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.