Challenges to a new Digital Archivist
I’m Krystal Thomas, digital archivist with Special Collections at Florida State University. I am new in my position, just starting this past summer. I am not new to the world of digital collections, but as I have learned quickly in my new position, each institution has its own processes and procedures for handling its digital collections over time. As my days are still finding their rhythm, I thought it would be more useful on this the Day of Digital Archives to share some of my lessons learned on starting a new position and learning a new institution’s ups and downs with digital projects.
Florida State University has had active digital collections for a decade and more at this point. During that time, many people and departments have influenced and been involved in the development, publication, and preservation of digital items, which is wonderful and I am happy to see the support these programs have received over time. However, coming in as the new kid on the block, I had a lot of questions about how work had been done, how decisions had been made, and where all of this work was now. As I found during my explorations, these answers weren’t always easy to find. Sometimes, it was simply there was no documentation to look over, while other times it was that the people who could give me the answers had left Florida State long before I was hired. From my research gathering, I wanted to share some of what I’ve learned in inheriting a digital collections legacy and what you should be doing and/or thinking about to properly help the people who come after you in the digital archivist role.
Document everything
Why did you choose this collection? Why did you choose only three boxes of that collection? Why did you name the files that way? Why didn’t you use the source field? Where are the TIFF images now? I have a million questions about how digital items were created and cataloged in the past but can’t find the answers anywhere. Document every decision you make for a digital project for your benefit, as well as the benefit of the people you are working with and the people who will come after you. This also helps in understanding partnerships you may establish with other entities. FSU participates in several digital preservation programs, but we currently are working to re-establish our relationships with them as there is little to no documentation about how FSU used them before.
Your decisions might not be as obvious as you think
This advice goes back to the “document everything” mantra but deserves its own line: no one is a mind reader, and no one coming after you will be faced with the same set of challenges, resources, and expectations again. There were probably very good, logical reasons why you made the decisions you did when it comes to a digital collection you are working on, but if you don’t record those somewhere, no one–not your supervisor, intern, or even you ten years down the road–will know that and be able to explain that to others moving forward.
Hindsight is 20/20
As an institution moves forward with digital collections, it will learn a little more with each project undertaken. It will gain expertise, and its last project should be better organized and better presented than its first. Hindsight is, after all, 20/20, but if there isn’t an active plan to be recording and sharing the information learned on each project with those involved, how will we learn? Project Management literature says once a project is completed, whether it was a success or not, a team should look back over it and see what they learned and then record that information. Digital projects should be handled the same way. Whether you completed all 2,000 items or ran into a glitch halfway through so the project was never completed, you still learned something of value and that hindsight should be put to good use.
Some times what everyone else is doing won’t work as well for you
When digital projects were started, everyone was looking at everyone else for how to do things which was great and is one of the best ways to learn, but there still has to be a thought process involved. Just because one institution does their digital projects one way does not mean that way will work for us. Each institution has its own set of factors determining how its digital projects are going to work; it is not a one size fits all, and that’s OK. Look around and borrow one process here or one standard there until you’ve developed the right digital process for your institution’s goals and culture.
Don’t make the same mistakes all over again
All of the above leads up to the fact you don’t have to make all the mistakes all over again. A lot of those challenges wouldn’t exist if more of the people and departments involved in the digitization process had communicated more effectively with each other as they worked on projects. A better communication structure would have meant a lot more of what had been done before would have been recorded, creating a self-sustaining institutional memory for this type of work at FSU.
Think outside the box
Keep in mind that you don’t have to do it the same way as before and if you want to help improve the systems and create new ones, get creative and think about how to solve the problems in ways people haven’t before. One of the best things about working in the digital world is creative solutions are always there if you just take the time to think through how they will work and fit into the long-term strategy.
Moving forward in my position, I want to make sure we are documenting our work and learning from our mistakes to create a strong digital collections program moving forward. It will be a challenge but I’m looking forward to it!
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A Day in the Life of a Special Collections Archivist
Burt Altman, Certified Archivist
As this is American Archives Month, I feel compelled to share my long, active, and fascinating career as a Special Collections archivist and archival manager with those just starting out in the profession and students exploring archives work as a career. Here at Florida State University’s Division of Special Collections and Archives, I’ve had many opportunities to utilize my training and experience in a variety of situations. To give you an idea of what an archivist actually does in a special collections environment, here’s a description of what was an unusually active but rewarding day for me.
After sipping my morning coffee and checking voluminous emails from my professional associations, notably the Society of Florida Archivists (SFA), Society of American Archivists (SAA), and the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress (my specialization is political collections), I examined the progress of our graduate assistant (GA) who has been conscientiously arranging, describing, and preserving the collection of a renowned, retired Florida State University (FSU) faculty member whose papers he gave to Special Collections document his rich professional life as a researchers, instructor, and book collector. Our GA has performed her professional tasks well, and with my guidance, she’s learned how to research everything she needs to know about the faculty member/donor to write a biographical sketch and synopsis of the collection. Also I’ve found that the materials have been arranged in a manner that they can be clearly described to researchers and they’ve been placed in the proper archival containers for long-term preservation and use. Several items have been flagged for digitization because I know these items are frequently requested by our users.
By late morning, our GA has arrived, and after an hour’s orientation, I’ve trained her how to use Archon, our archival information system, to create a finding aid or descriptive guide to the faculty member’s collection. I know it will take her several days to complete this, but I have all the confidence that she can.
After returning from lunch, I check in with my GA to be sure that she’s on the right track with Archon or has any questions. She’s well on her way, but no sooner do I return from lunch than I receive a call from our Music Library that they’ve discovered some mold on their books and have no idea how to treat this problem. So I don my preservation adviser’s hat and head out the door. When I arrive at the Music Library, their mold situation seems to be a fairly simple one, only affecting a few books, and there’s no need to call in any professional companies. I suggested that the books be brought outside, the dried mold brushed off, the books put into the freezer for about a week at the Claude Pepper Library, and the shelves they lived on sprayed with Lysol. This seems to do the trick because the problem hasn’t re-occurred.
When I returned to my office in Special Collections, our GA pointed out some neatly-drawn over-sized plastic transparencies, supported by cardboard frames that could only fit on an overhead projector. From my knowledge about the donor and his professional activities, it was evident that these were teaching materials he used in the classroom. I found this particularly interesting in light of today’s use of PowerPoint software, a computer, and a projector for presentations. While considered “low tech” for that time, it was clear to me and to potential researchers what purpose the instructor had in mind – notably to illustrate different European battlefield military strategies employed well over 200 years ago. We decided that since the transparencies were so large, it would be best to archivally store them in larger document boxes rather than the standard “Hollinger Box”.
I finished up the day revising and updating our archival processing training manual, because I found that a large portion of the collection we were arranging and describing could be processed using “More Product, Less Process” (MPLP) procedures. They were contemporary papers, but a large portion of the collection was already in order and folders could be re-used.
By the time I was ready to leave at 5:00, I felt it had been a productive day in the life of a Special Collections archivist!
Fore-Edge Paintings
From Paradise Lost by John Milton
The Nancy Bird Fore-edge painting collection is dedicated to the memory of Nancy Bird, Head of Special Collections from 1960-1974. Many of the paintings on the books housed in Special Collections are of landscapes or other scenes. Each one holds a different image and is truly a work of art. We even have one book that has a double painting. When you fan the pages one way you get one scene and then fanned the other way there is a different scene. The fore-edge painting collection is home to 27 titles encompassing 35 volumes. Fore-edge paintings began in the 1400s, before the invention of the printing press, when books were written on vellum. Since vellum is a heavy material and cannot be folded with the neatness and compactness of printed books today, books were shelved horizontally with the unbound pages facing outward and the title of the book written on the fore-edge. After the invention of the printing press and with the modernization of printing and publishing books when the spine became the method of printing the title, book owners used the fore-edge to identify to whom the book belonged. Books then began to be decorated with gold leaf, gold leaf edges and other techniques to enhance their beauty. For most books with fore-edge paintings, you see the gold leaf edge but not the painted scene until you hold the book in a certain way in order for the painting to appear.
A fore-edge painting is made by fanning the pages, clamping the book securely, applying water-color landscapes or other miniatures. The entire process takes several days or even weeks to complete to allow for drying time.
It is fun to show these to our students and patrons who have never seen one and to see their surprise when the painting comes to life.
From Silex Scintillans by Henry Vaughan
From The History of Sir Charles Grandison by Mr. Samuel Richardson
From The Book of Gems, edited by S.C. Hall
The Cracker Wedding
Published in The Florida Times-Union special World’s Fair edition, 1904
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Mary Oliver’s No Voyage and Other Poems
Mary Oliver’s first collection of poems, No Voyage and Other Poems, was published in 1963, when Ms. Oliver was 28. In a month from tomorrow, a new collection of poems will be released by her publisher under the title, A Thousand Mornings. In an almost fifty-year span of publishing Ms. Oliver’s work has remained true to what J. M. Dent & Sons (London) said in 1963 about her first forty-two poems:
“[Ms. Oliver] has attempted to marry technique and emotion in order to express simple human truth in such a way that it should be conveyed with purpose and clarity to the listener and the reader.”
Today is Mary Oliver’s birthday.
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We were saddened to learn that comic industry legend Joe Kubert passed away this week at the age of 85. In a truly remarkable career than spanned more than 70 years, Kubert entertained, inspired, and educated.
Perhaps best known for his acclaimed work for DC on Hawkman in the 1960s and Tarzan in the 1970s, Kubert also created the comic characters of Tor and Sgt. Rock.
In 1976, he founded the Kubert School in New Jersey, the United States only accredited comic arts institution.
As comic book writer Mark Waid told the Washington Post, “In the world of comics, Jack Kirby and Will Eisner may have been more influential artists, but Joe Kubert was its most influential man. Even if he were to be remembered solely for his body of illustration work, he’d still be one of the greats, but by opening the Kubert School in 1976, he was able to personally mentor and educate literally thousands of successful artists who owe their careers to his teachings.”
The Robert M. Ervin Jr. Collection in FSU’s Special Collections includes a number of Kubert-drawn comics. You can locate comics in the Ervin Collection by using this guide.
Philippe Petit, Paul Auster, and the Question of Solitude
Thirty-eight years ago today, and six days before his twenty-fifth birthday, wire walker Philippe Petit began his walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. “Those who saw him hushed.” [1]
In an undated interview from France Magazine that I found tucked between the pages of Mr. Petit’s On the High Wire, a book in our Harrison Sayre Circus Collection, Mr. Petit said he did not awake one day with a desire to be a wire walker. As a boy he liked to climb trees; it was an activity that gave him a great sense of solitude. And, “I like solitude,” he said.
“I like to be very close and very far away at the same time. I like to play with that distance. […] I like to create my own world. […] On the high wire, where the distance is real, I hear every noise; I know how to control the suspense. What I find beautiful and pure is to be single-mindedly committed to something, and when people pass by they are inspired by that single-minded commitment. That is how one learns; that is how life is enriched.”
Novelist Paul Auster, whose first memoir, The Invention of Solitude, was written between 1979 and 1981, wrote the translation of Mr. Petit’s On the High Wire, which was published in 1985. In his memoir, Mr. Auster speaks of his father seeing him only through the “mists of his solitude.” The August 7, 1974, morning wire walk of Mr. Petit had its own mist. Being close and far away at the same time – the study of it, the play of it – can lead to an outcome outside the limitations of distance. We can think of Mr. Petit’s incredible two-towers walk and Mr. Auster’s impressive collection of prose work following his initial exploration of the question of solitude and, indeed, find ourselves, linked by our humanity, both inspired and enriched.
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1Colum McCann. Let the Great World Spin: A Novel (New York: Random House, 2009), 3.
