SAA day one: diversity and inclusion

Atanta skyline, as seen from the steps of the Georgia Aquarium, Atlanta, Georgia, 2 August 2016.

 As has often been the case in recent years, I'm attending the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists on my own dime. Doing so has some obvious drawbacks, but it does have one very real advantage: I don't feel obliged to limit myself to attending only those sessions that relate directly to my current job responsibilities. Instead, I seek out those sessions that align with my other archival interests or promise to illuminate how the profession is changing.

Today, I attended a plenary session and two program sessions that, in various ways, focused on the necessity of and challenges associated with creating institutions that are truly serve all of the communities that make up our pluralistic, stratified society and collections that reflect our varied, complex, and unequal history.

BPE 2009: collaboration

Robert Vitello and Bill Travis detail the origins and goals of the New York State Economic Security and Human Services Advisory Board, Best Practices Exchange, 3 September 2009.

[I had hopes of wrapping up my Best Practices Exchange blogging last week, but life had other plans. I really wish I could say that I'm slow blogging, but unfortunately I'm merely late blogging -- and at present there's no manifesto for that.]

One of the most interesting Best Practices Exchange sessions I attended highlighted a couple of really productive collaborations.

The first presenter, Nancy Adgent of the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC), discussed the Collaborative Electronic Records Project (CERP), which allowed the RAC and the Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA) to develop tools for the preservation of e-mail.

Although the two institutions had some common strengths -- forward-thinking and pro-active directors, similar collecting policies, and above-average staffing levels -- they differed in their governance structures, level of authority over records creators, funding streams, staffing levels, and the e-mail formats for which they were responsible. They also had to contend with the challenges posed by physical distance, the need to develop a new knowledge base, various administrative and staffing problems, and the SIA's quasi-governmental status, which eliminated several sources of funding that the RAC could have otherwise pursued.

These differences and challenges forced the RAC and the SIA to develop e-mail tools that could handle a variety of of e-mail formats. It also exposed a number of issues that other archives might encounter: inadvertent changes wrought by global software upgrades pushed out to the SIA's networked CERP computers (but not the RAC's machines, which remained offline), and differences in the capacity of various virus detection applications.

Nancy then provided a brief overview of the tools that CERP uses to process e-mail, among them Aid4Mail, which converts Microsoft PST files to Microsoft .msg format and allowed staff to identify and remove non-record messages, and various tools that convert messages in various formats to the MBOX format, which CERP's parser converts to XML for preservation purposes. She also discussed how CERP and the E-mail Collection and Preservation (EMCAP) project, which also sought to use XML to preserve e-mail, developed a common XML schema.

Nancy made a really great closing point: odd couples can produce some good offspring! Even though the RAC and the SIA produced different guidance products tailored to the needs of their respective donor communities and their own institution-specific workflow processes, procedures, and forms, they developed and tested common tools for processing and preserving e-mail. And they look like really great tools! We're anticipating a transfer of e-mail pretty soon, and I'm really looking forward to giving CERP's parser a spin.

The next presentation was delivered by two New York State agency CIO's -- Bill Travis of the Office of Children and Family Services and Robert Vitello of the Department of Labor -- and focused on the work of the New York State Economic Security and Human Services Advisory Board. It underscored how shared problems can sometimes give rise to really effective collaboration.

Several years before the State CIO took office, the State had purchased a suite of out-of-the-box products that had been purchased to manage various human services programs and services. CIOs of agencies that were using these products had begun meeting to discuss that problems they encountered as they tried to make these products fit the State's county-administred, state-supervised model of service provision.

The agencies ultimately informed the State CIO that they would not use these products, and she accepted their decision. However, she also challenged them to develop an enterprise-wide approach. For years, the federal government has forced state human services agencies to construct IT silos, but the situation has changed in recent years, and there is real potential for cost savings is (the board's member agencies account for 70 percent -- approximately $1 billion per year -- of the State's IT expenditures)

The board has established a series of guiding principles:

• Provide for interoperability using open standards and seamless data sharing through common enterprise systems.
• Deploy an "Open New York" community approach to facilitate peer review and enhance quality control.
• Leverage prior IT investments with software reuse when feasible to achieve greater cost efficiencies.
• Implement agile systems development approaches to improve speed to market
• Establish strong enterprise governance to ensure alignment of technology plans with business goals
• Seek innovative collaborations to leverage State enterprise IT resources and assets

More information about these guiding principles is outlined in the board's January 2008 strategy document, and information about the board's work appears in its September 2009 progress report.

I was really struck by how Travis, Vitello, and the other board members were able to capitalize on their willingness to pool their expertise and share information. Thanks to this combination of characteristics -- plus strong support from the State CIO -- they've been able to make real headway, and it will be interesting to see how their work evolves. I get the sense that my employer will be well-positioned to do so: the board is just starting to focus on e-discovery and its relationship to records management.

Navajo history in a Burger King

After I left the Grand Canyon, I drove through the darkness to Kayenta, where I'm staying in the new Hampton Inn on the edge of town. Kayenta is located within the Navajo Nation, which observes Daylight Savings Time. I had forgotten this fact when planning the day's activities, and as a result, I arrived in Kayenta after almost all of the restaurants had closed.

When I scanned the listing of area amenities that the desk clerk handed to me, I noted that the Burger King next to the Hampton Inn was still open and that it had "an excellent display of the famous WWII Code Talkers." How could I not investigate?

Sure enough, the dining area of the restaurant had a small exhibit --consisting chiefly of photographic prints, with some fascimile documents and artifacts -- devoted to the approximately 400 Navajo men who served in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Second World War. These men developed a code, based upon the Navajo language, that was used to transmit information about military operations in the Pacific Theater. Their contribution to the Allied war effort was immeasurable.

My photographs of this modest but affecting exhibit are a bit wanting; I was trying to be considerate of the staff and the other people in the restaurant, so I was dependent upon the restaurant's lighting (I think that the exhibit cases have UV film--I didn't notice any fading) and had to shoot from odd angles.

I wouldn't drive a great distance to view this exhibit, but I enjoyed it and am really impressed that the owner(s) of the Kayenta Burger King saw the value of installing such an exhibit in a public space that is usually devoid of such things. We archivists are always talking about the need to make people aware of the significance of historical records and to build partnerships with non-academics and non-genealogists. Until tonight, the thought of partnering with a fast-food restaurant had never crossed my mind. What other kinds of potential partnerships might we be overlooking?

Update 2008-10-19: according to the guide who led my tour group through Monument Valley, the owner of the Kayenta Burger King is the son or grandson of a code talker.