So here’s where I need your input. If you are interested in participating in such an event, able to bring whatever instrument you play to San Diego, and could bring a song or two to sing, please let me know, either by leaving a comment below or hitting me up on Twitter (@helrond). Alternatively, if you think this is a dumb idea, can think of good reasons why it shouldn’t happen, or have any other comments, please leave those too!

Early on, McClure describes the work of programmers as fundamentally “to produce…expressions of process.” If there’s a better way of saying what it means to create meaningful archival description, I don’t know what it is.

McClure also talks about programming as an essentially volatile enterprise. Anyone who’s processed a large and complex collection will know the feeling of “a vast physical structure, hanging in a black void – a bundle of tubing that wires up in a constellation of colored nodes.”

However, it’s his discussion of the “Perfect System” that really grabbed me, and that got my wheels turning in relation to archival description. He defines the Perfect System as “completely intuitive, infinitely maintainable, and inevitable expression of what we intend.” Sounds a lot like what we want archival description to be, and speaks to why we’ve built up a constellation of standards and tools around it. The next paragraph is worth quoting verbatim:

Of course, we always build fallen systems. They have bugs. They compromise. What’s the closest we can imagine, though? I immediately think of concise, direct implementations of clever algorithms. Really, though, this is an asymptotic thought – the closest thing I can imagine to Perfect System is an infinitely small system. Take the limit of that sentiment, though, and the closest imaginable thing to the Perfect System is no system at all.

This idea that smaller is better struck a chord with me because of recent thoughts I’ve had about the work of archivists. I’ve been thinking a lot recently that what we archivists should be doing is figuring out how to connect researchers with archival materials, and then getting the hell out of the way. And yes, that means people will take things out of context and make factually incorrect statements and violate copyright and probably do a whole bunch of other stuff we’d like them not to do. And I’m fine with that. We’re bridge builders, not toll booth attendants.

Social conflicts arise from rivalries between those who occupy and preserve an eco-system as the place that specifies them as a family or group, and that therefore deserves every sacrifice, including sudden death. For if “to be is to inhabit,” not to inhabit is no longer to exist. Sudden death is preferable to the slow death of he who is no longer welcome, of the reject, of the man deprived of a specific place and thus of his identity.

Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology. New York: Semiotext(e), 1986. Page 78.

First of all, a few disclaimers: everything I’m about to say is my own opinion, and should not be construed in any way as representative of the views of my employer. My involvement in OWS is as a private citizen, not as a representative of any institution.

Second, I’m not going to give you any of the history of OWS. There are a lot of articles and essays (with a lot of different perspectives) out there about this already, and I wasn’t involved with the movement in the very beginning, so don’t feel I have a personal perspective that needs to be shared. I’m also not going to talk politics, or get into any of the larger issues surrounding the movement. If you want to talk about that stuff, find me later and I’ll be happy to chat (preferably over a beer).

What I am going to do is talk about how I’ve been involved with the records and the recordkeeping processes of OWS; telling you a little about what we’ve been doing and then talking about what we’d like to be doing.

As I said, I’m not going to give you a history of OWS, but by way of introduction, a lot of what I’m going to say relies on an understanding of the movement’s structure. Basically OWS (at least in New York City) is made up of a bunch of autonomous groups, each of which come together around a particular issue, identity, or need. These groups are linked together through a tri-weekly decisionmaking meeting called the General Assembly, which uses a pretty specific and well defined consensus decisionmaking process. There is also an operational spokes council meeting that happens twice a week that uses the same consensus process, but allows for more focused discussions by limiting each group to having only one person at that meeting who can speak. Both sets of meetings are long; usually three to four hours, and both are usually in public spaces, often outside.

I’ve been involved with one of these groups, the Minutes Working Group, for a couple of months now. The group’s goal is to record the processes and decisions of the General Assembly and the Spokes Council, a goal which grows out of a couple needs that the group fulfills. First (and most important), it meets some operational needs of the movement by providing a record of decisions made. This has all kinds of ramifications for working groups, for example, financial disbursement relies on documentation provided by minutes as proof of agreement on a particular proposal, so if we don’t record that consensus was reached on a proposal that involves money (or record it incorrectly), that money will not be disbursed. Second, one of the movement’s core values of transparency is served by having a public record not only of decisions, but the processes by which those decisions were reached. Third, the minutes offer a way for people who cannot be present for every (or any) meeting to keep in touch with what’s happening. as well as provide an incentive to stay involved with the movement. Finally, these minutes will eventually serve as an invaluable part of the historical record about this movement. The news media has already relied heavily on minutes as a record of events, in some cases even quoting extensively from them.

The group originally started creating verbatim transcripts, but as the winter set in and the initial enthusiasm wore off, it became essentially an impossible task. We have now moved to a more summarized form of documenting process and decisions, but are still interested in creating transcripts of these meetings by crowdsourcing some of that work. As I said above, the work that we do serves a number of purposes, and some of them are better accomplished through a summary than a transcript or vice versa.

We’ve been posting these minutes on the New York City General Assembly’s website, which is built on WordPress. I don’t know much about this website; another working group has been building it out. Over the course of time, we’ve been experimenting with a number of different ways of creating minutes, and have recently started using Etherpad Lite as a way of collaborating on transcriptions. We also recently started creating audio recordings of the meetings, which we’ve been uploading to the Internet Archive and then linking back to the WordPress posts of the particular meeting’s minutes.

There are a few other ways that meetings get documented as well. There’s a small group of people that have been livetweeting the meetings, and some people livestreaming as well. Obviously those are both great for keeping people involved in real time, but are less permanent and in some ways less reliable/trustworthy than the minutes we’ve been creating.

That’s what we’ve been doing. It’s a pretty big commitment, especially since many of us are working fulltime jobs and already have pretty busy lives.

There are a lot of things we’d like to do, or do better. We’d like to find ways to link up all the different ways the meetings are documented (audio recordings, tweets, livestream, minutes and transcriptions). Right now we have a post with an embedded quicklinks table that’s really handy, but it has to be manually updated, which is somewhat of a hassle. We’d also like to continue to make the process of minutes taking as transparent as possible, by having more information about provenance of the documents; who typed what, what edits were made (and why), and the differences between versions of the documents. We’d also like to find ways to help other working groups document their meetings in a standardized way, by providing templates, workshops and other resources.

Most importantly, we’d like to work more efficiently, so we can continue to do the work we’ve set out to do. Thanks, and again, feel free to talk to me at any point, by any means, about any of this.

from Anarchist Organisation: The History of the F.A.I. by Juan Gomez Casas.

The current collection comes largely from the personal libraries of three biblical scholars who pioneered the use of social sciences in biblical scholarship. Norman Gottwald, John H. Elliott and Herman Waetjen generously contributed a curated selection of their books to this venture. This is a collection of texts that would do any any major research library proud, let alone a theological library.

Not only did Herman, John and Norman donate their books to this venture, they have also all given substantially of their time, energy and wisdom to assist in the planning and implementation of this project. Thanks to their efforts, as well as the work of a small group of dedicated activists, librarians, educators and scholars, we were able to incorporate as a nonprofit organization, move over 800 books from the west coast to their new home, catalog and shelve them, and put up a website in a very short amount of time. The library officially opened this past weekend, with a series of cultural and scholarly events.

Although I’m hardly a disinterested party, I think the opening of this library is a really significant event. First of all, it addresses a particular need, one that I think is only going to grow exponentially in the coming years. As scholars reach the age of retirement, many of them will find themselves with vast collections of books and other materials, collections that they love dearly and want to see used and loved by another generation of scholars. However, the libraries of the universities and colleges to which these scholars belong are no longer focused on acquiring physical books, and many of them do not have the physical space to store additional volumes, particularly ones that may be outdated, annotated, or in less than ideal condition. What are these scholars supposed to do with their beloved books?

Second, it’s hardly revolutionary at this point to say that libraries are facing serious challenges to their traditional role as “the place where the books are kept.” With a growing emphasis on remote access and electronic resources, libraries are desperately searching for reasons to maintain themselves as brick-and-mortar institutions. Around the world, libraries are closing, and those that aren’t are making dramatic changes to their service models, trying to build their digital collections and online presences.

The CLBSJ moves in the opposite direction. Instead of privileging virtual space, we value physical space. Instead of focusing on a social media campaign, we’re trying to build a community of people dedicated to keeping the (very real) doors of our library open. Instead of an online conversation, we’re committed to bringing people together in a room where they can have transformative conversations, face-to-face. You could almost say we’re so old-fashioned we’re cool.

Of course, we’re hardly the only ones thinking creatively about what libraries can be. We have some really great company in the Read/Write Library and the Storefront Library project, to name two. We’d love to hear your feedback, and wholeheartedly welcome your partnership in continuing to build the future of this project.

Come visit us! Come join us!

So everybody prepared for war
but war preparations
did not bring peace;
they brought war.

Since war preparations
brought war,
why not quit
preparing for war.

If nations preparing for peace
instead of preparing for war,
they might have peace.

Aristide Briand used to say:
“The best kind of disarmament
is the disarmament of the heart.”

The disarmament of Germany
by the Allies
was not the product
of a change of heart
on the part of the Allies
toward Germany.

So do the English,
so do the Germans,
so do the Japanese,
so do the Italians.

Italy is in Ethopia
for the same reason
that the French
are in Algeria,
the English in India,
the Japanese in Manchuria.

The Italians say
thatthe Ethopians
are not civilized.

The last war proves
that Europeans
are no more civilized
than the Africans.

So Europeans
ought to find a way
to become civilized
before thinking
about the best way
to civilize Africans.

To protect the sea
the English took Gibraltar,
Canada, and India.

To protect India
the English went to Egypt.

To protect Egypt
the English took the Sudan.

To protect the Sudan
the English forced the French
to leave Fashoda.

To protect the Cape and Natal
the English took the Transvaal.

To protect South Africa
the English prevented the French
from giving Agadir
to Germany.

So the English
are just as good
or just as bad
as the French.

First of all, I had a fantastic time. There was a lot of unfortunate drama surrounding the labor dispute before the conference that led to my being pretty ambivalent about going. In fact, the day before I left I was feeling tired, bummed out, and not at all enthusiastic about trekking to Chicago. That all disappeared as soon as I met up with some of my good archival friends and colleagues; a good reminder that, when all is said and done, the best part about these conferences is really meeting new people and bonding with those you already know, usually over a glass of something alcoholic.

As always, I ended up feeling like I learned a lot and missed a lot. There were three sessions that stood out for me. The first was Session 210: Genuine Encounter, Authentic Relationships: Archival Covenant and Professional Self-Understanding, in particular Brien Brothman’s presentation, which was unfortunately truncated, but nonetheless heady, provocative, stimulating and mind-blowing. I seriously considered kidnapping Brothman and making him do the full presentation, but I couldn’t find any accomplices. I also really enjoyed Session 304: Archives in the Web of Data: Toward a Virtuous Flow of Data in the UK and Beyond, where a group of folks from the UK talked about using linked data to open up archival description in new and exciting ways. After sitting through what seem like countless presentations on the potential of linked data, it was great to see a real-world example of someone in the world of archives actually using linked data. Finally, Session 601: Rappin’ with a Fiddle: a 360 Perspective of Music Archives was really fantastic. I particularly enjoyed Courtney Chartier’s presentation on the Tupac Shakur Collection, and all the connections that could be made to the Woody Guthrie Archives.

There are a couple things I learned this year that are going to shape how I approach future SAA conferences. Mark Matienzo put together a good list (which, as he admits, he stole pretty much wholesale from the awesome Declan “Big D” Fleming) over on his blog, so mash up the two and I think you’ll have a pretty good guide to navigating the annual meeting.

• You get what you give. The more involved you are, the more people will know you and/or want to know you. Participate in smaller groups; run for office in a Roundtable or volunteer to serve on a Subcommittee or Task Force. Help organize informal or unofficial gatherings like the Tweetup or Beer Roundtable.

• Think carefully about what technology you bring with you. This year, there was no wireless internet access at the conference, which made 3G capable devices (like smartphones or tablets) the only option for internet access during session. Decide whether or not you need a device with a physical keyboard. And you’d probably do well to bring an extra battery for whatever device(s) you decide to take with you, since outlets in session rooms are few and far between.

• Don’t be afraid to session-hop. I used to avoid this because I thought it was rude (and maybe it is), but some of the best sessions I went to were those that I stumbled into. Keep an eye on Twitter to see which sessions are generating a buzz.

• Consider staying somewhere other than the conference hotel. A lot of people stayed away from the conference hotel this year because of the labor dispute. However, I’m starting to thing it’s not necessarily a bad idea to stay in a nearby hotel if the price is roughly equal. Generally speaking, conference hotels are pretty massive, not particularly friendly, and difficult to navigate. Having a little separation from the conference can be a good thing in terms of maintaining your sanity, and you’ll probably end up staying in a better hotel.

• Stick around post-conference. Because of Hurricane Irene, a bunch of us East Coasters were forced to stick around in Chicago post-conference. While this was not in my original plan, I had some of the best conversations of the conference during the few extra days I was “stuck,” and it was kind of nice to have a few extra days to decompress and ease the post-conference crash.