Best Practices Exchange wrap-up

Picacho Peak, Pinal County, Arizona, as seen from Interstate 10, 1 October 2010.

Now that I've had a little time to reflect upon the 2010 Best Practices Exchange (BPE), here are a few final thoughts I want to share:

• Archivists and digital forensics investigators have similar needs: both need to produce exact copies of the files with which they work and to document their own activities. However, archival use of digital forensics tools poses some ethical questions. If, for example, a tool reveals that a transferred hard drive contains deleted but recoverable files, is the archives obligated to make the deleted files accessible? In some instances, it may be possible for archivists to conduct a preliminary analysis of media slated for transfer and then negotiate with the creator. However, in some instances, such negotiations may not be possible; owing to this possibility, repositories may want to state publicly that they use software that can recover deleted files.
• The Utah State Archives and Records Service is seeking repositories interested in beta testing its Archives Enterprise Manager (AXAEM) system. AXAEM automates the creation of records schedules, supports creation of MARC records, EAD-encoded finding aids, and EAC-encoded data about records creators, tracks agency records office training histories and contact information, and allows searching of electronic indexing. It will soon support ingestion of electronic records and supporting metadata and map searching. If you want to be a beta tester, contact Elizabeth Perkes at eperkes[at]utah.gov
• As Laura Campbell of the Library of Congress noted, weak social ties are sometimes incredibly durable and strong. The BPE, which promotes the development of informal professional and personal links between cultural heritage professionals seeking to preserve digital information, sustains these weak ties. And -- sorry SAA, sorry MARAC -- that's one of the reasons why the BPE is the archival professional meeting that I love the most.

This post was written at my parents' house in Ohio and posted at CLT, where I rather unexpectedly ended up tonight; thanks to some last-minute mechanical problems, I got to choose between spending a long evening in Charlotte or spending the entire night in Philadelphia. I anticipate being in Albany for the remainder of October and almost all of November, and I'm hoping to get back to posting at least three times a week. Apologies for the slack pace as of late.

Best Practices Exchange, day three: Vermont functional classification

Crested saguaro in front of Old Main, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, 1 October 2010. As its name suggests, Old Main, which was built in 1891, is the oldest building on the campus. It now serves as the university's admissions office.

I know that this is a really tardy post, but I haven't had much time for this blog as of late. Immediately after the 2010 Best Practices Exchange (BPE) ended last Friday, I rented a car and headed to see an old friend in Tucson that I hadn't seen in (her word) hmmty years. I flew out of Phoenix last Saturday morning, and between overfull flights and an overfull head I wasn't able to write anything. When I got back to Albany, I needed to focus on digging my way out from under an avalanche of work, taking care of some last-minute Capital Region Archives Dinner stuff, and getting ready to go on vacation. This post was written at ALB, mid-air between ALB and DCA, and DCA (which is fast becoming my least-favorite airport), and posted from my parents’ house in Ohio. My parents and I are heading to my aunt's Internet-free house in West Virginia tomorrow morning, so I'm going to be disconnected for a little while. I'm actually kind of looking forward to it.

Every BPE session I attended was interesting and worthwhile, but Policy and Administration 7 was particularly thought-provoking. It centered upon two very different but equally compelling initiatives: the functional classification infrastructure developed by the Vermont State Archives and Records Administration (VSARA) and a grant-funded University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill effort to create a joint master's degree program in library/information science and public policy. In lieu of writing a single, monster post, I'm going to discuss Vermont's work in this post and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill project in a companion piece. (NB: I've gotten permission from the presenters to discuss these projects, so names will be named and details will be detailed.)

Tanya Marshall noted that VSARA's distinctive approach to appraisal is rooted in its newness: VSARA was established in 2003 within the Secretary of State's Office, and it acquired records management responsibilities in 2008. The newly hired staff had a deeply felt need to assess the structure and functions of state government and to identify important records held by agencies. They also had to contend with a large volume of records that the Secretary of State had acquired in past decades. They quickly realized that these records were broken down into series that were actually accessions: for example, driver's license records created in the 1900's were classified as a series, and identical records created in the 1910's were classified as a completely separate series.

As Marshall and her colleagues began researching the structure and functions of state government and began compiling the results of their research, their objectives gradually evolved. They sought to:

• Establish intellectual control over their existing holdings
• Study state government by focusing on its parts
• See the "big picture" of state government from multiple vantage points
• Develop an objective strategy for documenting state government functions, legislation, and agencies over time
• Capture and reuse staff research, especially stable information such as legislative acts and dates of creation
• Develop a balanced and consistent appraisal approach
• Document recordkeeping decisions
• Create reports and other resources as consistently and as efficiently as possible
• Develop the ability to export and reuse data in various ways -- including ways not yet envisioned by staff -- and to conform to ISO 15489 and other standards

The Vermont Functional Classification System (VCLAS) that Marshall and her colleagues developed uses standardized terminology to record information that breaks down the complexities of government into its constituent parts:

• Legislation
• Public agencies
• Areas of accountability (also called domains)
• Activities (e.g., permitting, licensing)
• Transactions

Each of these areas is further broken down into facets that support many different types of analysis, and VSARA staff can use VCLAS to do a number of really interesting things:

• Identify agencies that are or were engaged in specific activities. In addition to supporting VSARA's internal needs, this capacity can help VSARA supply information to others. For example, several years ago, officials who wished to examine the state's permit-issuing activities were impressed by VSARA's ability to identify, with little advance notice, all of the state agencies that issued permits
• Analyze activities to determine the types of records likely to be held by an agency. Staff have discovered that activities tend to generate the same types of records regardless the creating agency or area of responsibility, and in many instances they can generate macro-level inventories of the types of records that a given agency likely holds and then work with agency personnel to determine whether the records actually exist and are being managed properly
• Conduct functional analyses of related activities, including those that are performed by more than one agency
• Analyze domains and activities to identify records that most clearly warrant long-term preservation

In the future, VCLAS may also help staff conduct functional analyses that:

• Identify electronic records that warrant permanent preservation but are at risk of being lost
• Identify current and planned electronic recordkeeping systems that will house electronic records of enduring value and work with the state Chief Information Officer to ensure that these systems manage the records properly
• Enable VSARA to supply records creators with some basic metadata about the electronic records in their possession.

Cool stuff.

Throughout Marshall's presentation, I couldn't help but think that my own repository already gathers a lot of the data that VSARA collects and adds to VCLAS -- information about agencies' statutory mandates, organizational structure, core responsibilities and activities -- but some of it is collected by appraisal archivists and some of it is collected by reference/description archivists, and different elements reside in different systems. I suspect that most other state archives are in the same boat -- and that most, if not all, of us would benefit from giving the work of our Vermont colleagues a very close look.

DCAPE meeting: day two

Today was the second day of the inaugural meeting of the Distributed Custodial Archival Preservation Environments group. We went over over the project timeline (which needs some revision), and spent some time discussing the specifics of the archivist partners' first task: outlining, with reference to the Open Archival Information System Reference Model, the specific functional requirements of the preservation system. We then spent some time going over some practical stuff (travel reimbursements, etc.), talked about the records that each partner was thinking of contributing to the project, and wrapped up at around 11:30 AM. We continued talking informally over lunch, and then broke up headed our separate ways.

Right before lunch, Rich Szary, the director of the Wilson Library, gave me a quick tour of the Carolina Digital Library and Archives, which is housed in Wilson Library and which has an astounding array of scanning equipment -- including a high-capacity, autofeed paper scanner that UNC's conservation staff have approved for use with archival records -- and is digitizing archival materials and rare books with immense speed.

Immediately after lunch, I had to leave for RDU. I had another long layover at EWR. I'm getting really familiar with Concourse C, and got to watch the sun set over the "Airtrain" connecting it to the other concourses; unfortunately, my the window glass through which I shot this picture reflected some of the light in the concourse's interior.

Although the good people at Continental no doubt wanted a different outcome, I was really happy with the way my flight arrangements worked out: none of the planes I was on were full, and I didn't have any seatmats on any of my flights. Owing to the clear night sky, I also got a stunning view of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens on the flight from EWR to ALB.

Nonetheless, I am really, really glad to be home.

On the road (and in the air) again

I’m writing this entry in the Au Bon Pain in Concourse C of EWR, where I have a long layover between ALB and PHX, with the intention of posting it once I get Internet access. I’m heading to Phoenix for a meeting of the Persistent Digital Archives and Library System (PeDALS) project partners, but I’m taking a few days’ vacation before the meeting and heading up to the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, and perhaps Canyon de Chelly or the Petrified Forest.

I always approach vacations with a mixture of anticipation and guilt. I look forward to novel experiences and the opportunity to recharge, but at the same time I stress about the preparations and tell myself that I really don’t deserve time off; if I were a good person, I would quit shirking and get back to the work at hand. I suspect that these sentiments are in some respects a legacy of my decade in graduate school, when I had neither the time nor the money to go on vacation. Delusions of indispensability are probably at play as well.

Fortunately, once I’m on the road, I usually relax and get into the experience. At this moment, I’m feeling an almost Zen-like calm. It’s kind of surprising, really. I woke up with a nasty migraine this morning, and managed to break both a floor lamp and my vacuum cleaner before leaving my house today. I was also a bit short with my colleague, Michael, who really is indispensable and who needed to call me and clarify something before I left; he’s definitely getting an apologetic e-mail later tonight and something nice from Arizona when I get back!

I didn’t get the chance to eat before I left, and was famished when the plane touched down. So I stopped at the Au Bon Pain and got a lovely mozzarella and tomato salad, a fresh and staggeringly good piece of bread, and a heady cup of dark roast coffee. One of my friends has made it a habit to say “thank you for being sacred” to each morsel of food that she eats. It’s a good practice, I think: food of the sort I just ate really is, in a humble and humdrum way, a blessing, and we should take the time to appreciate the goodness in our lives.

I still have miles to go before I sleep: I’m going to be at ERJ for another 2.5 hours, and my plane won’t land in Phoenix until about 9:00 CST (midnight EDT). I will then have to drive about 2.5 hours before I reach my hotel. I’m pretty good at sleeping on planes, so I should be fine.

Tomorrow, if all goes according to plan, I’ll post my first pictures of the Grand Canyon.

POSTSCRIPT: My flight was supposed to leave EWR at 6:00 PM EDT, but we sat on the ground awaiting permission to take off until 7:40 PM. No one was happy about this state of affairs, and and it was particularly hard on my seatmates -- a sweet but very tired 16 month-old girl and her extremely capable mother. We got to Phoenix about an hour after we were supposed to arrive, and getting my rental car took a lot longer than anticipated. I finally got to Williams, where I'll be staying for the next couple of days, at around 1:30 AM CST (AZ doesn't observe Daylight Savings Time), only to find that the registration desk of the motel at which I made reservations closes at 11:00 PM. So I'm paying for two hotel rooms tonight -- the one I reserved and one I'm actually occupying.

At least the motel I'm staying at has free wifi. My body is telling me that it's 5:00 AM, and I'm sitting here blogging and eating a garden salad I bought at EWR so that I could eating dinner on the plane; however, there was no way I was going to attempt to eat a massive salad while sitting inches away from a wriggling and increasingly unhappy toddler.

I don't know why, but I'm still in a relatively good mood.

"The Sky's the Limit"

I'm not a fan of air travel, and I'm not certainly not fond of United's "Terminal for Tomorrow" (a.k.a. Terminal One) at ORD: it's constructed largely of glass and metal, and as a result it's often unpleasantly warm.

However, I love the underground tunnel that connects the terminal's two concourses. It's home to "The Sky's the Limit," a light and sound installation by Michael Hayden. It's both kinetic and soothing, and it makes all of the hassle and discomfort of air travel fade away, at least for a few minutes.


I had no need to pass through this tunnel on Sunday--my incoming and outgoing flights were both assigned to Concourse C--but I had a long layover and needed a break. After a couple of passes through the tunnel, my spirits were indeed lifted.

ALB-ORD-SFO

After months of anticipation, I left for San Francisco this morning. No flight or luggage snafus, but the flight from ALB to ORD was torture: the fellow who sat to my right spent the entire flight flirting obnoxiously with the young woman sitting to his right (He predicted the crash of the tech bubble! He speaks at investment seminars! He's appeared on the Canadian equivalent of CNBC several times!) Ugh.

The flight from ORD to SFO was a lot better, even though I sat in front of a couple of toddlers who were not happy about being trapped in a metal tube for hours. Their father apologized for the commotion, and I told him about my morning and said that I would much rather listen to his kids than to an on-the-make investment guru. He cracked up and said that he blogged about stuff like that. I told him that the thought had certainly crossed my mind . . . .

Landed at SFO this afternoon, took BART into the city, walked through tourist hell (aka the intersection of Powell and Market), and made it to my hotel. The accommodations aren't deluxe( kind of like a cross between a dorm room and a spartan studio apartment--which is not surprising given that it was at one point a single-room occupancy apartment building) but it meets my needs and my budget. It's actually kind of quaint in a European sort of way. (It's also populated in a European sort of way: the night manager, who checked me in, told me that I'm the only American here at the moment and that all of the other guests are taking advantage of the Euro's buying power here in the States.)

At some point, my room had a Murphy bed . . . .