Thing 19 - Bookmarking

I had my field day on the Delicious web site and set up the account with the ambition to create a library of psychoanalytic bookmarks. I've so far "clipped" several sites with psychoanalytic book and journal resources, and started a list of Freud museums and archives, check here to see my work in progress. I eventually hope to create a useful resource page for our library: currently all these links sit in the related sections on various collection web pages, and they not very visible that way. I could also finally integrate and annotate all archives out there that are related to ours. A relatively small archive as we are, we have many collections that are pieces of the larger archives stored elsewhere, and social bookmarking could help us recreate that whole picture for each particular collection. With online archival services like Harvard OASIS , cross-referencing becomes much needed and often required. I could see how "clipping" could make our web sites more dynamic and in touch with reality. Very few people use our library catalogs, but hey, something better is on the way.

Thing 9 - My Photos and Discoveries

Check out this Knowledge Sponge photo of a Cambridge building that came up in my search for Boston architectural sites on Flickr. What a nice metaphor to the work we do in libraries! It's amazing how quickly these photo sharing services filled with artistic photos and moving images. Being in charge of the Back Bay historic archive, I hope to see more historic black and white photos of our facades and skylines (could not find many of those on Flickr). The BPL project to make the postcard images public sounds great! I wish all local archives would do the same! There is a Digital Commonwealth initiative going on to integrate all Massachusetts historic archives. If anyone works for a participating library, let me know what your experience is.

Going Extra Mile: I've been using Picasa for some time, both for work and family pictures. Here is a link to the Album I created from the negative film found in our archives and turned into a historic exhibit.

Thing 7 - FEEDback on RSS

I've happily subcribed to WBUR, BBC World, TEDTalks, YouTube Most Discussed, and other RSS feeds in Google Reader. My favorite so far is the Joke of the Day from Comedy Central. I am also following the blogs of my fellows from the 26.2 Things in Boston course. It is nice to have all news in one place, my two frustrations have been: 1) it is often difficult to find the correct RSS url for a particular service - you have to go from page to page to find how they break their RSS feeds; and 2) too many too broad chunks, e.g. there is Most Popular and Most Discussed categories on YouTube, but no categories for News & Politics and such. I guess I will get better at it, once I start using tags, but coming up with the subject relevant to each news service is time consuming, as they are not always consistent. I could not subcribe to Library Journal - Google Reader not finding a perfectly valid RSS url for some reason. I wonder if there are alternatives to Google Reader, something more intuitive (regular Google finds RSS pages way better than Reader does).

There is certainly a place for RSS on every library web page: local news, library events, storytelling, new aquisitions, a newsletter, blogs could all be made into RSS alerts. Perhaps there is even a way to deliver the titles for the most discussed or most circulated books and articles to patrons. With the archives collections being more static than regular library ones, I can't quite see the same service for archives. Unless we push professional news, blogs, and newsletter items onto readers. There is always a danger to become too agressive with your customers - we have all come not to appreciate SPAM, but still... No reason no to have a Reader-like subcription page for a library or archive, set up with subjects and readings relevant to your audience.

Welcome to Archives Go Digital!

Welcome to my blog! Archivists, librarians, collectors, and amateurs, please share your thoughts on the future of archives and record management. How can we come out from the dusty basements and shady attics to take up residence in the cyber space? Scan, scan, scan - let's make our precious manuscripts and black-and-white photographs talk! Wait, what about copyrights? Have those scribes ever dreamt of going online? What are the promises and perils of OAI-PMH, OAI-ORE? How to find cheap tools to redo our catalogs? Mike is on: history is being recorded - how podcasting changed audio archives. Hey, it is an interesting world out there...