To describe at the item level or not to describe at the item level, is that the question?

Last monday was a strangely bookended day for me and the rest of you who have the "hat-trick" Intro to Archives, Intro to Technology, and Intro to Preseveration. In the morning, Dr. Callery and Dr. Cox drove home the message: "forget about item-level archival description," while Joel Blanco-Rivera in Preservation talked about archival digitization, which, he points out, requires that same much-maligned "item-level description." What is an archivist to do?

I haven't figured it out, but, based on a brief conversation with Dr. Tomer and some internet searching, here are some thoughts on the issue:
1) each side is probably looking at different literature, and probably have different ideas of "archives" in mind when they make their predictions or warnings
2) while not everything that is in traditional, physical media form will be digitized (especially with current technology), more and more - Joel said 93% - of information is being "born-digital", which is more available for item-level description through metadata schemes, etc.
3) new technology, such as this , this , or this represent the constantly advancing field of digital scanning, which should remind us that we don't know exactly what the future holds for the technology (while we should avoid the allure of futurism and technological determinism).
4) supply and demand: as online access to library and archival holdings increases, digitization and the loved/hated item-level description will happen where there is demand for it, consider the large amount of photographic material already available online because of the interest in photography supported by sites like Flickr - ex: Library of Congress.  

Meet & Greet :)

Hi all--

Just a friendly reminder that we will be getting together this evening for a very causal and informal and relaxing evening at The Library, a bar and restaurant. The address is:

2302 East Carson Street in the Southside. Thanks Google Maps.

We will be gathering around 8pm, but feel free to stop by earlier or later--it should be a great time!
Also, bring friends, spouses, significant others--as long as they are over 21!

Here is some more info about The Library.


If you have ANY questions, please email saa.at.pitt@gmail.com

Hope to see you there!

FREE BOOK!

I'm not sure if this was announced to us all and I simply missed it, but it exciting and worth repeating nonetheless:

The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill has made a digital version of the 1922 edition of A Manual of Archive Administration, Including the Problems of War Archives and Archive Making by Sir Hilary Jenkinson available for free download. Check it out here.

Let's go bowling!!

Hey everyone, I'm trying to get a sense of how many SAAers are interested in the idea of a bowling night during the first week of December. We will be partnering with SCALA and are going to try to involve local librarians and archivists (in a very casual way) so the event will have a networking element to it in addition to being a lot of fun. So, comment to this post, or send me an email (hbb8[at]pitt[dot]edu) if you're interested. Thanks!!

Joining SAA

As members of this organization, we should all be members of SAA! Not only does membership offer you great values on books, it also provides you with many valuable resources, especially for those of us just beginning in our career.

I wanted to point out one of those many resources: SAA's new member mentoring program. On the SAA homepage at archivists.org, it can be accessed by clicking on the "Members" tab. Or you can try this link: http://www.archivists.org/membership/mentoring.asp

Enjoy! :)

Did you miss the meeting?

Check out the agenda below. If you would like to be added to the email list, email saa.at.pitt.@gmail.com. Thanks!

Society of American Archivists Student Chapter

The University of Pittsburgh (saa.at.pitt@gmail.com)

I. Introductions

a. President: Nikki Williams

b. Vice President: Harrison Behl

c. Business Manager: John Tomasicchio

d. Secretary: Abigail Miller

e. Web Coordinator: Tim Notari

II. Overview of SAA

a. Join SAA at www.archivists.org

b. Mission: “SAA's mission is to serve the educational and informational needs of more than 5,000 individual and institutional members and to provide leadership to ensure the identification, preservation, and use of records of historical value.”

c. Numerous SAA publications, list serves, discussion boards, roundtables

III. SAA Student Chapter at the University of Pittsburgh

a. Advocacy organization that will connect students to archive resources in the Pittsburgh area through speakers, meetings, trips, and social events

b. Social networking and building a base of archives peers

c. Creating a name and place for SAA in the industry in Pittsburgh

d. http://saapitt.blogspot.com/

IV. Upcoming Events (check the blog for full info)

a. Meet and Greet on Thursday, November 6^th at the Library in the Southside

b. SISCO Volunteering at Bookem: November 2 from 3-8pm

c. Bowling Night: TBA

V. General Discussion

a. Any questions or ideas?

b. Contact info again:

i. Saa.at.pitt@gmail.com

ii. http://saapitt.blogspot.com/

iii. Join the Facebook Group: SAA Student Chapter at the University of Pittsburgh (you must be in the Pitt network to join)

SISCO Events!

Hello All--

Please support a fellow student organization and take part in the following SISCO community events. They will be a great way to get to know your fellow classmates as well as help out the community we live in!

Sunday Nov 2nd, 3-8pm
Bookem (5125 Penn Ave, Pittsburgh PA)

Volunteers are needed to collect and package books, which will be sent to prisoners across the United States. Bookem' receives letters from prisoners, from across the country, requesting materials. It's our job as volunteers to match these requests with materials in Bookem's library.
______________________________________________

Saturday Nov 8th, 10am-3pm
Millvale Library (213 Grant Avenue, Millvale, PA 15209)

New Sun Rising is a 501(c3) nonprofit which is trying to build a library from the ground up in the community of Millvale, just north of the Allegheny River. Millvale has been hit hard by floods over the past few years and this project is one of the first steps toward revitalizing the community as a whole. Volunteers are needed to do perform renovation and winterising work on the building, which will be the future home of the library. Lunch will be provided!

_______________________________________________

Any interested parties should RSVP as soon as is convenient to sisco.pitt@gmail.com.

Copyright in the Wild

If you guys are anything like me, the past two weeks of LIS 2000 have only served to whet my appetite for discussion of copyright law!!! In addition, work done in LIS 2600 about licensing agreements has made me wary of these great *free* services provided on the intertubes.
So when Tim the Web Coordinator (thanks Tim, the site looks great!) sent me the link to start contributing to the SAA @ Pitt blog, I had to read the terms of service. Which led me to Google/Bloggers content policy. Which led me to Google/Blogger's policies regarding the DMCA that we've heard so much about.

To get to the point: While Google does act on notices of infringement as required by the DMCA, they also take this further action: Please note that in addition to being forwarded to the person who provided the allegedly infringing content, a copy of this legal notice may be sent to a third-party which may publish and/or annotate it. As such, your letter (with your personal information removed) may be forwarded to Chilling Effects (http://www.chillingeffects.org) for publication.

The website Chilling Effects is a project sponsored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, University of San Francisco, University of Maine, George Washington School of Law, and Santa Clara University School of Law clinics and is intended to draw attention to cease and desist notices sent by individuals and organizations under the terms of the DMCA, educate the public about their rights and restrictions when publishing material online, and create a database of these notices for the benefit of interested scholars, etc.

There are great examples of the little guy sticking it to The Man (Blue Jean Cable's response to Monster Cable's C&D is 1.readable and interesting and 2.chock full of moxie) - follow the entire saga here - and individuals fighting today's ePirates, both malicious and benign.

So if you craved real world examples of the debate over copyright and infringement, here is a place to start. If you didn't, then come to our first meeting on MONDAY, OCTOBER 27 at FIVE pm and tell me what you'd rather hear about.

Best,
Harrison

Welcome to to SAA @ the University of Pittsburgh's Blog

We are the University of Pittsburgh's Student Chapter of the Society of American Archivists. We'll use this as a forum for making announcements, posting minutes of meetings, sharing images and other media after our events, and posting topics of interest to students in Pitt's Archival program.

Please feel free to use the blog as a means to contact the SAA officers.

Cheers,
Tim