Nicole H. Garrett

Last month, I attended NAGARA’s annual meeting in Seattle, WA.  I learned a lot, saw a lot, and shopped a lot. 

One day of the conference was spent at Microsoft headquarters.  It was really interesting to hear where Microsoft thinks the future of technology is headed.  In their  virtual home, the house computer knows what food is in the house, what homework students have, and the schedule of everybody in the family.  Personally, I found it a tad creepy, although I can see how some of the ideas could become mainstream in ten years.   The virtual office is under construction, so we didn’t see too much of that exhibit.  Mostly, it consisted of a video demo with Surface units to play around with.  The surface units are neat, but I don’t see any difference between it’s features and those on the iPhone.  Again, I see how we are heading into a mouse free age, but I’m not sure if Microsoft is at the head of innovation anymore.

I presented on the NHPRC grant the Archives of Michigan received last year.  We were the last session of the conference, so we were surprised to get around 25 people.  The talk went well and I made some contacts–win, win in my book!

Seattle itself is a beautiful city.  It’s always fun to stay downtown and explore.  I shopped downtown, visited the Klondike  Gold Rush National Park,  the Experience Music Project, and the Needle, and explored the various neighborhoods of the city.

Next year, NAGARA will be joining with COSA and SAA for a joint annual meeting in Washington, D.C.  I’m really looking forward to attending!

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This year, the Michigan Archival Association met in Marshall, Mich.  The conference was held at Schuler’s Restaurant June 24-25.   I spoke again, with this year’s focus on the upcoming Civil War Sesquicentennial.

All of the sessions I went to were very informative.  I attended sessions on DSpace, The Archivist Toolkit vs. Achron, and Documenting the Undocumented.

I had never heard of DSpace prior to the conference and was amazed to learn how many institutions use it.  It’s great to have an open source digital asset manager, but I hope they improve the public interface.  Currently, everything looks muddled and is difficult to search through.  It made me thankful that the Archives of Michigan uses CONTENTdm and has been able to customize it so heavily.

As an archivist, I’ve heard The Archivists Toolkit and Achron around on listservs and such, but never had a clear idea of what they do and how they differ.  The presenters at MAA did a great job breaking down the strengths and weaknesses of each and showing how both make an archivists job much easier.  It was very cool to see software developed specifically for archives and I hope to use either of these programs (or something new!) in the future.

Documenting the Undocumented was a very fun session about how archivists are collecting materials on populations that are left out of most histories.  The presenters discussed (1) Circus and Carnival Performers,  (2) Minority Student Groups at Michigan State University (my alma mater!), and (3) Minority groups in Boston.  The talk on circus performers was very interesting and I learned new things about a fascinating topic.   The “professional” lesson I took away from this session was (1) visuals are very important and (2) don’t talk too fast!

Giving my presentation

The session I spoke in was, of course, first in the program.  I discussed the various Civil War collections that the Archives of Michigan is uploading onto Seeking Michigan.  These collections include Civil War service records, manuscripts, and photographs.  The service records and photographs are already uploaded and I am currently working on the manuscripts.  Stay tuned for my progress!

I also took a few tours while at the conference.  The Local Arrangements were a little disorganized, but I was able to see everything I signed up for.  The tour included visits to the Magic Museum, GAR Hall, and the Postal Museum.  Of the three, the Postal Museum was my favorite.  I went in thinking it would be really boring, but it turned out to be really interesting.  I think part of that is we all use the mail and thus, have a personal connection to draw us in.  Plus, the curator there is VERY enthusiastic and his enthusiasm spreads quickly.  I should also note it was the only museum with air conditioning, so that may have played a factor as well. 

Group outside of the GAR Museum

All in all, the conference was another great experience.  I am feeling much more comfortable with public speaking and it’s really fun to reconnect with archivists from across the state.  I met new people, saw old friends, and had a blast.

Next up–NAGARA in 2 weeks!

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I just returned home from the Michigan Archival Association (MAA) Conference held in Mackinac City, Michigan.  This my first time attending an MAA conference and my first time presenting at any professional conference.  The last time I gave a presentation was in college, so it was a little nerve wracking.  At least this time I wasn’t graded!

I attended sessions on odd reference requests and do-it-yourself exhibits.  Both were very interesting and informative.  We don’t work with the media too often at the Archives of Michigan, so it was interesting to hear from institutions that the media frequently contacts.  The do-it-yourself exhibits session was particularly well done.  The presenters explored designing descriptive panels, borrowing artifacts from museums to compliment archival material, and exporting physical exhibits to the web.  They all provided step-by-step hand outs, so I’m excited to dig a bit and play around with the concepts.

I gave my presentation on the “Thank God for Michigan” Project that I am working on at the Archives of Michigan.  People seemed very interested in the project, so my presentation must have at least kept most of the audience awake!  I write a blog about the project, available here .  I try to update it fairly often (I’m much better about that one than my blog here!).  I’ll also write more about my projects at the Archives of Michigan in a new post.

Greg Kinney from the Bentley Historical Library also spoke at my session.  He announced that DLPS (from the University of Michigan) is interested in beginning a Michigan EAD consortium with all EAD guides hosted on their servers free of charge.  The Archives of Michigan was the first institution offered this free license for the “Thank God For Michigan” Project and I’m really excited to part of this pilot project.

This was MAA 50th Anniversary and I was glad to be a part of it.  Aside from doing well on my presentation, my other goal was to become more involved in this organization.  Everyone was very friendly and I am planning on joining the program committee for next year’s conference in Marshall, Michigan.

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My second day started with a session on digital collections. The session mostly concerned MPLP (More Product Less Process). The project I am working on at the Archives of Michigan is testing this exact idea. I also found out about a Midwest CONTENTdm Conference that I would like to participate in next year.

Next, I learned about audio preservation in the ideal. There was an example of an audio engineer converting analog to digital and the quality was profoundly better compared to standard graduate student help. It’s too bad this option is out of the realm of possibility for most archival institutions.

The last session I attended for the day was about marketing archival resources to the “Netgen”. I was expecting a lot more from this session. One of my pet peeves is when established professionals stereotype young people with technology. Yes, people of later generations have grown up with computers, but most patrons requesting digital content are not younger than 20. In fact, they’re usually senior citizens in my experience.

Additionally, I fail to see how creating myspace and facebook pages will bring young people to archives and libraries. Personally, I see it as a waste of resources; instead, institutions should be working on creating more user oriented webpages that make searching fun and simple. Going into social networking sites also just seems absurd to me–I equate it to a librarian or archivist in 1969 setting up a booth at Woodstock. Young people should know that myspace and facebook are not places to go for research worthy information and just because they visit these sites, doesn’t mean they’ll visit a library facebook page. Neither myspace of facebook were set up to provide information for users, so why are librarians and archivists wanting to make it do something that it doesn’t do.

That’s not to say I’m against using the web. The Library of Congress’s Flickr site is a great way to use free and highly used web services to booster activity.

One good idea from this session was to work with teachers, since that’s where most students learn where to go for information. This isn’t a new idea, but it’s a much better way of marketing to students than social networking sites.

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Today was my first day of the Midwest Archival Conference Annual Meeting.  I started the day by going on a walking tour of the city of Louisville (photos coming as soon!).  From there, I visited the Frasier Museum and viewed a engaging exhibit on an excavated slave ship.  A school group happened to be there at the same time.  I overheard one kid tell a friend that “this is really cool.  I thought this would be boring, but it’s really kind of interesting.”  Hearing kids say things like that is so inspiring.  Maybe that’s cheesy of me, but I love museums that make history fun for the public.

At 1:30, I went to my first session on collection policies and met up with my friend Linnea. My job doesn’t relate to collection policies, so it wasn’t too helpful for my current job, but it was still interesting and a good review of what I learned in grad school.

The keynote speech concerned the need to put materials online to provide greater access.  Since this directly relates to my job, this was quite an interesting talk.  Jennifer Schaffner gave several examples of institutions’ digital collections, which I will be perusing.  She also offered the idea of digitizing snippets of collections to “lure” people into the archives to view the full collection.  For a repository with a small budget, this is a viable solution to creating a digital collection.  Additionally, this allows archivists to see the reaction of patrons without investing a lot of money.

In the evening, my family and I visited the Speed Art Museum.  I don’t “get” art, but I appreciate it!  The Museum had excellent displays with panels explaining themes and history for those of us who want to know more, but like being told rather than interpreting it any way we wish.  We took a guided tour where the guide explained modern art in a way that made me actually enjoy it (usually I skip anything post Impressionism).  So, one up on increasing my cultural astuteness!

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