Friday Sessions

In case you think that this conference is supposed to be fun, think again. There were sessions! And serious work! My sessions on Friday included (if there are mistakes, please let me know. My documentation strategy is minimalist):

Usability Testing in Archives (Tony Kurtz, Tiah-Edmunson Morton, Megan Freidel). This session discussed a variety of usability testing performed in relation to the use of NWDA. The goal of the project was to determine whether users were getting what they needed form the NWDA interface and finding aids. They cited a lot of specifics (and I’m sure Tiah, the owner of this blog, would share at length . . .), but the takeaway lessons I got were:

• Users are interested in the big picture – how the information looks and is presented (“If display is secondary we risk alienating customers”)
• We (the site creators) need to be more innovative in design and consistent in presentation.
• We need to keep asking what users want.
• We need to try and replicate old world feel in new world medium (“people want context and relationship”).
• Users needs are not homogenous and even a single user’s needs are not static.
• They want a personalized research experience (“think Amazon.com”)

Or as Tony Kurtz put it: “We need to educate users in a non-dictatorial way.” A great session with three lively presenters and a real call to all of us to start finding out what users want/need and incorporating a lot more of it into our online reference.

How Do We Keep From Getting Further Behind? Applying the Principles of Minimal-Level Arrangement and Description to New Accessions (Elizabeth Nielson, Scott Cline, Elizabeth Uhlig). Holy Moly. Another session on MPLP? Who’d have thunk it? Elizibeth N. and Scott discussed their priorities in trying to reduce the expansion of backlogs by applying MPLP to accessioned collections. Elizabeth discussed a one-year project at Oregon State Univ. to try and make minimal collection descriptions for 36 accessions. They ended up getting complete usable descriptions in the one-year project for 34 of them. Scott discussed the City of Seattle’s use of folder descriptions provided by the depositing agency to reduce intellectual processing needs (they continue to rebox and refolder). He also stated something that always gets a laugh from me because it’s so true - “there’s always been MPLP. We just used to call it government records processing.”

Elizabeth U. discussed the need for MPLP in a half-time lone arranger shop as a necessity in order to just make records available. This is especially true in the context of MPLP’s call for access prioritization. So a useful session, and one that acknowledged that MPLP has become the dominant paradigm in processing, regardless of what people may think of it.

State of the States lunch plenary (Steve Walker (Idaho), Steve for Jodie Folie (Montana), Glenn Cook (Alaska), Jerry Handfield (Washington), and Jerry for Mary Beth Herkert (Oregon).. This is a session that I hope becomes a tradition. It’s been done three times in the last five years and allows each of the five member states’ State Archivists to talk about what’s been happening in their respective states. Most of the discussions centered around numbers of patrons, number of electronic visits (latter up, former down, big surprise!). Glenn is new to Alaska (3 months) and is still getting to know everyone. Steve noted that his most active records are Idaho Penitentiary Records: “nearly everyone in Idaho seems to have had some relative in the pen.” Jerry indicated that we need a new acronym for archivists that could compete with CIO’s. He suggested PRIMO – “Primary Records and Information Management Officers.” That’s very cute, but I wouldn’t put it on my business card. He did have a good 12-step plan for archivists, which he promised to send me (because I couldn’t write fast enough. I’ll post it when I get it.

The big surprise was a presentation by a group of archivists from the Sakha Republic. Dr. Panteleymon Petrov and Eduard Yakovlev gave short presentations on their research in Alaska and on the state of operations in Sakha. It was a wonderful moment. Dr. Petrov very bravely and clearly gave a short presentation in English followed by his presentation on research. I didn’t take very good notes on the presentation; I was more intrigued by the translation process – several translators and several Russians all engaged in a discussion of how best to relay the meaning. It reminded me of a childhood listening to sermons in foreign languages relayed by translation and wondering just how different the two stories might be.

The second short presentation was by Senior Registrar Eduard Yakovlev, of the Sakha State Archives. He mentioned that the Sakha Archives is the oldest archives in the Russian Far East, operating since the 18^th century. It has over 1600 collections including 6 million folders, with some records dating from the mid 17^th century. They have just started digitizing information. He indicated that they had enjoyed the state of the states addresses and were happy to have been invited to speak and would use the information they had learned to improve their services. I think both groups of archivist were genuinely touched by the meeting and a lot of smiles, pictures, and card-exchanges followed.

Archival Research: The History and Future of the Profession. This is a traditional session involving research papers presented by Western Washington University students in the Archives program. Caitlan Maxwell presented a paper on cyberinfrasturcture. I missed almost all of it, due to getting caught up in conversation. I’m sorry, too, because after looking the term up it sounded very interesting. I hope another blogger can fill in. Megan Bezzo presented on Watergate and the Presidential Records Act (it really wasn’t Marja Krusten presenting. Really.) It was a pretty straightforward treatment of the impact of Watergate, especially the exclusion of the national archives from the process, on the creation of theact. One comment caught my attention – Bezzo stated that manuscript archives have been more invested in access issues than government archives. That has not been my experience at all. What do you all think? Finally Stephanie Brown discussed Margaret Cross Norton and her impact on the development of the professionalized archivist, the creation of SAA, and the American Archivist. Norton was definitely the original mover and shaker – an archival rockstar. All good papers and an enjoyable session as usual.

Archives At the Last Frontier: Collections of Alaska (James Simard, Bruce Parham, Kevin Tripp, and Tracy Leithauser) This was more of a fun session, allowing several local institutions to showcase collections, primarily visual resources. Bruce discussed records of the Pribiloff Islands Program, 1868-1984, including a variety of records related to the seal harvesting and processing program there. A lot of good photos, with the seal clubbing ones thankfully edited. Kevin showed a number of movie clips from the AMIPA collection. Two notable ones both involved memento mori – one was perhaps the last footage shot of Will Rogers and Wiley Post before their famous crash near Point Barrow; the second involved footage of JFK just minutes, maybe seconds, before his assassination. Another fine clip involved scenes of people reacting to the 1964 Good Friday quake. Tracy showed a series of photographs related primarily to the growth of Anchorage. Some of my favorites were the aerial views, the sail-sledding machine, and the earthquake pictures.