Christine Parker

Sounds like my four year old on a long road trip!  I agree with all sentiments about the class ending.  During the first two classes, I thought I was in way over my head, but after we received our information, everything seemed to fall into place.  While I certainly learned how to navigate through Omeka and that Dublin Core has nothing to do with Ireland (or does it!?), perhaps more importantly I learned about the power of images and the stories they tell.  People say that technology destroys connections between people, alienates them; well I think our project absolutely connects people and hopefully helps them feel and remember.

Thanks to everyone for making this class my most memorable yet…

~Chrisie

Maybe I am way off base, but I am thinking about how you would use Omeka in the classroom…Would 5th grade be too young?  Nancy–what could children of this age archive?  Or is there a “kids” version of Omeka out there somewhere?  Seeing this archive come to life as a result of this fusion of images and metadata really is neat…just wondering how or if I could use it with the kiddos…

Even for starters, having kids look through archival material that pertains to specific curricular areas would be a start–exposure to primary docs is always a wonderful teaching technique and opportunity for discussion…

After reading about the challenges and successes with archiving this type of data, it convinces me (now more than ever) that there should be a 501 Intro to Science and Tech course AND a 502 Intro to Science and Tech II course.  For newbies to the technical side of libraries, like myself, the knowledge I gained in the intro course just skimmed the surface of information pertinent to archiving. Chapter 9 eloquently described it: there are the technical issues (obsolete formats, etc) and then there’s the different metadata knowledge and considerations that are required for archiving these materials.  I think there should be two jobs: one techie and one metadata expert for each project!

I am most surprised at all that goes into archiving one item.  An archivist must make many decisions before even doing anything with the item.  The sensitive nature of our project adds another level of thought and consideration before beginning the project.

I am thankful for the clarification of definitions in class.  Our own definitions of controlled vocabularies is so important, especially as we make the lib guide glossary of sorts to draw upon for future library projects.

Our victim passed away at the Pentagon and has relatively few artifacts from her family to archive.  I hope that we can pay tribute to her life though you can only work with what we’re given.  For starters, Jen is alerting VOICES (Frank) to her age which was incorrectly posted as 36 on that tribute page.  I am hoping that our little archive gets viewed by at least the families, so that they know that their loved ones’ lives are being honored.

This weekend I plan on uploading and tagging many of her documents into Omeka.  Hopefully I won’t run into too many glitches!

First off–thank you, Nancy and Frank, for Saturday’s experience.  I am in awe over the work Mary has done and know it’s such a worthwhile project with a widespread impact. I really am honored to be part of such a meaningful endeavor.

While reading chapter 7, I was thinking about Frank’s massive job…it mentioned consistency being so important in digitization. He certainly has tried to make things consistent as he developed his own terms/controlled vocabularies and definitions.  Before this class I was totally unaware of the technology background and skill needed to be an archivist.  He’s really perfect for this job!

I am also wondering what document or object has been the most difficult or time consuming for Frank to digitize…I would think that there are some things he’s received over the years that do not conform to typical descriptors.  Perhaps I’ll email him and ask that question.

See you all on Tuesday–

Chrisie