Archival Musings

I haven't posted here for a while because pesky life and work got in the way.

I've been away for 10 weeks in the US on an internship and as a result (or maybe not as a result, I'm not sure), my job will be changing fairly soon. Which means this blog will be changing. More soon.

In the interim, I'll point you to two interesting posts you can read while I step into my phone booth and change a-la Clark Kent/Superman...

- Johann van Wyk of the University of Pretoria writes about the South African Library blogosphere. And cites meeeee, even though my paper hasn't actually been published yet.

- I don't really understand a word of this article, but apparently it promises that soon, we'll be able to store data for a billion years. Okaaaaaay.

 

Scrap "Nerds Academy". I've decided to rename the Academy "The Fat Farm". All we did was eat! Oh the suffering we endured. Cooked breakfast, homebakes for tea, cooked lunch, more homebakes for afternoon tea and a three course dinner. I'm too scared to get on a scale.

 

In September, I'll be presenting a paper at a conference on policies in South African academic archive Reading Rooms. Which is a mouthful, but it's basically a look at what South African archives allow and don't allow in their Reading Rooms: do they allow use of digital cameras? Do they restrict access? Do they allow researchers to handle photographs with their bare (gasp!) hands? That sort of thing.

I prepared a little survey - just 10 questions - that I asked my population to fill in. (Can you see I've just recently been on a statistics course? I can now throw words like 'population' and 'sample' into casual conversation.) 

The response hasn't been great. It's been 3 weeks and I've received 2 replies. 

The exercise got me thinking about communication amongst archivists and librarians. I've been a librarian for 18 years and I've worked in the archives for 8. How many of the people that I contacted for my survey have I met and chatted with? Two. How many librarians and archivists from other institutions do I speak to on a daily basis? None.

I'm all for exchanging of ideas. It's ridiculous to think that when we're creating policies, or starting a new venture, we have to flounder around as if no one before us has done exactly this and might be able to help.

I read the blogs of archivists and librarians daily. But they're all American. They're helpful up to a point - I've contacted one or two of them to get tips and advice or to comment on their ventures - but it would be wonderful to have a similar conversation happening in South Africa. 

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