The Archivist's Utility Belt

In the comics, Batman wears a belt stocked with all the tools he might need on a case. Batarangs, gas mask, grappling hook--whatever the situation, he is prepared.

I like to pretend that archivists are the superheroes (or at least the masked vigilantes) of the LIS world. So we need our own "utility belt," with the tools to manage any information gathering emergency we might face.

What would go onto the Archivist's utility belt? That is what I am still working on. I welcome suggestions, either for general tools (a ruler, a portable scanner) or for product recommendations. I hope to have more updates as I go, explaining why each tool is important and where to start.

The Value of Finishing Tasks

Yesterday I managed to wrap up 4 projects at the film archive. All of them had been on my plate for at least a month--in some cases longer--and they were causing me a fair amount of stress, even in my off hours. (It's no fun to have a hard time sleeping because you're worried about when you can get a reference scan sent off to a patron.)


I can see several useful lessons from this experience, but probably the most valuable is: If something causes you stress, figure out what you can do about it and do that. (And if you cannot do anything, learn to say "There's nothing I can do" and shrug it off.) To use one project as an example, I wanted to try out an electronic deliverable for a reference scan. That's a great (and necessary!) goal for the archive, but in the meantime, I have an actual patron who wants some materials for a book he is working on. After lots of trial and error in getting the materials ready, I finally decided that for now it is best to just make photocopies (like I used to) and ship those to the patron, then continue to experiment on my own. And I felt much better after I did that, even with the frustration that something I'd worked on for weeks was otherwise accomplished in, say, fifteen minutes.

If I have one weakness as a worker, it's that I am always eager to take on new tasks, but I frequently take on too much, and then I wind up stressing out over all the things I haven't done. I try to remind myself to make task lists and set a small number of goals each day. If I finish 3 significant tasks per day, I can feel like I'm making progress. Especially if I have not at the same time added 4 or more tasks in the same day!

Film Archiving: The Importance of Enlightening Those Audiences Sitting in the Dark

Here is an excellent article by Lynnette Porter for PopMatters about film archiving. It interviews BFI archivist Jo Botting and provides a great overview of the kind of work film archivists do.

Film Archiving: The Importance of Enlightening Those Audiences Sitting in the Dark

Does Digital Piracy Hurt Sales?

After a recent conversation with a friend about digital piracy--and its alleged negative impact on sales of music albums and movie tickets--I found myself wondering how exactly a distributor could prove that piracy really is to blame for a decline in sales. That is, how could they prove that the rise of digital piracy wasn't just coinciding with a time when people no longer felt that the cost of purchasing entertainment was justified by the product they purchased?

I can imagine two points groups like the MPAA and the RIAA could try to prove, but both would be difficult. The two points are:

1. A significant number of people who download an illegal copy of a work would otherwise, if they had no other choice, purchase the work at full price; and
2. A significant number of people who download an illegal copy of a work do not then go on to pay for a legal copy of the work or purchase some equivalent works.

To the first point, let's suppose the record labels found a magic switch that, if pulled, would definitively end all digital piracy.  Would sales of albums then increase, or would it stay the same? I think the tendency is to suggest that this point is proved by looking at what record sales were before file-sharing sites became popular, and then looking at the overall decline in sales. However, this could be a coincidence. It is possible that many music downloads are more like impulse purchases, and if the means of impulsively downloading them did not exist, those users would not feel like it was worth the cost to buy the albums. And if that is the case, piracy is not really hurting record sales. And it might even help them.

Which leads me to my second point. It would be interesting to see how many consumers who purchase an album first became aware of it through an illegally downloaded copy. (I don't have a strong feeling with regard to how often this occurs, it is just an idea I had.) What if it turns out that many record sales come about because someone "samples" an album for free, decides he likes it, and then wants to pay for a legitimate copy? Additionally, suppose someone downloads an illegal copy of a popular new album, likes it, and then buys other albums by that artist? In these cases, piracy might actually be stimulating record sales. I have seen some of this in action in the world of Japanese movie fandom; otaku in the US have been known to download an illegal, fan-subbed version of a movie because it is not otherwise available in the US, but then when it does get a US release, those same people get excited to buy a copy.

In my points I used the phrase "a significant number" because these points would have to apply to more than just a few people, but obviously would not apply to everyone. If only a small number of people who download an album for free would instead buy it if they had to, it would not be a strong argument for the negative effects of piracy.

LIS Freelancing: Arrangement

I recently talked with a potential client about a contract job to arrange part of his private library. He is an avid photographer and has built a significant library of photography-related books and magazines. These range from technical guides on photographic skills to art books, and also such things as travel books for planning photography trips. His interest is in having someone with a professional eye for arrangement organize these books in a way that will make sense to him and improve the usefulness of his library.

My strategy for a project like this is to first build a small but comprehensive controlled vocabulary for his books, according to their use. (As I explained to him, a public library would arrange books by subject because its arrangement is independent of how any one user might use the books, but a private library can afford a more personal arrangement schema.) Then I would inventory the books and assign each the most appropriate term(s) for its use. I could then use this information--and a spreadsheet--to organize the books and develop a sensible shelving arrangement.

This was not really a project I had considered before, but it is actually a great use of LIS skills in the freelance world. Many people have sizable collections of books, movies, CDs, and such, and they feel that their collections are haphazard and possibly that some things are lost. And while the average person probably would not want to pay a professional to organize their home DVD collection, many other enthusiasts, professionals, and perhaps small businesses would be inclined to do a simple arrangement. In fact, an added bonus of this kind of work is that the client not only gets an organized bookshelf, he winds up with an inventory of his materials, indexed by a use schema that he helped design.

Have any of my other LIS colleagues worked on a similar project?

Do Archivists Share More Online?

One question I have wondered about recently is whether younger archivists--and related LIS professionals--are inclined to share more information about themselves online. Not in the sense of being careless with security information, of course, nor that archivists are more likely to post stories of drunken exploits. (Although we can sometimes accession more beer than we currently have the resources to process....) I wonder rather about building detailed and organized bodies of information about ourselves online, where others can see.
I think that people from Generation X onward are more comfortable with the online component of their lives in general, and use a range of public sites (social networking sites being a good example) frequently. These are sometimes for staying in touch with friends and family, sometimes for networking, and sometimes just an expression of creativity. And when the person doing all this is also an archivist, he or she might be more inclined to organize and describe the materials they are sharing. I for one love to fill in as many details as I can about each photo I share on Facebook, to use one example. I think the impulse to make as many be-metadated photos as possible available online is a combination of eagerness to share ("open access for all") and eagerness to create an organized and detailed collection. I wonder whether other online archivists feel the same.

Recommendation: Practical Archivist

For the person looking to do right by his or her family photos and other memorabilia, consider the website Practical Archivist. This is a site run by a friend and colleague, who offers best practices and detailed advice about the best ways to scan, organize, and preserve family treasures. Her insights are invaluable and her blog makes for great reading. And she is high on my list of archivist role models. If you find my (sparse) posts interesting, I highly recommend you look at her site.