NYAC 2016: Careers in Archives

The bronze statue of Samuel de Champlain atop Plattsburgh, New York's Champlain Monument overlooks the lake that bears the explorer's name, 7 June 2016. Champlain never visited what is now Plattsburgh, but many of the area's inhabitants are descendants of the French settlers who arrived in his wake.

Whenever I attend a conference, I make it a point to attend at least one session that isn't directly relevant to my job responsibilities or my career path. It gives me the chance to put aside my preoccupations for a bit and to look at my profession from a slightly different perspective, at least for a little while, and I always find it refreshing.

When I was at the 2016 meeting of the New York Archives Conference in Plattsburgh, last Friday, I attended "Careers in Archives: The Ins and Outs," which focused on the varied career paths within archives and brought together five experienced archivists and allied professionals who have taken on archival responsibilities:

• Jane Subramanian, SUNY Potsdam (emerita) 
• John Thomas, Jefferson Community College 
• Susannah Fout, Lake Placid Olympic Museum 
• Anastasia Pratt, SUNY Empire State College and Clinton County Historian 
• Susan Hughes, American Pomeroy Historic Genealogical Association 

The session was aimed at graduate students and new professionals, but I found it quite useful from the perspective of a mid-career archivist who regularly works with interns, dispenses the odd bit of career advice to graduate students, and who occasionally sits on a hiring committee. If you're new to the field or come into contact with people who are just finding their professional footing, I'll think you'll find the points that the panelists made extremely interesting. In the interest of brevity, I've organized them thematically.

Securing one's first professional job

• An MLS/MIS degree from an American Library Association-accredited school remains the gold standard. If you want a job in a specialized library, specialized coursework is a good idea. However, if you insinuate yourself into an institution or find yourself taking on archival work without having had formal training, you can now pursue an MLS/MIS online. 
• If you're committed to working in a given institution or a given region, you might have to take a related job and bide your time. One panelist who wanted to work with an archives/local history collection took a librarian position within the same institution, waited until the archives/local history librarian retired, and then approached the library director about transferring into the position. 
• There are a lot of small museums, historical societies, and libraries out there, and there's a very good chance that you will be employed by such an institution at some point in your career. 
• Do not limit yourself to archives-specific or library-specific jobs; archival skills translate very well to registrar and collections manager positions. 
• You need to know how historians do research. If you can fit a historical research methods course into your schedule, by all means do so. 
• If you're interested in working in a corporate archives, look for job postings on their websites, the American Association of State and Local History website (especially for internship positions), and www.indeed.com as well as archives-specific listservs and websites. News of openings is sometimes spread by word of mouth, so network with board members if you can. Private businesses hire staff more quickly than non-profits, so proactively submitting a resume never hurts. 
• A number of organizations provide grants to local governments and historical records repositories, and working as a short-term consultant or project archivist is one way to get your foot in the door; however, you should be aware that consulting work, in particular, has serious income tax implications. Contact grant funders and ask if they maintain a list of consultants. Watch their websites for news of awards and contact recipients as soon as announcements are made; recipients often don't hire a consultant until after they have received a grant and may need to get their project started quickly. 
• Familiarize yourself with the organization to which you're applying; look at its website and its finding aids. Hiring committees can tell if you haven't done your homework. 
• Have someone else proofread your resume or curriculum vitae; most of the panelists indicated that they have seen resumes that contained multiple errors – and promptly discarded them. 
• If asked to submit a resume, do not send a curriculum vitae – and vice versa. 
• Your cover letter is your chance to distinguish yourself from all the other candidates. Be sure that it addresses all of the main points in the job posting. Again, have someone else proofread it. 
• Search committees are not looking for people who know everything. They are looking for people who know what they do know, what they don't know, and have some ideas about how they're going to learn what they don't know. (This is such an important point. The archival learning curve is infinite, and I would be deeply wary about hiring anyone who seemed convinced that s/he already knew all s/he needed to know.) 
• A job interview is a two-way process. At the same time it gives your prospective employer a chance to evaluate you, it gives you the chance to evaluate your prospective employer. (Having heard my fair share of horror stories, I offer the following advice: if you walk out of an interview with the sense that your prospective employer is dysfunctional, think very, very carefully before accepting a job offer!) 
• Walking out of an interview wishing you had said X is a very common experience. A post-interview thank you letter allows you to say it. 

Succeeding in one's first (or second, or third . . . ) professional job

• If you are working in a smaller organization, be prepared to wear many hats. In smaller institutions, the roles of curator, registrar, and archivist are often rolled into one. You may also have fundraising, research, publicity, social media, tourism promotion, and ticket sales responsibilities. You will almost certainly have at least some IT responsibilities. In academic settings, you may have both library and archival responsibilities. 
• Being pulled in multiple directions can be frustrating, but it can also enable you to learn new skills and make valuable contacts. One panelist who held a joint library/archives appointment found that the extensive faculty contacts she developed in her capacity as a librarian proved very handy when she decided she wanted to start an archives instruction program for undergraduates. 
• Seek ways to make your collections more visible and accessible. Space is always limited and administrators are always looking to ensure that it is used as effectively as possible, so you want to be sure that your collections are being used. 
• Making connections and pointing people to resources held by other repositories will be an essential component of your job. Depending upon your repository's collecting scope and researcher community, you may need to acquaint yourself with the staff and the holdings of repositories not only in your region but also in other states or nations. 
• Continuing education is a must. Certificate of advanced study programs, online and in-person professional development workshops, and professional conferences will help you maintain and expand your knowledge and skills and make essential professional connections. 
• If you are your employer's first professional archivist, tackling an extensive processing backlog may be your first assignment. You'll need to be able to figure out how to establish appropriate legal and intellectual control over your holdings – and to do so without a lot of staff or money. Solid organizational skills are a must. 
• Prepare to steel yourself against poor-quality or out-of-scope donations – and to train colleagues and volunteers to do the same. 
• Don't be satisfied with your collections as they are. Know what you don't have, and be prepared to do the work needed to expand your holdings. 
• It's 2016. Even lone arrangers working in small organizations have electronic records in their holdings now. Be prepared to care for them.

NYAC 2016: More Than the 40-Hour Work Week

Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains of Vermont as seen from the window at the end of the fourth-floor hallway of my Plattsburgh, New York hotel, 9 June 2016. Thanks to a zoom lens and some judicious cropping, you can't see most of the sprawl that surrounded my hotel or the windowpane condensation that affected a substantial portion of the view. When I got to the hotel, I was initially disappointed to find that my room window offered a commanding view of an access road and that the hallway window was badly fogged. However, the view from the hallway was in many respects akin to archival research: if you take imperfection as a given and deal with it creatively, you can find a lot of interesting and worthwhile things.

In a former life, I was a graduate student interested the historical intersections of labor, gender, medicine, and public policy. Then I became an electronic records archivist . . . who is still interested in the historical intersections of labor, gender, medicine, and public policy. How could I resist the very first session listed in the 2016 New York Archives Conference program -- "More Than the 40-Hour Work Week: A New Look at Labor Records"? I was not disappointed: all three presentations concerned lightly used records that contain a wealth of information of interest to historians of labor. In the process, they highlighted several topics that cry out for scholarly attention.

My colleague Emily Allen focused on the records of the New York State Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), which administers the Taylor Law, which gives state and local government employees to unionize. PERB settles questions of union representation, provides mediation, fact-finding, and arbitration services in public employee contract disputes, and hears charges of improper practices by public employers, employees, and employee organizations. The New York State Archives holds thirteen series of investigation and case files created by PERB, but scholars have not made extensive use of them, in part because PERB's records are hard to access. PERB's website contains indexes to interest arbitration award case files (1974-2016) and PERB board decisions (1974-2014), and Westlaw's National Employee Reporter database indexes numerous case files, but those who lack a Westlaw subscription must consult multiple sections of the board's 48-volume Official Decisions, Opinions, and Related Matters in order to identify relevant case numbers and then ask the State Archives whether it holds the corresponding case files.

The State Archives is trying to determine how to streamline this process and encourage use of PERB's records, which contain some fascinating files:

• In the early 1970s, inmates who were paid nominal wages to work in various state prison facilities repeatedly asserted that they were public employees and thus had the right to unionize. State courts ultimately ruled that prisoners were not covered by the Taylor Law, but such cases ought to be interest to historians interested in not only in prison labor and prisoners' rights movements but also in the historical evolution of the concepts of "employment," "employee," and "public employee."
• In the mid-1970s, the New York City Department of Education attempted reduce the impact of the city's fiscal crisis on its operations by eliminating teachers' contractually mandated sabbaticals. The teachers' union appealed to PERB, and state courts ultimately determined that the department either had to honor the existing contract's sabbatical provisions or reach some sort of negotiated agreement with the union. Historians aren't used to thinking of sabbaticals as a condition of employment of importance to workers, but this case reveals that, at least in some instances, they were. 

Jodi Boyle of the University at Albany, SUNY discussed several significant collections that document both worker and retiree activism and the manner in which researchers seem content to overlook significant aspects of historical figures' lives and work and significant issues that affect workers as they grow older and leave the workforce:

• Helen Quirini was a Schenectady, New York employee of General Electric who for over three decades held leadership positions in the unions that represented GE workers and for almost three decades agitated for improved benefits for GE retirees and for older people generally. Quirini's papers amply document both phases of her GE activism, but historians and graduate students gravitate toward the first half of her activist career. 
• Eugene Link was a founding member of United University Professions, the union that represents State University of New York faculty and was active in its retirees organization, but scholars have devoted little attention to his retiree activism -- even though relations between the union and its retiree organization were at times extremely strained. 
• The Civil Service Employees Association, New York's public employee union, has transferred many of its older records but few of its retiree records. It has transferred some of its retiree newsletters, but researchers don't seem interested in them.

Boyle then outlined how archivists might nudge scholars into taking an interest in retiree records, among them:

• Being more persuasive with teaching faculty.
• Actively collecting retirement records and making sure that prospective donors are aware of their value.
• Resisting the temptation to glamorize strike activity and women's rights and stressing the importance of retirement issues in shaping workers' lives.
• Making retirement records readily accessible. 

Barb Morley of Cornell University's Kheel Center detailed how digitization might affect use of Kheel's large collection of collective bargaining agreements, which consists of approximately 350 cubic feet of paper records and approximately 2,000 PDF files. Kheel receives most of these employer-union contracts from the United States Department of Labor's Office of Labor-Management Standards; it also receives contracts from PERB. Unfortunately, the Office of Labor-Management Standards organizes the contracts it collects in ways that makes them difficult to access; some are organized by company name, some by industry, and some by Department of Labor industry code number. As a result, the paper files have been consulted only 120 times during the past ten years. However, the 2,000 PDF files that Kheel has received from the Department of Labor are readily accessible via Kheel's website and have been downloaded 380,000 times over the past six years. Kheel got a grant to digitize an additional 1,600 agreements covering retail and education workers and create enhanced metadata, and these files are also accessible online.

Morley then outlined some potential new avenues of research afforded by these readily searchable, data-mineable digital surrogates:

• Integration of minorities and immigrant groups into the workforce as revealed by protections relating to clothing preferences, prayer times, language use, work hours, and specific holidays.
• The impact of natural disasters, social crises, or terrorism on conditions of employment in schools (e.g., classroom size, numbers of teaching aides, special safety plans and training, building spaces, and water and food safety).
• Social integration of LGBTIQ employees as revealed by definitions of "family member" in contract provisions relating to family and bereavement leave, family insurance coverage, and bathroom and locker room specifications.
• The impact of technology, trade agreements, and tariffs on conditions of employment and on labor unions as a whole.

During the discussion that followed and one-on-one conversations with the presenters, my fellow attendees and I identified a number of topics that historians in particular have yet to explore:

The history of older Americans' activism on their own behalf. Scholars have examined the old age pensions movement and the Social Security program that resulted from it, but they have traditionally viewed them in light of the Great Depression and the New Deal. One historian has examined the Gray Panthers movement, but scholarly histories of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and other advocacy organizations and of the pension activism of Quirini and others seems to have been given short shrift -- in part, perhaps, because we unconsciously see older Americans as being the pitiable objects, not the engaged agents, of social reform. As far as I can tell, AARP has yet to donate its organizational records to an archives, but a cursory Google search for "american association of retired persons" and "special collections" reveals that records of several chapters and papers of many activists have made their way into repositories.

Relationships between unions and their retiree organizations. Most unions have such organizations, and the nature of the relationship varies from union to union. Studying a given union's relationship with its retiree group will likely shed interesting light on its inner workings. Moreover, as Jodi Boyle noted, relations between unions and their retiree groups have at times been less than tranquil. Examining how active and retired members' views converged and diverged might help to illuminate how workers' perceptions and priorities shift as a result of broad political shifts and structural economic changes. 

Public employee unionism generally. Although some excellent local studies have been done, no one seems to be looking at the rise of public employee unionism as a whole. In my opinion, there are five reasons for this.

• Public employee unionism is a relatively recent phenomenon. Unlike the craft unions of the old American Federation of Labor, many of which were established in the 19th century, and the industrial unions of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, which won stunning successes during the New Deal era, most unionized public employees won the right to bargain collectively during the last third of the 20th century. 
• Those of us who study the history of labor tend to focus on dramatic conflict and working-class resistance, but demonstrations and strikes mounted by public employees have rarely engendered mass violence. In addition, public employee strike activity is relatively rare; New York  and many other states that recognize the right of public employees to unionize also bar them from striking. 
• Public employees span just about every category imaginable -- race/ethnicity, gender, educational attainment, economic status, job responsibilities -- and the image that comes to mind the word "worker" is uttered is -- despite several decades of "the new labor history" -- all too often that of a white, male industrial worker.
• Public employee union activity is heavily shaped by state law, and looking at public employee unionism as a broad movement means diving into a lot of legal minutiae.
• The American labor movement has taken a beating in recent decades. Although public employee unions in a number of states have recently suffered serious setbacks, they are, as a whole, faring better than their private sector counterparts. Studying the emergence of public employee unionism forces one to come to terms with today's dismal state of affairs.

At any rate, it's high time for more in-depth studies of individual public employees unions and the employee associations out of which many of them grew, of broader analyses of the role public employees and their unions have played in the American labor movement as a whole, and of the working lives of public employees -- unionized or not. Many repositories hold records created by public employees and oral histories, personal papers, and other materials documenting the lives and work of public employees.

New York Archives Conference 2013 recap

Earlier this month, I had the privilege of attending the joint 2013 meeting of the New York Archives Conference and the Archivists Roundtable of Metropolitan New York, which was held at the C.W. Post campus of Long Island University. I was initially scheduled to give one presentation and agreed at the last minute to speak twice, so I didn't get the chance to attend as many sessions or explore the surrounding area as much as I would have liked. However, I did learn a few interesting things:

• I attended the Society of American Archivists' Privacy and Confidentiality Issues in Digital Archives workshop, which was held the day before the conference began, and I'm pleased to report that both the workshop and instructor Heather Briston (University of California, Los Angeles) are fantastic. I've a substantial amount of time working with records that contain information that is restricted in accordance with various state and federal laws, and I still learned quite a bit. If you get the chance to take this workshop, by all means do so. 

• Jason Kuscma, the executive director of the Metropolitan New York Library Council, delivered a thought-provoking plenary address, "(Re)Building: Opportunities for Collaboration for New York's Cultural Heritage Institutions," in which he used post-Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts as an entry point for discussing the concept of collaboration. I was particularly struck by his analysis of why collaboration, which involves sharing of risk, is so difficult: it forces us to admit what we don't know, it makes us confront ambiguity and fluidity, it requires discussion and deliberation, it compels us to share information that we may view as proprietary, it has the potential to expose us to even more conflict than we currently experience, and it makes us worry about who's going to get credit for the successes and blame for the failures. I've been involved in a number of collaborative projects over the years, and some of them went belly-up as a result of some or all of the problems that Kucsma identified. The successful ones worked because people were willing get out of what he referred to as "emotional, cultural, and institutional silos," embrace uncertainty, define achievable goals, and entertain the possibility of working with unconventional partners.  As Kucsma pointed out, Hurricane Sandy is merely a dramatic example of a problem that's too large and too complex for any one organization to take on by itself. Archivists and librarians face a growing number of such problems, and we need to figure out how to tackle them together.

• Kucsma also highlighted the existence of a recent report that somehow escaped my attention. I2NY: Envisioning an Information Infrastructure for New York State was prepared at the behest of New York's regional library associations, and it assesses the state's current library information landscape, which already features some collaborative initiatives, and outlines how the library associations can move toward building a fully comprehensive, fully collaborative information infrastructure.  The report doesn't discuss born-digital archival records, but it does envision the expansion of the collaborative archival digitization efforts led by the regional library associations (which are now exploring how to incorporate digital surrogates or archival materials into the Digital Public Library of America). It calls for creating innovative professional development opportunities. 

• I do not envy curators seeking to preserve born-digital works of art. In addition to worrying about all of the hardware and software, data integrity, storage, metadata, information security, and other technical concerns that anyone seeking to preserve digital resources must address, they also have the unenviable task of sussing out the artist's intent and preserving significant properties that may be unique to each viewer/listener or dependent upon external resources.  The interactive (and very cool) short film The Wilderness Downtown requires that each viewer enter an address and then pulls data from Google Street View to create visual content. Static and distortions present on an analog recording of an experimental television show may be the result of media degradation . . . or may be the result of the creator's deliberate manipulations. 

• Cornell University's Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art holds a host of analog video, old CDs and DVDs that require Mac OS 9 or other obsolete software or hardware, and Internet art.  At present, the archive maintains an array of older hardware and software and focuses on documenting playback requirements, digitizing analog content, archiving Web sites, and developing emulation software. It's also using National Endowment for the Humanities grant funding to preserve CD-ROM-based works of art.  This grant project should allow Cornell to identify how to conduct technical analyses of digital artworks, develop generalizable user profiles for new media art, create a viable data object model and associated PREMIS or RDF metadata profile, and identify a Submission Information Package structure that will support long-term preservation.

• The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is developing a Digital Repository for Museum Collections that currently houses 60 TB of artwork that was originally stored on floppy disks, CDs, and other portable media.  Archivematica will supply this repository's core processing services, and a conservation management application will be created to house descriptive information and document software and other dependencies.  MoMA is also exploring using emulation to make digital artworks accessible not only to people who visit MoMA's physical exhibit spaces but also to people who access MoMA's website.  MoMA is also in the midst of completing a formal study that compares the fidelity of emulation vs. native hardware and software, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the findings arising from this study.

• Documentary filmmaker Jonathan Minard, whose work in progress Archive examines the future of long-term digital storage, the development of the Internet, and Internet preservation efforts, highlighted an essential but frequently overlooked truth:  the Internet is a utility, not a library, and its operations are governed chiefly by market considerations. Cultural heritage professionals disregard this truth at their peril. (BTW, part one of Archive, which focuses on the work of the Internet Archive, is available online.)

• The National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA), a Library of Congress-led membership organization of individuals and organizations seeking to preserve digital cultural heritage materials, is developing Levels of Digital Preservation, a simple, tiered set of guidelines that will allow institutions to assess how well they're caring for their digital holdings. It addresses storage and geographical redundancy, file fixity and data integrity, information security, metadata, and file format issues, and the NDSA group developing it would appreciate your feedback.

• If you want a DSpace-powered institutional repository but lack the IT resources needed to maintain your own DSpace installation, you're in luck:  DuraSpace, the non-profit organization that guides the development of DSpace and several other digital access and preservation tools, is now offering DSpace Direct, a hosted DSpace service. For approximately $4,000 a year, you can quickly set up your own DSpace institutional repository, select the language customization and other features that meet your needs, and allow DuraSpace to take care of storing and backing up your data (via Amazon Web Services) and upgrading your DSpace software.

Image: This building, now known as Winnick House, was formerly Hillwood, the house that anchored the Gold Coast estate of Post cereal heiress Marjorie Meriweather Post and her second husband, financier E.F. Hutton. The estate was sold to Long Island University in 1951. Winnick House, which is by far the grandest structure on Long Island University's C.W. Post campus, houses the university's administrative offices. This photograph was taken on 4 June 2013.

NYAC/ARTNY: open source

Westbound on the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Mid-Hudson Bridge, late evening, 4 June 2010.

[I wrote this post a while ago, but I spent some time away from home and, for the most part, the Internet. Now that I'm back in cyberspace, the pace of posting is going to pick up a bit.]

While at the recent joint meeting of the New York Archives Conference and Archivists Roundtable of Metropolitan New York, I took part in Session 12, Using Open Source Software. I had a good time putting together and delivering my presentation, and both of my co-presenters were stellar. Although the three of us met only a few minutes before our session began, our presentations meshed well, in large part because all of us approached open source in the same pragmatic fashion; i.e., we largely avoided the open-source-versus-proprietary-software debate and encouraged people to use open source software when doing so met their business needs.

I discussed the Open Source Initiative’s definition of open source software, open source as a model of software development in which programmers work independently and collaboratively to write code and review each other’s work, and open source as a philosophical belief that sharing information and knowledge is good in and of itself and a spur to the development of more information and knowledge. I also detailed the practical advantages (e.g., no cost of acquisition) and disadvantages (e.g., support and technical documentation that may range from excellent to abysmal) and highlighted some open source applications of particular value to archivists working in smaller repositories:

• Ubuntu Linux and Chrome OS operating systems, which may be factory-installed
• Mozilla Firefox and Chromium Web browsers
• OpenOffice.org -- an office productivity suite that Microsoft Office users will master quickly
• GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) -- a sophisticated Adobe Photoshop alternative
• Audacity -- digital audio recording, editing, and conversion tool
• Avidemux -- digital video cutting, editing, and encoding tool (with a steep learning curve!)
• Archivist’s Toolkit -- archival description and workflow management system
• Digital collections systems -- CollectiveAccess (also supports description), Greenstone, and Omeka (particularly good for creating online exhibits)
• Integrated library systems -- Evergreen, Koha, and OPALS (New York State-based)

I was really pleased that I got the chance to hear Seth Kauffmann, who spearheaded the development of CollectiveAccess, discuss its development, functionality, and support options. CollectiveAccess is a cataloging and Web presentation system that supports every descriptive standard (and local variant thereof) and that can be used to gather and manage information about people and places as well as digital surrogates of cultural heritage materials. After highlighting PhilaPlace and some other really cool projects powered by CollectiveAccess, he offered some sound words of advice to anyone involved in an archival software development project:

• Planning is good. This point may seem painfully obvious, but it’s all too often overlooked. (I would hasten to add that “we’ll leave all the technical stuff up to the programmer/vendor because its his/her/its job” is not a plan)
• Don’t assume that all of your problems can be solved with software or technology.
• Involve real users in the development process. Seth stressed that one of CollectiveAccess’s strengths is its “community of self-interest development model” -- archivists who have grants to “do something real” drove its creation and guide its evolution.
• Be realistic about the quality and extent of your existing metadata and digitized resources.
• Involve archivists at the start of the development process and keep them involved throughout the project (no argument here)

Rick Cobello, the Schenectady County Information Technology Director, then detailed how the county is deploying open source software at the enterprise level. Fiscal pressures are forcing governments to choose between cutting operating costs and laying off staff, and open source software will enable the county to reduce costs and provide better services.

At present, roughly half of Schenectady County’s IT budget is devoted to fixing and decontaminating desktop computers. The county is now centralizing almost all of its storage and applications, and most county employees will have only a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and Pano Logic client that will enable them to access the county’s central servers. The county will no longer have to install antivirus protection and update software on desktops, and desktop support staff will be able to focus on other projects. Estimated cost savings: at least 30 percent.

The county attorney’s office is now using OpenOffice.org, and Rick plans to move other county offices to OpenOffice.org after the county’s licensing agreements with Microsoft expire. Although the county is currently using a mixture of open source and proprietary software and will continue to use specialized proprietary software (e.g., geographic information system applications) well into the future, Rick’s ultimate goal is to stop paying licensing fees for any of the software needed to support routine office operations.

Rick emphasized that the county has support contracts for almost all of the open source software that it uses: he believes in supporting organizations that create open source software, and paying for support is less expensive than paying licensing fees. I find this approach is both altruistic and smart: in addition to sustaining worthwhile projects, he's helping to ensure that the software he's using will be updated and enhanced.

Public-sector budgets always lag behind the economy. The coming years are going to be extremely tight, and I think that a lot of government IT directors are going to make many of the same decisions that Rick has made -- and look for other ways in which open source, among other things, can save money. It’s going to be really interesting to see just how things pan out.

NYAC/ARTNY: Archivists' Toolkit

The Hudson River, as seen from the grounds of the Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site, Hyde Park, New York, 4 June 2010.

Last week, I attended the joint meeting of the New York Archives Conference (NYAC) and the Archivists Roundtable of Metropolitan New York, (ARTNY) which was held at Marist College in Poughkeepsie. Unfortunately, Mac-using attendees discovered upon arrival that, despite Marist’s promises to the contrary, they could not connect to Marist’s wireless network. Now that I’ve reconnected, I’ll put up a couple of posts about the highlights of this year’s conference.

In my view, the best session of the conference was Session 1, “Implementing, Modifying, and Teaching the Archivists' Toolkit.” The Archivists’ Toolkit (AT) is an increasingly popular open source tool that supports accessioning, location management, and description of archival materials, and the session itself attracted a capacity crowd.

Janet Bunde of New York University (NYU) discussed a recent effort to integrate the AT into NYU’s Advanced Archival Description course so that students, who typically lacked the funds needed to attend AT workshops sponsored by the Society of American Archivists, would become familiar with the tool and hone their descriptive skills. The students reviewed the AT user’s manual in advance, then devoted an entire class session to entering sample data into the AT. At the end of the class, students discussed where they entered specific data elements and the descriptive output that resulted. Although the discussion wasn’t as extensive as Bunde would have liked, it shed light on students’ descriptive choices and revealed that, despite the use of some odd terminology, the AT’s interface is relatively intuitive.

Bunde stressed that this exercise didn’t, in and of itself, teach archival description, but it made me think about how to do so. I created a handful of MARC records while working as a student assistant, but I really didn’t feel comfortable with description until I found myself responsible for reviewing MARC records created by archivists at other repositories. I soon acquired an intimate knowledge of MARC and the ability to differentiate between acceptable variations in local practice and out-of-bounds tag usage. I really like the idea of having students openly compare and defend their descriptive choices, and using the AT as a teaching tool has real promise, particularly if, as NYU plans to do this fall, it’s incorporated more fully into the course curriculum.

Deena Schwimmer of Yeshiva University discussed how her repository, which has only two professional staffers and few IT resources, used the AT to centralize, as quickly as possible, holdings and descriptive information about its manuscript collections. Working with a clerical assistant, Schwimmer first culled holdings information from donor files and the relatively small number of MARC records describing the collections and entered it into the AT. Then, working in tandem with an intern who created collection-level descriptions, she used the AT to create Encoded Archival Description (EAD) finding aids that contained only the most basic descriptive elements: Biographical/Historical Note, Scope and Content, Abstract, Conditions Governing Access, Conditions Governing Use, and Language of Materials, and Title and Date information. She also used the AT to manage the project: she added fields that identified whether an EAD finding aid had been produced and enabled her and her intern to exchange notes about specific collections.

Schwimmer’s project exemplifies what a single results-minded archivist can do with a well-chosen tool and a little student and clerical help. Before Schwimmer’s project began, approximately a third of Yeshiva’s 2500 linear feet of manuscript holdings had been described, and when the project wrapped up roughly 18 months later, every collection had at least a basic finding aid. I think we’re going to see lots of similar AT success stories during the next few years, and, needless to say, I think that this is a very good thing.

Marisa Hudspeth of the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC) then discussed how her repository is building a new AT reference module that will both meet its needs and enable it to, via release of the module’s source code and documentation, give back to the archival community. The RAC had been using a proprietary tool that supported patron registration and tracking of duplication services, but moved to the AT because of its robust collections management and descriptive modules. When it became apparent that the AT development team's energies were focused elsewhere, the RAC decided to hire several former team members and build a reference module itself.

When it’s completed, the reference module will perform the following functions:

• Patron registration: will track research visits, publications, completion of necessary research paperwork, and research awards; and facilitate generation of statistics and reports.
• Duplication services: will manage all types of requests; create standardized invoices in PDF; store fee schedules and shipping rates and automatically calculate totals; track service requests; generate statistics and reports; and securely manage payment information.
• Retrievals, bar-coding, and use tracking: will track use of materials by patrons; generate statistics and reports; automate the charge-out procedure using barcoding; add barcoding functionality to the AT’s Accession module; support printing of barcodes and box labels; and enable both archivists and researchers to submit pull requests electronically via clicking on boxes in the RAC’s EAD finding aids.
• Reference requests and reading room scheduling: will electronically distribute reference requests to staff; allow staff to respond to requests within the AT; store request histories, staff assignments, and responses; generate statistics and reports; and enable archives that have limited research facilities to manage scheduling of research appointments and factor in holiday closings, weather incidents, and other events.
• Personalized user accounts: will enable patrons to update their contact information, submit reference requests, schedule and cancel research appointments and sign up for waiting lists; receive notifications of closings and research room vacancies; sign up for newsletters and the like; view an orientation video and agree to the RAC’s terms of use; track the status of their duplication requests; review their own request histories; bookmark and comment on finding aids; submit funding paperwork; electronically sign forms, and, if they wish to do so, connect with other researchers.

At present, the RAC doesn’t know how this reference module will work with ArchivesSpace, which will, when completed, merge the AT and Archon, another open source archival data management system. However, the RAC will release the code and continue using it, even if the module can’t be incorporated into ArchivesSpace.

After this session ended, I was talking to a colleague about the RAC’s work, and we were both struck by the degree to which reference-related information systems remain paper-driven -- not only at our repository but also at many, many others. Our own repository is currently developing some of the functionality that will be included in the reference module (e.g., barcoding and use tracking), but we’re still terribly paper-centric. The RAC’s work ought to help propel the move away from paper, and it’s going to be really interesting to see how this exciting project pans out.

If you are an AT user and want to track reference requests, duplication services, etc., electronically, the RAC is looking for reference module beta testers. The module’s first component -- patron registration -- should be finished within a few weeks, and the entire module has a scheduled completion date of 31 December 2011, so things are moving right along. If you're interested in serving as a beta tester, contact Marisa Hudspeth at mhudspeth-at-rockarch.org.

New York Archives Conference, day two

The 2009 New York Archives Conference wrapped up yesterday afternoon, and everyone in attendance seemed to have a great time.

The first morning session I attended, “Exploring the Possibilities of Web 2.0 for Cultural Heritage Websites,” gave attendees an introduction to the world of Web 2.0 and some of the ways in which archivists could make use of it.

Greg Bobish (University at Albany, SUNY) provided an overview of some of Web 2.0’s core concepts and then noted the characteristics that Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, wikis, and social networking sites share: they are available online from almost any computer (or other device), require minimal technical skills, and encourage and participation and creation and editing of content. Bobish’s presentation, which is a great introduction to Web 2.0 principles, is available online.

Nancy Cannon and Kay Benjamin (both from the SUNY College at Oneonta) then outlined how Web 2.0 technology could be used to make primary source materials freely available to students, teachers, and researchers. They obtained permission from the Delaware County Historical Association to reproduce materials that shed light on life in the county prior to the Civil War, and Cannon drafted historical essays that placed the primary source materials in context. Cannon and Benjamin then used basic HTML coding to create their site, Voice of the People: Daily Life in the Antebellum Rural Delaware County New York Area.

Cannon and Benjamin used Google Maps to add interactivity to sections of the site documenting an 1851 sea voyage from New York to California and a Delhi family's 1823 journey through upstate New York. Benjamin then gave a practical demonstration of how to set up a Google Maps account and then combine maps with text, images, and multimedia materials. As she noted, Google Maps can be of great use to archivists and librarians who want to create interactive online content on a shoestring.

I next attended “Digitizing Audio and Video Materials.” My colleague Monica Gray opened the session by explaining how the New York State Archives used a one-time allocation of $25,000 to outsource the digitization of 53 motion picture films, 98 video recordings, and 34 audio recordings.

In preparation for digitization, Gray conducted an inventory of holdings, did a lot of background research into digitization standards and best practices, and worked with colleagues and vendors to select materials that were of interest to researchers or in formats on the verge of obsolescence. She stressed that archivists need to specify exactly what they want from their vendors, determine in advance whether to add title frames, etc., and anticipate the need to provide access to the resulting files.

As a result of this project, the State Archives now manages preservation master copies (.wav format, 44.1 kHZ, 16 bit), and access copies (.mp3 format) of audio recordings and preservation master copies (.avi format) and access (.wmp format) copies of moving image materials. It is now focusing on providing access to its use copies.

Gray also outlined some easy preservation measures that all archivists can undertake:

• Store media vertically, not horizontally.
• Rewind all recordings to the start.
• Remove all record tabs from video and audio cassettes.
• Remove papers from film canisters (dust is the great enemy of tape and film).
• Use film strips that measure the extent of vinegar syndrome in motion picture film.

Andrea Buchner (Gruss Lipper Digital Laboratory, Center for Jewish History) then discussed the results of her repository’s year-long, grant-funded pilot digitization project. Staff digitized 94 oral histories on 142 audio cassettes, 79 hours worth of recordings on 193 reel-to-reel tapes; they also produced transcripts of 23 oral history interviews. Each hour of preservation master recordings comprises 1 GB of data, and Buchner determined that it cost $80 to produce, catalog, and store one hour of digital audio data.

Library staff created preservation master files of each recording (PCM.wav format, 2 channel stereo, 48.1 kHz, 24 bit). Derivative access copies were produced in .mp3 format. They also created a MARC21 catalog record for each recording and incorporated data captured during the digitization process into each record.

Buchner noted that the digitization process itself was easy compared to other challenges that staff encountered:

• Unreliable metadata: people hadn’t listened to these tapes in decades, and existing catalog records weren’t always accurate.
• Copyright: in some instances, staff had to make use of the “library exception” in U.S. copyright law; i.e., they made a limited number of copies and must restrict access to onsite users, include a copyright notice, and inform users that they should not exceed the fair use provision of U.S. copyright law.

Melinda Dermody (Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive, Syracuse University) then outlined how her repository digitized some of its approximately 22,000 cylinder recordings, 12,000 of which are unique titles. The Belfer Audio Archive received a $25,000 grant for this ongoing three-year project; a gift that made possible the purchase of a new digital soundboard has made it much easier for staff to work on this project.

The project’s core team includes Dermody, a music librarian, the core metadata librarian, and the digital initiatives librarian, and the Belfer's sound engineer. The group’s goal was to make available online 6,000 audio files (300 are currently available), and to create create preservation master (.wav format, 44.1 kHz, 24 bit) and access (.mp3 format) copies of each recording.

The group determined which cylinders had already been digitized by another university, identified cylinders in fragile condition, and assessed the interests of music faculty and researchers. The digitization of selected recordings is being done by Belfer Audio Archive staff, and staff have created or revised a MARC record for each recording. They use a MARC-to-Dublin Core crosswalk to populate the metadata fields of CONTENTdm, which is being used to provide access to the use copies of the recordings.

After the second session ended, all of the attendees convened for lunch and a great talk by Syracuse University Archivist Ed Galvin, who outlined how the Syracuse University Archives was drawn into the production of The Express (2008), a film about the life of alumnus Ernie Davis, the first African-American winner of the Heisman Trophy.

Preparations for the filming of The Express brought Universal’s production designers and other Hollywood personnel to the SU campus, and Galvin and his staff spent the next 18 months responding to their requests. The filmmakers were intent upon reconstructing Davis’s life on campus as faithfully as they could, and developed a wide-ranging and sometimes surprising list of items they sought and questions they wished to have answered. Galvin and his colleagues supplied detailed information about uniforms, etc., and other aspects of campus life and gave production staff access to yearbooks, copies of the student newspaper, copies of football programs, other campus publications and memorabilia, images of the coach’s office and other SU facilities.

The SU Archives also led licensing negotiations with Universal on behalf of the entirety of the university at large; however, much of the SU material in the film came from departments other than the archives.

Completion of the film, most of which was shot in Chicago, brought additional challenges. The film’s world premiere was held in Syracuse, prompting SU’s marketing unit and development office and a California film marketing firm to request additional materials from the SU Archives. Three days after the film’s premiere, Universal asked the archives to locate footage that could be used to produce a bonus featurette for the film’s DVD release. The archives also received requests for materials from alumni, politicians, History Day students, and other interested individuals.

Galvin made it plain that he and his staff often enjoyed working on this project, but also emphasized that archives approached by film studios should draw up detailed contracts and specify fees before any work begins; SU received only $4,000-$5,000 -- which did not even cover reproduction costs -- for 18 months of intense work on The Express.

NYAC conferences typically don't have overarching themes, but it struck me on the way home that just about every speaker I heard at this year's meeting centered upon clearly articulating one's expections -- about security measures, vendor deliverables, project specifications and outcomes -- and documenting whether or not they have been met. We as a profession haven't always excelled at doing so, and it was really heartening to hear so many colleagues assert the need for this sort of activity.

New York Archives Conference, day one

Grewen Hall, LeMoyne College

Yesterday was the first day of the New York Archives Conference (NYAC), which is being held at Lemoyne College in Syracuse. One of the things I really like about NYAC is its informality: many people either know each other or know of each other’s work, and the atmosphere is intimate and convivial as a result.

Today was jam-packed with sessions and other activities. IT started with a plenary session led by Maria Holden (New York State Archives), who outlined how the State Archives has responded to a recent internal theft and left the attendees with the following advice:

• It is up to you to take ownership of security. It isn’t something that just happens or is the concern of a handful of people.
• Do not wait until something bad happens. Addressing security issues before trouble occurs helps to avert problems and makes it easier to manage change and secure staff support.
• Become with security standards and guidelines relating to cultural heritage institutions.
• Do your due diligence: develop policies and procedures, and document what you have done to improve security.
• Remember that security is as much about protecting the innocent as it is about protecting collections. Employees need to understand that good security practices help to ensure that they will not become suspects in the event that a theft takes place.

The “Everyday -- Ethics (or What Do I Do Now?)” session touched on a host of related issues, and all of the panelists made some great points.

• Geoff Williams (University at Albany, SUNY) asserted that archivists need to question whether they should use their own holdings when conducting their own scholarly research; any archivist who does so will have to figure out what to do when other scholars want access to the results of their research and determine what to do when other users want to see the records that they’re using.
• Kathleen Roe (New York State Archives) discussed the thorny issue of collecting manuscripts, ephemera, and artifacts that fall within their own institution’s collection parameters and concluded that the safest course of action is to avoid collecting anything that, broadly defined, falls within the collecting scope of one’s employer; this approach avoids both the actuality and the appearance of impropriety -- and frees one to develop new collecting interests.
• Trudy Hutchinson (Bellevue Alumnae Center for Nursing History, Foundation of New York State Nurses) discussed how her nursing background informs her understanding of archival ethics and how, as an undergraduate majoring in public history, she had been required to develop a written personal code of ethics. She has since updated and expanded this code, which she discussed with her current employer during the interview process, and would like to see all archives students develop such does. (This is a great idea for current professionals, too.)
• Patrizia Sione (Kheel Center, Cornell University) discussed a variety of ethical issues that she has confronted, and noted that she would like to see employers develop written policies relating to scholarly research undertaken by staff. She also emphasized the importance of working with donors to ensure that the privacy of correspondents, etc., is appropriately protected; doing so will ensure that appropriate access restrictions are spelled out in deeds of gift. Finally, she noted that archivists need to be sensitive to the ways in which the pressure to assist researchers with ties to high-level administrators can conflict with their ethical obligation to treat all users equitably.

In the next session, “Can We Afford Not to Act? Strategies for Collection Security in Hard Times,” Richard Strassberg (independent archival consultant) and Maria Holden (New York State Archives) outlined a wide array of low-cost security measures.

Richard Strassberg noted that the recession makes protection of collections particularly important: instances of shoplifting and employee theft are on the rise, and archivists and researchers face the same financial pressures as everyone else. He also noted that the increasing prevalence of online finding aids and digitized images has had mixed results: although they make it easier for honest dealers and collectors to identify stolen materials, they also make it easier for dishonest individuals to hone in on valuable materials.

He then outlined what he called “minimal level protection” strategies for cultural institutions, all of which require staff time but don’t cost much:

• Have a crime prevention specialist employed by the local or state police do an assessment of your facility.
• Establish links with the local police so that they know that you hold valuable materials.
• Have a fire inspection conducted (but make sure that your management knows in advance that you’re planning to do so -- the fire department will close your facility if it finds serious problems that management isn’t able to fix).
• Get a security equipment quote; even if you don’t have the money, the cost might be lower than you expect, and having the quote will give you a fundraising target.
• Do an insurance review and have your holdings appraised; doing so will help you in the event that you suffer a loss.
• Protect your perimeter by tightly controlling keys and, if possible, screwing window sashes shut.
• Avoid drawing attention to valuable materials. Don’t put up red-flag labels (e.g., “George Washington letter”) in your stacks and be cautious about what you display to VIPs and other visitors.
• Tighten up on hiring. Conduct background checks if you can, and carefully check references by phone.

Strassberg emphasized that these measures will protect collections from “conditionally honest visitors,” but will not guard against thefts by staff. Moreover, they are not sufficient for repositories that hold materials of particular interest to thieves (e.g., collections relating to politics, sports, Native Americans, African Americans, and literary figures); such institutions will likely have to invest in electronic anti-theft technology.

In the event that a theft occurs or is suspected, contact, in the following order: your supervisor (or, if s/he is the suspect, his/her boss), the police, the donor (if applicable and he/she is still around), and your staff. Staff must be cautioned not to talk about the theft with family, friends, or co-workers. Also, develop a local phone tree -- external thieves tend to hit all of the repositories in a region within a short amount of time, and your colleagues will appreciate being informed. Avoid sending out e-mail alerts; you don’t want to document suspicions that might be unfounded.

Strassberg concluded by noting that librarians and archivists must be trained to confront suspected thieves in a legal and appropriate manner -- or how to set the process of confrontation in motion by contacting security or the police. They also need to know that they cannot physically prevent anyone from leaving the research room; in New York State, they might be guilty of battery if they attempt to do so.

Maria Holden then focused upon internal theft, which is the most common security threat that archives face. Employee theft is a complex problem, and full understanding of it is hard to come by. Theft is motivated by a variety of factors: personality disorders, gambling or substance abuse problems, retaliation for actual or perceived slights, and feelings of being unvalued.

We need to create a work environment that discourages theft and to control when, where, and how people interact with records; doing so protects not only the records but also innocent people who might be otherwise be suspected of wrongdoing. There are several ways we can do so:

• Hiring should be done carefully and with due diligence. The references of prospective employees should be screened carefully, and their collecting habits should be scrutinized carefully; the results of these checks should be documented. Many archives compel staff to adhere to codes of ethics and sign disclosure statements re: their collecting and dealing habits. The code of ethics developed by the Association of Research Libraries might be a good model.
• A number of recent thefts have been perpetrated by interns and volunteers. Develop a formal application process for interns and volunteers, document the process, and supervise interns and volunteers at all times.
• Keep order in your house. There is growing evidence in the literature that disordered environments can encourage delinquent behavior. Order begets respect for collections.
• Keep collections in the most restricted space possible. The State Archives has looked at every space in which records might be found (research room, scanning lab, etc.) and then figured out when it’s appropriate to bring records into a given space and how long they should remain in it. Develop overarching rules governing removal and return of records to the stacks.
• Keep collections in the most secure space possible, grant access rights thoughtfully, designate spaces for storage, work, and research, and establish parameters for working hours; many internal thefts occur during off-hours.

During the question and answer period, Kathleen Roe made an important point: Sometimes, people start out honest, then fall prey to gambling or other addictions or personal problems. We have to make it difficult for desperate people to steal from our holdings.

Richard Strassberg also emphasized the research proves that most people are conditionally honest, i.e., they won’t steal from their friends. We need to create work environments that make people feel valued.

I took part in one of the late afternoon sessions, “The Challenge of the New: Archivists and Non-Traditional Records,” which focused on various electronic records projects at the New York State Archives. Ann Marie Przybyla discussed our new e-mail management publication, Michael Martin detailed our Web crawling activities, and I discussed the processing and description of a series of records relating to the “Troopergate” scandal.

At the end of the day, we went to a reception and a great tour of the LeMoyne College Archives led by College Archivist Fr. Bill Bosch. Afterward, I went out to dinner with my State Archives colleagues Monica Gray and Pamela Cooley, Capital Region Documentary Heritage Program Archivist Susan D’Entremont, and Nathan Tallman, who just graduated from the University at Buffalo’s library school and is a project archivist at the Herschell Carousel Museum. We had a great time, and all of us would recommend Phoebe’s to anyone visiting Syracuse.