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.

I ran a digitisation workshop for library staff last week. It's taken me this long to recover and write about it.

Joking.

I thought I'd write up a list of things I learned about running a workshop like this, partly so I'll remember for next time, and partly to allow others to learn from my mistakes:

1. Make it clear in your invitation what kind of digitisation you'll be covering. Digitisation for archival storage and digitisation of your personal photographs are two totally separate things.
2. If a tech-savvy person asks to attend a basic digitisation workshop, find out why, because chances are, they've misunderstood the level of the workshop and they'll be bored by your prattling about what a scanner is.
3. Your 'ready' and the IT department's 'ready' might be two totally different things. Explain what you want beforehand, because you might find yourself with no equipment at the beginning of the session.
4. Remember to ask people to bring examples of items they'd like to digitise. That way, the 'hands-on' session will be much more interesting to participants.
5. Decide beforehand how long you want the hands-on session to be, otherwise you'll spend the time panicking that you're running out of time to get through the rest of the material.
6. Ask for feedback - perhaps a feedback form.