archives were, by and large, used to buttress the power of the current order rather than to provide any meaningful accountability (a word which he took exception to anyway, calling it "a stand-in for justice") and said that the historical narrative put forth by NARA was by and large in support of a "Bankrupt Nationalism." Turnbaugh said that the people themselves had to deal with this problem, but that "If there is a way out, it's not through an archives." Again, I find my professional self at odds with my activist self-- I'm right with him on the way that national archives "filter meaning" to serve their own ends, but I'm not sure if I agree with his comment during the question time that there would be "no difference on a macro level" to government accountability if the national archives didn't exist. Perhaps because I am just starting out I am naive, but I think what the National Archives chooses to display is very different from what is actually available, and that with the right diligence people can find the truth behind the filtered narrative. (Whether they can get the public to listen is another question-- Look at Howard Zinn, for example, who is (rightly or wrongly) reviled as a nutcase by much of the historical 'establishment'.) Certainly, though, it is incumbent upon us as a profession to work on it-- we cannot, as he said, "keep supporting the complacency of our government and its leaders."
Aack. These take longer than I thought. More later when I don't have to run to a section roundtable. Meanwhile, comments welcome!
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Wilkommen!
Hi all!
Welcome to the official (unofficial) blog for the Student Archivists at Maryland. This blog, which will be staffed by the three SAM officers for the 2006-2007 academic year, will bring you updates on SAM events, archives in the news, local archives stuff, and more! For now, stay tuned for a liveblogging* of the Society of American Archivists annual conference, happening RIGHT NOW!
*Well, I say liveblogging except that it's going to be delayed posting because the Washington Hilton doesn't have free wifi. The writing will be live though. Um, I'm also kind of missing the Council of State Archivists chair Plenary session right now because I'm setting up this blog-- maybe Sara or Courtney are there and can report?
Welcome to the official (unofficial) blog for the Student Archivists at Maryland. This blog, which will be staffed by the three SAM officers for the 2006-2007 academic year, will bring you updates on SAM events, archives in the news, local archives stuff, and more! For now, stay tuned for a liveblogging* of the Society of American Archivists annual conference, happening RIGHT NOW!
*Well, I say liveblogging except that it's going to be delayed posting because the Washington Hilton doesn't have free wifi. The writing will be live though. Um, I'm also kind of missing the Council of State Archivists chair Plenary session right now because I'm setting up this blog-- maybe Sara or Courtney are there and can report?
