Friday, November 12, 2010

(late in coming) reflections on last class

I got sick almost immediately following our last class (it had nothing to do with the class itself, I swear!), so my apologies that I'm going to try to comment on it now, almost a week later.

What I remember most about it was our very interesting discussion/mini-debate on what ought to go into the tags of any item we are archiving. People made some excellent points for and against certain things. I thought it was a good idea to avoid putting anything in which one could already find in the metadata. What I'd especially like to see in there would be tags we talked about relating to someone's affiliation outside of their work: schools they attended, groups they were involved in, etc. This would help give a more comprehensive picture of each individual and allow for someone to look them up via other routes than the typical ones which are currently recorded by the 9/11 Living Memorial (as comprehensive as it is).

While looking for some other instances where issue this might have been discussed, I stumbled across this very interesting site. Also, does anyone have access to Wiley articles? Because this one looks particularly interesting/appropriate.

I also REALLY enjoyed digging into the database files, more than I thought I would; I'm looking forward to doing a bit more of that. It even made me consider wanting to look for work which might bridge my training between computer & library science: I am thinking perhaps I can find something in consulting which would allow me to use my database knowledge and combine it with the need in libraries and archiving for technical people who have some actual knowledge of libraries. Exciting!

2 comments:

  1. Arianna, that site is fantastic! I never really considered the implementation of Web 2.0 in digital archives, other than tagging and user submissions of materials. I have recently taken an interest in mashups, and this site provides some great ideas.

    P.S. Feel better!

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  2. the Bienche is hiring a programmer/analyst!

    I love the new look on the blog... and the web 2.0 site. It's bringing back my 501 class. I just wrote a paper on a similar topic for preservation class.

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