For all of you who think the interwebz isn't popular...

We haz the Europeana site!! Ok, no more lolspeak today, but this is a really cool initiative where the European Commission has invested just scads of euros to create a Europe wide digital library available online 24/7. Cool right?

Well, it is until you get 10 million hits per hour when you launch causing the site to crash.....

So the site is recalibrating and should be relaunched in mid December. You can click here for the future site

I find this just fascinating for two reasons; firstly, wow, ten MILLION hits an hour? That's a popular website. I wonder if we can learn from something like this and have more efforts being put forth into digitization on a large scale. They will be featuring items from the Louvre and the British Museum to name but two museums. According to one article,"the images online include the Magna Carta from Britain, the Vermeer painting “Girl With a Pearl Earring” from the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague and a copy of Dante’s “Divine Comedy.”" (NYT Nov 20, 2008).

The second reason this fascinates me is due to the fact that France apparently dominates submissions to the Digital Library. I lived there four years ago and found the internet to be a little lame on French websites. I have to take that view back since I used Les Archives du Rennes last year for a project and it was a fabulous website. The website for La Ville du Rennes is also quite good. And France had submitted over half of the two million articles that were up on Europeana, even writing other countries' histories for them (NYT Nov 20, 2008). I'm not sure if this is part of trying to protect the French Culture, or if France has placed a great emphasis on being part of digital initiatives, but they have so much culture to draw upon.....I can see why they submitted so much!

I look forward to going on the new version of the Europeana website to see what it's like. And I'd also be curious to see what sorts of bells and whistles they are using, as maybe those could be used here in Canada. Well, that is if we ever got digitization funding again.....

so I was busy doing another project for an archives course

and trying to find images of Jenkinson and Schellenberg as I became curious to know what these famous names looked like. Google pointed me to this little gem: Archivopedia! Looks like we have our own little wikipedia to call out own. It seems to be in the beta testing phase, and although I only tried searching two things, this could be a fun little encyclopedia to which we all could refer.

My wish: drop the 1986 colour scheme of teal and dusty rose (?) or lavender with rounded edges... Not modern looking at all.

Would a logo help?

Another good posting by the Records Junkie, this time suggesting archives need a logo akin to what is used for hospitals or libraries. He states:

A logo will let our researchers and our donors know who and what we are. There will be people who don't know what an archivist is who will recognize the archives logo (symbol?) as a place that safeguards and preserves historical materials. They will know who we are, what we do, what we stand for.

Although this is a good idea, I always chuckle when I hear words like "they will know what we do". Right, like the name change we just underwent to become the Faculty of Information. Our old dean tried to tell us it would become like medicine or law, so when asked what we study, all would understand information....(another debate for another time....). But the Records Junkie has a point, had I not become a student in this program, I would never have known what an archives does or where they were. A little logo like the L man reading a book could help the public understand archives or at least know that we're some sort of cultural institution.

I wonder what would work, an "A" made of documents? A magnifying glass? White gloves? A filing cabinet? Something to ponder.

Those November blahs....

Which means I haven't been posting like I should be. I could say I have been busy with school and I wouldn't be lying, but I'm not doing so well in the blogging department. I have been saving some items of interest which I wanted to bring up:

Firstly: Just in the interest of copyright, Charlie Nesson, a US lawyer has taken up the case of a Boston graduate student who has been charged by the RIAA for file sharing. Why this is big news is Nessen is the guy who they based "A Civil Action" on, so we're talking about a whip smart lawyer who will defend the little guy against the ridiculousness of corporate interests. According to Cory Doctorow:

"Nesson argues that the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999 is unconstitutional because it effectively lets a private group — the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA — carry out civil enforcement of a criminal law. He also says the music industry group abused the legal process by brandishing the prospects of lengthy and costly lawsuits in an effort to intimidate people into settling cases out of court."

See larger post plus link to full story here

Second: The Records Junkie has been posting some really well thought out ideas. The first one was his wish list for archival accreditation. Although his list is quite extensive, he brings up some good issues. I gather from wish #1 that not all programs in archives/public history/information science/library science are accredited. I mean, our program here at U of T is accredited by ALA, but we have no Canadian equivalent. I also know some programs, notably the one at UC Berkeley dropped the ALA accreditation. And there were rumblings that they were to drop the ALA one here....I'm quite glad they didn't as we're not Berkeley!!

He also points out many areas where there should be archivist courses. I'll just copy his list:

a) selection, appraisal, and acquisition;
b) arrangement and description;
c) reference services and access;
d) preservation and protection;
e) outreach, advocacy, and promotion;
f) managing archival programs;
g) professional, ethical, and legal responsibilities

We have courses in most of these topics, although sometimes I feel that these subjects get glossed over. I know I'd love more courses on the last three topics (e, f, g), especially professional, ethical and legal responsabilities. Although I can see this being part of the large category of "things you learn on the job", there are relevant subjects that I know little about like copyright, but I'll be dealing with every day.

I fully agree with his wish for hands on experience. I selected to take a practicum course this term, and I have learned so much from this, both in being able to apply what I learned in class, and more of the ins and outs of working in a small archives. This desire fpr hands on learning is a continual chant (rant?) we have from time to time in the program...

Some of his suggestions that would be brilliant if they were even a remore possibility are things like having the SAA put their stamp of approval on the graduate program, having classes at a ratio of 15 students to one faculty member, and having interships available to pay for school. I wonder if the ACA would imagine doing this in Canada (Likely not, we only have about....3 programs if you include the University of Manitoba). But having interships would help our funding. We pay a lot to get U of T on our diplomas! Smaller classes would be great too. They wish to increase the numbers in our Information Studies program, so this means we have classes around 20-30 people at the smallest...not optimal at a Master's level.

We have an active ACA chpater this year, so at least the student body knows we are out there! I hope this continues next year as well. All in all, I think the Records Junkie has some good suggestions in his wish list that should provoke thought and discussion to see where archives programs will go in the future. This will be interesting to see what happens when the SAA comes out with its education report.

Homegrown case study in why archives and records management are important

You may or may not be keeping up with the story of how over 400 women received inaccurate breast cancer tests in Newfoundland and Labrador which As stated in a CBC article, these patients received inaccurate results with hormone receptor tests which were to help determine whether a patient can benefit from the anti-hormonal drug Tamoxifen between 1997 and 2005. For whatever reason, these issues with testing were withheld from the public and the patients.

[The many days of testimony] "conclude an examination that has revealed serious issues within the health-care system, including the often-neglected field of pathology, ethical issues of patient notification and how well staff are trained for their jobs".

A focus of the inquiry has also been how agile the health-care system is in responding to reports of problems.

Smith said the experience of the inquiry has already led to substantial changes in quality assurance, but said there are still risks if staff do not step up and file reports.

"I think we've made major efforts to try to educate people about what an occurrence report is, why it's used, how it can improve patient care and safety, but some people just don't use those report forms," Smith said." (CBC News October 31, 2008).

The other big story along with all the issues of withholding information is the loss of one of the computers used in the diagnostic testing. Apparently after the computers are deemed too old, they are put in a landfill. But the records are not wiped clean from the system. An older news story mentioned that these computers were in a dump in St. John's but it turns out a technician had taken the computer, refurbished it and sold it. He managed to track it down to the University of Virginia, who were more than happy to forward along the requested records. My question, which is the same as many others, is why wasn't the computer wiped before leaving the hospital???

You can be sure the hospital is in some serious trouble as this reveals inept record keeping procedures as well as patient neglect and improper records disposal. This will continue to be an interesting but sad tale, as 108 women lost their lives to breast cancer, and it is uncertain if tamoxifen would have helped them.

(Thanks to the Canadian Archivist blog for highlighting the story)