Henrik de Gyor’s kickstarter campaign

Wow it’s been a long time since I’ve posted. My new temp job and the online digital preservation class I’m taking up so much of my time. The class is almost over so hopefully I’ll have time to post more soon.

Henrik de Gyor from Another dam blog/podcast has started a Kickstarter campaign to transcribe his podcasts into searchable text. I think this is a really good idea. It’s a great resource and I think this would be a valuable tool to the DAM community. If you think so too, please consider backing him for this project.

Collections Care Basics: Where Do I Begin? Webinar course

I recently completed the Collection Care Basics course  from Connecting to Collections Online Community. This course is apart of the new Caring for Yesterday’s Treasures – Today course series. This is a joint project of  Heritage Preservation,  the American Assoication for State and Local History, and IMLS.

I highly recommend checking out the power point slides for this course and consider registering for the other courses. There is no cost for these webinars and you can do them at your own pace. While, I chose to watch most of them live,  when I wasn’t able to do that because of an interview conflicted with the time slot I was able to view a recording of the webinar. There were homework assignments, that I thought was helpful. They were two kinds, one focused on a collection or object at your institution and how it relates to the class content and quizzes.  I felt that both types of these assignments helped me retain what was discussed in the webinar. Also the quizzes made me feel a bit more confident as well.  The recommended readings were a nice touch. I look though some of them and there was alot I learned from them.

I’ll be honest I registered for this course to be like a refresher of my Intro to archives class from college, but I learned alot more than I thought. What was icing on the cake however, was that this course counts towards ACA re-certification credits.  That I thought was pretty sweet.

This might be my last post for a while, I’m taking a digital preservation class online this semester and I might not be able to post to this blog as often.

 

SNAP ACA study tips post and reposting my comment from there

The SNAP blog has a great post on studying for ACA exam.  I wrote a reply there on my suggestions which I’m going to copy below. You’re going to have to read their post to know what I’m talking about.

These are all great tips and I can’t agree more with starting to study early. I made up a whole bunch of flash cards that I studied from which helped alot. I made outlines of some of the readings I did. I also made a list of topics I felt weak on right after I took the test when it was fresh in my mind. This way if I had to repeat it I knew exactly what I needed to focus on.
I’m not sure about splitting up the readings for a group. I would worry I would miss something. If you do that, I would do it for some of the readings not for all.
Personally I think Greg Hunter’s Yellow book helped me the most in studying. http://www.amazon.com/Developing-Maintaining-Practical-Archives-How/dp/1555704670
Full disclaimer: I might be bias he was my archiving professor at Palmer and that was my textbook. Also you by no means should just focus on that one book, it won’t work.
My suggestion if you’re taking this test for the first time is to study your best and go in relaxed. If you pass great if you don’t view it as practice and focus on your weak points for next time. Whatever you do don’t give up.

Articles on DAM preservation

This is an old article on DAM digital preservation from April. I ment to post it earlier, it has been sitting in my inbox for months. I think it bridges the DAM and archives field pretty well. It also goes well with Henrik de Gyor recent article on the life cycle of DAM assets.

On another related note, I registered for a digital preservation online class though my alma mater.

Big Data Article

I saw this article from TechCrunch on Big Data and thought it would be a good read. I like how they point out that good data could help your business grow and be more effective. I never heard of data scientist but it’s a job title I could look more into. Wish they mentioned digital asset management.

Hope everyone is has a very happy holiday season.

The sunny side of the Signal

The Signal strikes again with another amazing article on dare I say a bright outlook for librarian job growth. I was skeptical about this post when I first heard about it but it seems pretty solid. Then again I thirst for good news these days it doesn’t take much to quench it. Also in the comments section for that entry I found a nice little gem another optimistic tidbit I think, but better I love how she lists all the different job titles. I look forward to seeing more from her.

SAA volunteer program resource guide

Looks like the SAA wrote up a guidebook of sorts for archives wanting to create volunteer programs.  I’ll be honest I don’t know how I feel about it. On the one hand this perpetuates the problem of unpaid work in the archive field, on the other it can provide experience and connections to new archivists.  I’ve been volunteering with my local archives for years and yes I would have loved to have a paid position somewhere during that time, but with the job market the way it is I wasn’t able to find one.  That said volunteering has been kind to me, I was able to earn the hours I needed to become a Certified Archivist, I gained practical experience, and I met wonderful people. I made my decision to volunteer with the support of my family and with the fact I deal with stress better when working towards a goal. However, not everyone can make that choice or has a choice in the matter. There is a really good conversion about the volunteer guide going on Twitter.  Someone mentioned privilege and I think they have a point there.  It’s worth going over there to check it out.

Update: You ought to be ashamed wrote a good post on this it’s worth a read. I even left a comment.