Comments for Hot Brainstem

Comment on Teaching primary sources: Secondary in, Primary out, Flip it, Repeat by Maureen

Maureen — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:51:26 +0000

When I was in college, we had to do something close to your second exercise for a class — basically, we had to take a chapter in a monograph or an article, read through the cited sources, and then write a paper about whether we believed that the author had enough evidence to make the argument she was making. This was a great exercise for a number of reasons:
1. The same reasons that (I think) motivate your pedagogical activity — reminding students that history is produced by people, and people can make mistakes or come to different conclusions.
2. Our instructor was setting the standard that history must involve an argument. You have to make a point, or else you’re reading a compendium of archival sources. Doing so is a lot of fun, but they don’t mean anything in and of themselves. Furthermore, I’m not certain that it’s possible to read through, pick through, and exclude historical information WITHOUT making some sort of implicit argument.

Anyway, the instructor is Sharon Ullman, at Bryn Mawr, and she might be interested in working with you if you wanted to make this a reality.

Comment on Can you skip learning EAD and go right to Archivists’ Toolkit or Archon? by Chris Prom

Chris Prom — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 18:59:34 +0000

Interesting discussion, thanks for posting it. You said:

“Is it negligent to skip straight to AT? No, and it doesn’t make someone a bad archivist. It is less than ideal and maybe even a bit risky, but it’s also a very practical approach. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that this is the most immediate value of a tool like AT/Archon.”

That’s very perceptive. When we developed Archon, the idea was to make EAD and online access possible for those who would never have time/inclination to edit raw xml. I don’t particularly think one needs to know anything about EAD in order to do good description. However, it is essential that one understand DACS, ideas such as access points, levels of description, difference between intellectual hierarchy and physical order, etc. Most of the problems that implementers run into with Archon, in my experience, is because they don’t understand these concepts or are clearly using the application to describe archives in ways that DACS does not recommend.

However, I would also add that a basic understanding of EAD and DACS go hand in hand, so familiarly with EAD is a good benchmark of whether an individual is ready to begin using a tool such as AT/Archon.

Comment on Can you skip learning EAD and go right to Archivists’ Toolkit or Archon? by librarchivist

librarchivist — Tue, 11 May 2010 18:16:35 +0000

Thanks for bringing up this question. I just posted a response on my blog: http://librarchivist.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/who-cares-about-learning-ead/.

Comment on Can you skip learning EAD and go right to Archivists’ Toolkit or Archon? by Who cares about learning EAD? « Touchable Archives

Who cares about learning EAD? « Touchable Archives — Tue, 11 May 2010 18:15:46 +0000

[...] aids Matt (@herbison) over at Hot Brainstem posted a good question to his blog: “Can you skip learning EAD and go right to Archivists’ Toolkit or Archon?” He suggests that the “right way” to create accessible finding aids (EAD, DACS, [...]

Comment on Survey of Archon & Archivists’ Toolkit use by Jayson

Jayson — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 03:51:14 +0000

I’m curious about how it was that you were able to move your data from AT to Archon. I’m in the process of figuring this out myself and any time saving tips you might have would be very greatly appreciated!

Comment on Using Camera Phones to Improve Reference in the Archives and Library by Megan Fraser

Megan Fraser — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 20:47:20 +0000

I think you mean “vault/cage/lehr.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lew_Lehr

Comment on Using Camera Phones to Improve Reference in the Archives and Library by matt

matt — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 05:10:40 +0000

Christine and Jim, one of the things I like best about the sendable-photo approach is that I can do it “where the stuff is,” whether in book stacks, in the vault/cage/lair, or in the basement storage room with oversize ledgers. No photocopier or scanner needed…which brings me to my second point: For whatever reason, I tend to find that I’m taking quick and dirty snapshots of material that is either oversize or more fragile than I want to put on the flatbed of a photocopier or scanner. This is probably why, in my lower-priority daydreams, I have a sweet overhead book-type scanner that automatically compiles a PDF like Jim’s photocopier does — but this runs afoul of the “where the stuff is” benefit.

Having said all this, if anyone has an extra PDF-networkable photocopier or overhead scanner, I’d swallow my pride and accept it.

Comment on Using Camera Phones to Improve Reference in the Archives and Library by Jim G.

Jim G. — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:07:44 +0000

We do very little photocopying at all anymore – much quicker and easier to send scans, especially since we got a copier that sends PDFs directly to our network account from which we can attach to an email. Has saved us tons of time over the past year. We have taken digital photos of a few items that were too large for our copier or scanners, but none of us have decent phones so we’ve borrowed the library digital camera in those cases. But if someone here had a better phone device, I could definitely see the value of taking “phone photos” to quickly and easily share information with interested patrons.

Comment on Using Camera Phones to Improve Reference in the Archives and Library by Christine Di Bella

Christine Di Bella — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:27:33 +0000

Coincidentally, I actually did this today – my new reading room doesn’t have its own large format scanner, and the piece was too big for a standard one, and I made the calculation that a crude iPhone photo would do the trick in this case. (Not wanting to leave my comfy post or prevail upon my assistant for the umpteenth time today may have also had something to do with it.)

I’ve emailed myself such photos that went into a grant application before, but this is the first time I did it for reference. I liked it.

By the way, we don’t have a photocopier yet either (it’s down the hall, in the main part of the library), but we do have a little letter size scanner attached to one of the public computers, so we often do quick and dirty scans where others would do photocopies. I did this today too, and printed them out for the researcher, though we often just email them.

Comment on Using Google Earth to Jog Memories in Oral History Interviews by matt

matt — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:41:03 +0000

Via West Yorks Archives on Twitter: We’ve been trying similar, collecting memories using historic maps as a prompt in our Tracks in Time project http://www.tracksintime.wyjs.org.uk/tracks-in-time-outreach.htm
(http://twitter.com/wyorksarchives/status/5214033944)