So we've finished the, ahem, 23 things programme and out last task is to take a reflective look back at the programme.
Highlight: getting a few comments on my blog!
Lowlight: at point getting 3 things behind and feeling the book token slipping from my grasp.
Favourite: Although twitter is my favourite of all the technologies as it's like having a big ole archival party going on at my computer every day, the most useful new technology has definitely been making a website with google apps, which I didn't know you could do and will definitely use in the future.
leas favourite: Technorati and Rollyo. They required way too much input for too little output, in my opinion. They didn't integrate with any other sites that I was using and generally seemed a bit detached from the rest of the web and thus not so useful.
I've enjoyed the 23 things programme and it's been good to know that the university considers learning how to use these tools to be part of our job. Certainly I shall keep experimenting with web 2.0 - I've just joined tumblr to try to learn how that works and whether it could work better from archives services than flickr does.
So thank you, and good night!
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Thing #14: Create a podcast (again)
Thing #14 said we had to "create an audio or video file – a 3 to 5 minute introduction to yourself.". I've chosen to use a snippet of an oral history interview that I've conducted in my role here at the University, because I think it's the best introduction I can give to my job.
Firstly, because I speak very little in it and let the interviewee do the talking. This is the hardest thing about doing an oral history interview! It also shows the difference between an archivist and a historian or an archivist and a curator - we let the past speak for itself, be that through living people or through old documents.
Secondly, because it conveys some of the wonderful surprises I have in my job. In oral history interviews you never know what the interviewee is going to say. This interview had been fairly routine for half an hour and then he told me two anecdotes about Rag Week in the 1950s that I wasn't expecting and really add to our knowledge and understanding of the Polytechnic, as well as giving me a good laugh. Similarly a box of papers can look really dull and then turn up some absolute gems. In the last year I've found handwritten letters from Quintin Hogg, photographs of women fencers from the 1920s and correspondence arguing about the cost of typewriters. All of tremendous value to our researchers.
Thirdly, and lastly, because there is no point in having archives if no-one knows they're there. When our website is revamped we hope to include snippets from our oral history interviews online. The collections are already open to the public but we need to show them then riches within them. So this is a technique I hope to be using then so now seemed like a good time to practice it!
This should hopefully take you to the file on my University google docs page: podcast . It's not quite 3 minutes but it is very funny, so I hope that counts.
Firstly, because I speak very little in it and let the interviewee do the talking. This is the hardest thing about doing an oral history interview! It also shows the difference between an archivist and a historian or an archivist and a curator - we let the past speak for itself, be that through living people or through old documents.
Secondly, because it conveys some of the wonderful surprises I have in my job. In oral history interviews you never know what the interviewee is going to say. This interview had been fairly routine for half an hour and then he told me two anecdotes about Rag Week in the 1950s that I wasn't expecting and really add to our knowledge and understanding of the Polytechnic, as well as giving me a good laugh. Similarly a box of papers can look really dull and then turn up some absolute gems. In the last year I've found handwritten letters from Quintin Hogg, photographs of women fencers from the 1920s and correspondence arguing about the cost of typewriters. All of tremendous value to our researchers.
Thirdly, and lastly, because there is no point in having archives if no-one knows they're there. When our website is revamped we hope to include snippets from our oral history interviews online. The collections are already open to the public but we need to show them then riches within them. So this is a technique I hope to be using then so now seemed like a good time to practice it!
This should hopefully take you to the file on my University google docs page: podcast . It's not quite 3 minutes but it is very funny, so I hope that counts.
Thing #15: Social media – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter
ah, the easy Thing! As a digital native (I'm a bit too old to fall into the usual definition of this term but as my dad works in IT, I grew up around computers), I'm already on all three of these sites.
The 'Thing' asked us to get started on these sites (too late), learn more about what we can do on them, and consider their usefulness.
Facebook: I use facebook only for connecting with people who are my friends in the real world - and so I only have about 30 friends on there. I might sometimes cross-post amusing links between there and twitter, but generally I keep the two separate. People on twitter don't want to hear about my cat, people on facebook don't want to hear about my job.
Twitter: I've been on twitter pretty much since I started at Westminster, having come from working at a bank where web access was very much locked down. In that time (18 months) I've gained (and kept) 600 followers, which I'm pretty pleased with. The vast majority of these are other archivists, from the UK, Germany and North America. It took me a while to find my voice on twitter but now I use it very much as I would to talk to a colleague in the office - sharing interesting enquiries, tasks I'm doing, amusing items from the archive and professional news. So that it doesn't sound like an archivist robot is tweeting, I do mention things from my personal life, like gigs or theatre performances I'm going to, but try to keep it to a roughly 80/20 professional/personal mix. Twitter has been very useful for keeping me plugged into the professional world and for networking. I attended a conference recently in canada and already knew about half a dozen people there from twitter, and met up with another archivist who lived there but wasn't at the conference. I've had lots of help with german translations I'm doing for the archive, and in return have helped a german archive with translating their webpages into english.
LinkedIn: I'm on LinkedIn, and have been for some time, but haven't really done much with it other than join, and add people I know. I can see that for people with other jobs, such as a consultant or freelancer, it could be a very useful tool but I struggle to apply it in my own line of work. Ultimately I see it as having my CV online but not much more.
So I would say that I think social media is very useful in both a personal and professional capacities, but for me it works best when you keep the two separate, and have a very clear idea of what you're using them for.
The 'Thing' asked us to get started on these sites (too late), learn more about what we can do on them, and consider their usefulness.
Facebook: I use facebook only for connecting with people who are my friends in the real world - and so I only have about 30 friends on there. I might sometimes cross-post amusing links between there and twitter, but generally I keep the two separate. People on twitter don't want to hear about my cat, people on facebook don't want to hear about my job.
Twitter: I've been on twitter pretty much since I started at Westminster, having come from working at a bank where web access was very much locked down. In that time (18 months) I've gained (and kept) 600 followers, which I'm pretty pleased with. The vast majority of these are other archivists, from the UK, Germany and North America. It took me a while to find my voice on twitter but now I use it very much as I would to talk to a colleague in the office - sharing interesting enquiries, tasks I'm doing, amusing items from the archive and professional news. So that it doesn't sound like an archivist robot is tweeting, I do mention things from my personal life, like gigs or theatre performances I'm going to, but try to keep it to a roughly 80/20 professional/personal mix. Twitter has been very useful for keeping me plugged into the professional world and for networking. I attended a conference recently in canada and already knew about half a dozen people there from twitter, and met up with another archivist who lived there but wasn't at the conference. I've had lots of help with german translations I'm doing for the archive, and in return have helped a german archive with translating their webpages into english.
LinkedIn: I'm on LinkedIn, and have been for some time, but haven't really done much with it other than join, and add people I know. I can see that for people with other jobs, such as a consultant or freelancer, it could be a very useful tool but I struggle to apply it in my own line of work. Ultimately I see it as having my CV online but not much more.
So I would say that I think social media is very useful in both a personal and professional capacities, but for me it works best when you keep the two separate, and have a very clear idea of what you're using them for.
Thing #14: Create a podcast
I'm coming back to this one, bear with me while I get the necessary technology sorted.
Monday, August 8, 2011
ICA- SUV conference notes - where have they gone?
If you're looking for my notes from the ICA-SUV conference I attended in Edmonton July 2011, these have now moved to a new blog at http://archivesnotes.blogspot.com/
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