archivemati.ca

I won’t even bother to apologize for the long gap since my last post. The simple truth is that I am much too busy with work, life, and travel to be posting regularly. I briefly considered pulling the plug on this blog altogether because I couldn’t stand the non-posting guilt. However, I am still a getting a lot of hits daily on past articles and i’ve decided to just do what I can, when I can. Perhaps it will become a quarterly issue

At any rate, I have been very busy with the ICA-AtoM Project, as well as work for the City of Vancouver Archives and the Public Archives of Alberta. I finally took some time today to write an update on the ica.org discussion forum about what’s been happening with the ICA-AtoM Project. The post includes my presentation slides from the ICA CITRA conference in Quebec City in November as well as a diagram illustrating the recently established ICA-AtoM governance structure.

Michael Welsh, a ‘digital ethonography’ professor at Kansas State University, has created a follow-up video to his amazing and widely-viewed “The Machine is Us/ing Us.” In this second piece he once again drives home the point that digital information is different because it has less constraints than its paper counterpart. It is not shackled by physical constraints like shelves, storage cabinets, card catalogues and microfilm readers. Instead, it is out there, out of the reach of ‘experts’ (e.g. librarians and archivists), ready to be tagged and linked by the masses.

I am not sure I agree fully with his implied conclusions. As I learned during several discussion about faceted search at the recent Access2007 conference, bad metadata is bad metadata. There is still an argument to be made for quality (e.g. precision) vs. quantity (e.g. recall). I also don’t think that information in digital form changes the fundamental definition of information, although it does change how that information is organized and used.

At any rate, this is another very watchable video that somehow manages, once again, to evoke the wonder, emotion and intellectual excitement that is the attraction to most of us working their way through this digital information r/evolution.

Today is the last day of the Access Library Technology Conference conference here in sunny Victoria, BC.. Archives have usually been the poor cousins to Libraries when it comes to deploying IT and, based on what I’ve seen and heard over the past few days, that’s still the case. Therefore, this conference is a great opportunity to hear about where Archives IT will likely be in the next couple of years.

The predominant, underlying theme of the sessions here has been the dissatisfaction of libraries with their traditional OPAC access systems and ILS vendors. This has led to a growing interest in adding Web 2.0 layers on top of those platforms and supporting open-source solutions as a legitimate alternative to commercial products (namely Evergreen and Koha). [Read more →]

I’ve been a little quiet on the blogging front for the past month but that’s because there’s lots going on lately and its been tough to find a couple of hours to write a post. I’ll just break the blogging silence then with a quick update post about what’s been going on:

1. I reproduced. My wife Amanda and I had our second son, Tobiah, born August 12. Big brother Mattheus is already 3 years old and started his second ’semester’ of preschool this morning.
2. I proposed. An Association of Canadian Archivists 2008 conference session on ‘Open Source Software for Archives’. Hopefully the program committee will be interested. Even more exciting though, is a proposal that I submitted to organize an ‘ArchivesGeekFest’ immediately before the ACA 2008 conference. This will be an event in the tradition of the Barcamp unconferences and the Access Library Technology Conference Hackfest. The idea has received lots of good feedback so far, so hopefully this will fly. It should be lots of fun.
3. I expanded. Yes, my waistline grew but so did the ICA-AtoM project team. I’ve hired two additional staff to assist with documentation, testing, coding and upgrading our development infrastructure.
4. I collaborated. One of the more important developments for the ICA-AtoM project this summer is a collaboration with a related open-source project that has a similar vision and functional requirements. We began with some informal discussions and comparing notes. We are now moving to a stage where we are going to co-develop some of our underlying code in order to leverage our respective knowledge and skills. This will save time and money as well expand the implementation base and support community for each project when we are ready to put our applications into live production. This is all still in its early stages but I will be able to reveal more as this collaboration matures over the coming months.
5. I modeled. Not fashion but data, which is fashionable if you are a geek. I have upgraded the ICA-AtoM data model to take it one step closer to my ideal information model which I posted about last year. I used the ideas and principles from that investigation to arrive at the data object model that is now implemented at the core of the ICA-AtoM application. I will elaborate in detail on this model in future posts but here is a sneak peak at the data model diagram.
6. I coded. The data model is a significant refactor. This is like lifting up your house and pouring a new foundation. I’m making sure now that all the walls, pipes and vents line up properly before putting the house back down. By the end of this month I hope to have completed this intensive but rewarding exercise. Then its on to adding internationalization, XML import/export, spicing up the interface with AJAX controls and getting some test sites running so that others can finally kick the tires on the application.
7. I didn’t do any research. My PhD research topic is more relevant than ever and I know exactly what I need to do and write. If I could only get about six months free from all other commitments I could have 90% of it done but I know that is a fantasy. I am going to have to try to set aside a month in early 2008 to at least get the second chapter done (analyzing archival description or ‘representation’ and its role in archives access systems).
8. I didn’t blog. Didn’t have the time. I feel slightly guilty about this, especially when other bloggers out there like Jeanne at SpellboundBlog or Jill at Digitization101 are consistently posting thought-provoking, meaty articles. From what I’ve read, they’re busy people too but they still find the time to post great articles about digital trends and events in the information science world. I remember reading an article about ‘blog guilt’ which is anxiety about not posting regularly. I read about it in a traditional print newspaper so it must be a legitimate disorder. I think I have that.

I have been meaning to write a blog post and documentation wiki update to discuss ICA-AtoM’s core data model. However, this month turned out to be a good time to do one last major update to the model, so I’ve got to put that arcane write-up on hold until the update is complete.

In the meanwhile, I’ve been mulling over the potential of three new technologies that are being discussed out there in the InterWeb blogosphere. All three have the potential to dramatically change the way we access information. Now I know you hear that kind of hyperbole almost everyday in the Web 2.0, beta site, dog-and-pony show circuit but, trust me, each of these is different. [Read more →]

I recently added Place and Map objects to the ICA-AtoM core data model to allow users to dynamically create GoogleMap mash-ups. A simple demonstration of this new feature is available at SappertonHistory.ca.

One of the main objectives is to link archival materials related to specific buildings (e.g. deeds, property tax rolls, city directories) to markers on a dynamic map, such as GoogleMaps. This provides a whole new access method (i.e. map-based browsing) that is lots of fun and very direct. This feature will now be provided out-of-the-box with the first public release of the open-source ICA-AtoM code (scheduled for early 2008). [Read more →]

Since I first posted about my ideal information model several months ago, I’ve been wanting to add an update about the logical data model that I eventually implemented in the ICA-AtoM application but, before I can do that, I should briefly explain the physical architecture on which ICA-AtoM is built so it is easier to understand how the data object model fits into that. I’ll follow-up about the logical data object model in a later post.

First of all, for the uninitiated, ICA-AtoM is a open-source, archival description application that is currently in development. It is being built using the MySQL database engine, PHP5 object-oriented programming language and the Symfony web-application framework. Symfony incorporates a number of web development best practices and design patterns into a single framework making it easier to develop, maintain and contribute to applications that implement this common framework structure. [Read more →]

I finally had some time this week to pay a visit to the Second Life metaverse. I have been following Christian Van Der Ven’s blog posts with some interest so I already had some idea of what to expect and what to look for. Christian (who is Christi Janus in-world) has been exploring and musing what opportunities Second Life might have for archives and archivists. If you’ve never heard of Second Life, check out this introduction video on YouTube.

The first order of business was to get an account, choose an in-world name, download the client software and complete the mandatory (but brief) tutorials before being let loose into the Second Life world. Then I spent a good two hours altering my appearance (body, hair, clothes, etc.). So here then is Maximum Vollmar, my Second Life alter-ego.

Then I teleported over to InfoIsland and Cybrary City where a number of archives, libraries and their staff have begun to claim the information science professionals’ place in Second Life. They have a virtual reference desk staffed in shifts by real-world reference desk personnel from around the world. However, it appears their main role is to help newcomers to Second Life and not really to provide reference access to real-world collections. [Read more →]

I’ve just returned from an intensive but productive trip to Amsterdam and Paris where I had a number of meetings related to both my consulting and doctoral research. While in The Netherlands I had the opportunity to meet with representatives at the Nationaal Archief to discuss their work with EAD and, in particular, their virtual reference room project (which is managed by Yvette Hoitink who blogs over at Nederlands Erfgoed). I also dropped in at the City of Rotterdam Archives to check on the progress of their digital reference desk prototype and I met with my PhD supervisor, Dr. Eric Ketelaar to review the progress of my doctoral research (and got a great impromptu tour of the historical heart of the University of Amsterdam which dates back to 1632).

My primary liaison in the Netherlands is Peter Horsman, research coordinator at the Dutch Archiefschool, associate supervisor on my PhD research, and for all intents and purposes, the project director of the ICA-AtoM project. Peter and I reviewed the progress of the ICA-AtoM software development and I gave a demonstration of alpha version 0.2 of the ICA-AtoM application to his Archiefschool colleagues. Most significantly, Peter and I caught the train to Paris last Wednesday to meet the next morning with the ICA Secretrary-General and Program Managers to discuss the objectives and roadmap for the ICA-AtoM Project. [Read more →]

Well that was a waste of time. I tracked down and bought a song that I had heard several times recently (on my favourite Internet radio station SomaFM) only to have it locked up by draconian DRM technology. There is no way that I am introducing this digital mutation into my personal digital archive. I am totally convinced that, thanks to Digital ‘Restrictions’ Management encryption, this track will be useless five years down the road when I am using a whole new platform of PCs and MP3 players.

I am an avid music fan. My music collection is just as valuable to me as my family photograph collection. It has very much the same function. Music is a constant backdrop to my daily life. Certain songs or genres define whole periods of my personal history. They can evoke detailed memories of experiences, emotions, people and places from my past. They scroll by like a grainy home movie in my head as the song plays. I use the music in my collection to enhance or change my moods and to create soundtracks to brand new experiences that will form my future memories. Therefore, I am determined to preserve and protect my music collection like any other collection of archival materials. [Read more →]