December 11, 2008
Runaway time
It’s difficult to find time to blog. I really wanted to write about the decision of the Irish Government to merge their National Archives, Irish Manuscripts Commission and National Library. This seems a blatantly bad move, one that reveals a genuine lack of understanding of how these institutions work and the services they provide. I also wanted to write about the decision in Japan to demolish their Kabuki-za, a truly beautiful and historic building in Tokyo, a city that has almost run out of architectural evidence of it’s past. Unfortunately, it’s a busy time at home and work and blogging on these and other important issues hasn’t happened.
November 17, 2008
Bulgaria does the best bread
Recently I went to Sofia. While there I was shown the national archives and took these photos:
October 15, 2008
Blog Action Day
This post is participating in Blog Action Day. The idea is that bloggers all over the world use one day a year to discuss a common topic. This year that topic is Poverty. The idea is to raise awareness, generate discussion, raise money (through the donation of blog ad revenue), and instigate change. I’m in favour of all these things, although to be honest I’m sceptical of how much real change will ever be made in the area of poverty. There has always been an imbalance between the rich and poor. Why should this change? Why does it exist in the first place? It seems to me that people living in poverty are there through the greed and selfishness of others, namely those who make the rules, wield the power, have the wealth, own the land and property, dictate how the money flows, have access to education, and generally are in a position to choose their own life-styles and life-views and to not give a damn about their fellow human beings. Sometimes poverty leads to death. Sometimes it leads to revolution.
I’m supposed to post about poverty as it relates to the theme of my blog. So, poverty and archives….
There has been a dedicated movement during the last couple of years to get world governments to seriously tackle the problem of poverty, both in their own countries and on an international scale. This will be documented in newspapers, government policy papers, live aid videos, etc. But a lot of material will be lost because it originates from small, grass level movements that are run by volunteers, that exist for a couple of years (or less) and then disappear. Many of these groups operate in electronic environments, relying on the internet and email to get their messages across and to communicate with their membership and the wider public. As archivists, how can we identify, collect and preserve the records of these groups? Should we even try? Is this our role?
Well I could write a bit more about that, but there are other angles to poverty and archives. People living in poverty have to worry about food, shelter, fresh water, education, heating, access to medicine, and other basics of survival. How many of the truly impoverished visit our institutions? How do our outreach programmes tackle this? The Archives Awareness Campaign for 2008 is “Take your place in history”. How does the position of the poverty-stricken fit into this? (I don’t mean to critique the Awareness Campaign, which, by the way, I think is brilliant.) But, poor people exist in history and always have and many of them make it into archives only via government statistics, or studies on social and health conditions. I suspect not many institutions contain the personal collections of families or individuals living in poverty. What records are they creating anyway?
This last thought really is my way of getting to the point that poverty excludes people from a full engagement with archival collections, both as creators and as readers. This lack of engagement denies them a connection with their history, their culture, their identity, the memories of their communities and ancestors, and all the other wonderful ways that archives enrich our lives and our feelings of personal identity and belonging.
Poverty sucks. It should be done away with.
I’m supposed to post about poverty as it relates to the theme of my blog. So, poverty and archives….
There has been a dedicated movement during the last couple of years to get world governments to seriously tackle the problem of poverty, both in their own countries and on an international scale. This will be documented in newspapers, government policy papers, live aid videos, etc. But a lot of material will be lost because it originates from small, grass level movements that are run by volunteers, that exist for a couple of years (or less) and then disappear. Many of these groups operate in electronic environments, relying on the internet and email to get their messages across and to communicate with their membership and the wider public. As archivists, how can we identify, collect and preserve the records of these groups? Should we even try? Is this our role?
Well I could write a bit more about that, but there are other angles to poverty and archives. People living in poverty have to worry about food, shelter, fresh water, education, heating, access to medicine, and other basics of survival. How many of the truly impoverished visit our institutions? How do our outreach programmes tackle this? The Archives Awareness Campaign for 2008 is “Take your place in history”. How does the position of the poverty-stricken fit into this? (I don’t mean to critique the Awareness Campaign, which, by the way, I think is brilliant.) But, poor people exist in history and always have and many of them make it into archives only via government statistics, or studies on social and health conditions. I suspect not many institutions contain the personal collections of families or individuals living in poverty. What records are they creating anyway?
This last thought really is my way of getting to the point that poverty excludes people from a full engagement with archival collections, both as creators and as readers. This lack of engagement denies them a connection with their history, their culture, their identity, the memories of their communities and ancestors, and all the other wonderful ways that archives enrich our lives and our feelings of personal identity and belonging.
Poverty sucks. It should be done away with.
September 24, 2008
Librarians make it in the movies
Ann Seidl’s The Hollywood Librarian: A Look at Librarians through Film is a new documentary looking at librarians working in America today. The film takes the form of interviews with real librarians, interspersed with film clips from movies showing some of the more stereotyped and humorous views of librarians, libraries and library work. The clips comment on library settings, the public, books, the value of reading and younger patrons of libraries. The documentary part of the film portrays the wide variety of work done by librarians in their jobs, mainly through interviews with different types of librarians working in different kinds of libraries.
The second half of the film is taken over by the documentary side. The script focuses on aspects of the political milieu in which American librarians work. The Patriot Act, and its freedom-threatening laws, is criticised and put into perspective of history’s witch hunts of the past – the American government feared communists in the 1950’s, free radicals in the 1970’s and now terrorists in the 21st Century. Attention then turns to the plight of the libraries in Salinas, John Steinbeck’s home town, which were threatened with closure due to Council budget cuts.
We thought there were really two movies/documentaries here – one on portrayals of librarians in Hollywood versus the reality, and one on the real working conditions of librarians and libraries in the US. I went expecting to see some of the movie librarians I remembered from my own movie-watching experience, but only a handful of movies were clipped. The wealth of suitable material out there must be huge and it seems a lost opportunity not to have explored this idea in more depth. Also, the situation of American librarians working under the Patriot Act, as shown in the movie, yields a lot of interesting dilemmas that are linked to American society as a whole, and the nation’s view of itself as a land of freedom and opportunity. The inclusion of a San Quentin literacy group that campaigned on behalf of the Salinas libraries was interesting. The inmates recognised the value of a decent education and of having somewhere to go that encourages kids to learn. Their campaign pointed out that “if you take away the libraries and recreation centres, the only place kids have to end up is a place like this”. Coupled with the statistic that the yearly library budget for the US is about the same amount as is spent each day on the war in Iraq, clearly there’s a lot more to be explored re America’s view of libraries and their role in society.
I saw the movie last night thanks to Sue Hill. Most of the audience were librarians, or at least they appeared to be. I laughed in the same places they did. Librarians and archivists suffer from the same (sometimes true, sometimes laughable) stereotypes. I did however feel somewhat marginalised when Ann Seidl referred to the looting of the “Iraq National Library and Museum”, getting the name of the institution wrong and thereby cutting us out of the picture.
And now I have to go feed my cat.
The second half of the film is taken over by the documentary side. The script focuses on aspects of the political milieu in which American librarians work. The Patriot Act, and its freedom-threatening laws, is criticised and put into perspective of history’s witch hunts of the past – the American government feared communists in the 1950’s, free radicals in the 1970’s and now terrorists in the 21st Century. Attention then turns to the plight of the libraries in Salinas, John Steinbeck’s home town, which were threatened with closure due to Council budget cuts.
We thought there were really two movies/documentaries here – one on portrayals of librarians in Hollywood versus the reality, and one on the real working conditions of librarians and libraries in the US. I went expecting to see some of the movie librarians I remembered from my own movie-watching experience, but only a handful of movies were clipped. The wealth of suitable material out there must be huge and it seems a lost opportunity not to have explored this idea in more depth. Also, the situation of American librarians working under the Patriot Act, as shown in the movie, yields a lot of interesting dilemmas that are linked to American society as a whole, and the nation’s view of itself as a land of freedom and opportunity. The inclusion of a San Quentin literacy group that campaigned on behalf of the Salinas libraries was interesting. The inmates recognised the value of a decent education and of having somewhere to go that encourages kids to learn. Their campaign pointed out that “if you take away the libraries and recreation centres, the only place kids have to end up is a place like this”. Coupled with the statistic that the yearly library budget for the US is about the same amount as is spent each day on the war in Iraq, clearly there’s a lot more to be explored re America’s view of libraries and their role in society.
I saw the movie last night thanks to Sue Hill. Most of the audience were librarians, or at least they appeared to be. I laughed in the same places they did. Librarians and archivists suffer from the same (sometimes true, sometimes laughable) stereotypes. I did however feel somewhat marginalised when Ann Seidl referred to the looting of the “Iraq National Library and Museum”, getting the name of the institution wrong and thereby cutting us out of the picture.
And now I have to go feed my cat.
September 10, 2008
A strategy for national collections
TNA has launched The National Collections Strategy with a draft document for consultation, available from TNA website. The aim behind this initiative is to locate areas of weak representation in archival collections and collecting institutions in England and Wales, and make them stronger. Potentially, this is big news. But before offering too much praise, here are my negative points: I’m sceptical of these types of all-encompassing endeavours that aim to achieve broad overviews and wide reaching changes/improvements. My first questions would be: where is the money coming from? Who will pay the staff to carry out the research, and how much? How long will these posts be funded for? Once gaps are identified, who will pay for the community engagement, transfer, storage, processing, cataloguing, access-related-costs, etc of all the new material? My concerns are mostly economic, but human too. Will staff in local record offices, libraries and charities be given even greater backlogs plus added responsibility for public and internal outreach? Will support be given to libraries or record offices threatened with closure or funding cuts?
These concerns aside, I'm in favour of a national collections strategy. Active engagement with potential donors and sources of deposit-able material is important work. Likewise, cooperation and coordination of collecting activities is important. And I believe it’s crucial that gaps in collections and collecting missions are identified and addressed. This is particularly true, obviously, because a lot of material will be electronic. Fuller histories and better understanding come from fuller archives.
These concerns aside, I'm in favour of a national collections strategy. Active engagement with potential donors and sources of deposit-able material is important work. Likewise, cooperation and coordination of collecting activities is important. And I believe it’s crucial that gaps in collections and collecting missions are identified and addressed. This is particularly true, obviously, because a lot of material will be electronic. Fuller histories and better understanding come from fuller archives.
September 09, 2008
Archives the raw material of history
An article from the Daily Yomiuri Online reports on the need in Japan for greater control over National Government records.
The Japanese government has set up a panel to explore the situation. The panel's interim report recommends a more integrated and authoritative approach to the identification, appraisal and transfer or disposal of government records. It calls for better awareness of public (versus private) ownership of government records and better control over their fate to avoid deliberate, accidental or unintentional loss. The journalist, Yuko Mukai, notes that extra government funding directed towards understanding and improving the “administration of official documents and important records” will only be worthwhile if Japanese bureaucrats are educated about their importance and status as public records, and hence the property of the Japanese government and its people. Trust in the government is highlighted as a major issue. The article points to records on people who contracted HIV/AIDS as a result of state-sanctioned medical treatment, denied by the health ministry but located after an enquiry was ordered.
The article gives some alarming figures: the Japanese National Archives employs only 42 people, compared to the 300 employed at the South Korean National Archives. Can this be true? Such as small number. The article also notes the smallish size of the building of the Japanese National Archives (which I took a photo of and posted earlier this year). If this is their main storage building, then it is indeed small for a national repository.
I found this article interesting because of my recent visit to Japan and also because of the ongoing controversy re how, and what, history is taught in Japan. The keeping of government records is not only important for democracy, as the Japanese Prime Minister is quoted as saying, but also for education and those things that are supposed to flow from it such as understanding and tolerance. It is perhaps unfair to single out the Japanese for its censorship of educational textbooks. Other countries have been guilty of editing history to present a favoured view of the past. This is why it’s important that the archives, the raw material of future textbooks, be kept and made available so that histories can be written based on the original documentary evidence, and so that these histories can be questioned and re-written by future historians.
Apart from comparisons with South Korea, the article compares the size and staff of the Japanese National Archives with the United States’ NARA. I hope the panel also take note of the current lawsuit against Dick Cheney and his refusal to treat the records of his vice-presidency as part of the public record when trying to convince government officials that the records they create as part of their jobs are not their own private property.
The Japanese government has set up a panel to explore the situation. The panel's interim report recommends a more integrated and authoritative approach to the identification, appraisal and transfer or disposal of government records. It calls for better awareness of public (versus private) ownership of government records and better control over their fate to avoid deliberate, accidental or unintentional loss. The journalist, Yuko Mukai, notes that extra government funding directed towards understanding and improving the “administration of official documents and important records” will only be worthwhile if Japanese bureaucrats are educated about their importance and status as public records, and hence the property of the Japanese government and its people. Trust in the government is highlighted as a major issue. The article points to records on people who contracted HIV/AIDS as a result of state-sanctioned medical treatment, denied by the health ministry but located after an enquiry was ordered.
The article gives some alarming figures: the Japanese National Archives employs only 42 people, compared to the 300 employed at the South Korean National Archives. Can this be true? Such as small number. The article also notes the smallish size of the building of the Japanese National Archives (which I took a photo of and posted earlier this year). If this is their main storage building, then it is indeed small for a national repository.
I found this article interesting because of my recent visit to Japan and also because of the ongoing controversy re how, and what, history is taught in Japan. The keeping of government records is not only important for democracy, as the Japanese Prime Minister is quoted as saying, but also for education and those things that are supposed to flow from it such as understanding and tolerance. It is perhaps unfair to single out the Japanese for its censorship of educational textbooks. Other countries have been guilty of editing history to present a favoured view of the past. This is why it’s important that the archives, the raw material of future textbooks, be kept and made available so that histories can be written based on the original documentary evidence, and so that these histories can be questioned and re-written by future historians.
Apart from comparisons with South Korea, the article compares the size and staff of the Japanese National Archives with the United States’ NARA. I hope the panel also take note of the current lawsuit against Dick Cheney and his refusal to treat the records of his vice-presidency as part of the public record when trying to convince government officials that the records they create as part of their jobs are not their own private property.
September 05, 2008
Free text versus chance
Last night I attended the monthly Archives for London seminar. It was entitled “Serendipity in the Archives”. Advertised as an “indulgent evening”, it promised to amuse or even shock. I’m happy to say it was an evening of fun presentations and accomplished all it set out to do.
The idea for the seminar grew from the experience we’ve all had of finding weird or unexpected things in the archives. Usually this is a pleasant experience, made more so when the items found can be shared with others. The speakers gave a lot of thought to the meaning of the term “serendipity”. Several ideas emerged.
One speaker looked at what serendipity means to cataloguing practices and theory. Does free text searching remove the possibility of ‘chance finds’? Does free text searching render hierarchy and sequential referencing obsolete? I think the answer to both these questions is ‘no’.
Free text searches are usually carried out on the catalogues, not the records themselves, whereas items found by chance are usually found in the records, not the catalogue description. Words within an electronic or hard copy catalogue are findable, free text searching just makes this easier. If you’re able to do a free text search of the actual records (isn’t OCR great?), then you will only retrieve the words you look for. If this provides you with something unexpected, then isn’t that ‘chance’?
Perhaps the speaker didn’t take her argument far enough. From a cataloguer’s point of view, does free text searching negate the need for indexing? Does it limit the importance of the title / scope and content division? Indexing archival material is notoriously difficult. A good description will include terms likely to be used as search terms, which arguably makes (subject) indexing obsolete. Many archivists ascribe to this.
What about hierarchy and sequential referencing? Free text searching can liberate researchers from the need to navigate manual findings aids. But, the hierarchy will be more or less important depending on what type of research you’re doing. It’s also important from the perspective of our professional respect for original order. I don’t think we want to get away from hierarchies, although it’s interesting to re-evaluate multi-level descriptions in an electronic environment and to ask questions such as ‘how many levels are too many?’.
Sequential referencing may appear to be made obsolete by free text searching. But its value as a management tool can’t be overlooked. Electronic systems like unique identifiers, which are usually sequential. As human beings, we tend to also like codes that we can make sense of and sequential systems fit the bill.
The idea for the seminar grew from the experience we’ve all had of finding weird or unexpected things in the archives. Usually this is a pleasant experience, made more so when the items found can be shared with others. The speakers gave a lot of thought to the meaning of the term “serendipity”. Several ideas emerged.
One speaker looked at what serendipity means to cataloguing practices and theory. Does free text searching remove the possibility of ‘chance finds’? Does free text searching render hierarchy and sequential referencing obsolete? I think the answer to both these questions is ‘no’.
Free text searches are usually carried out on the catalogues, not the records themselves, whereas items found by chance are usually found in the records, not the catalogue description. Words within an electronic or hard copy catalogue are findable, free text searching just makes this easier. If you’re able to do a free text search of the actual records (isn’t OCR great?), then you will only retrieve the words you look for. If this provides you with something unexpected, then isn’t that ‘chance’?
Perhaps the speaker didn’t take her argument far enough. From a cataloguer’s point of view, does free text searching negate the need for indexing? Does it limit the importance of the title / scope and content division? Indexing archival material is notoriously difficult. A good description will include terms likely to be used as search terms, which arguably makes (subject) indexing obsolete. Many archivists ascribe to this.
What about hierarchy and sequential referencing? Free text searching can liberate researchers from the need to navigate manual findings aids. But, the hierarchy will be more or less important depending on what type of research you’re doing. It’s also important from the perspective of our professional respect for original order. I don’t think we want to get away from hierarchies, although it’s interesting to re-evaluate multi-level descriptions in an electronic environment and to ask questions such as ‘how many levels are too many?’.
Sequential referencing may appear to be made obsolete by free text searching. But its value as a management tool can’t be overlooked. Electronic systems like unique identifiers, which are usually sequential. As human beings, we tend to also like codes that we can make sense of and sequential systems fit the bill.
September 02, 2008
reCAPTCHA helps libraries and archives take over the world
The most exciting news I read all last week had to do with the use of reCAPTCHA internet security software in transcribing tricky, hard to read words in on-line copies of newspapers and old books. CAPTCHA is responsible for the squiggly security codes humans are asked to transcribe on websites, authenticating themselves as humans and not machines. Now this idea is being put to a new use, helping out where OCR fails. Those words OCR can’t read, because they’re smudged, weird, cramped, strangely-fonted, badly-spelled, whatever, can be forwarded to reCAPTCHA and it will be transcribed. Here’s their website: http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html
August 13, 2008
New ISDF
As I write, the printer next to me is printing out a copy of the new International Standard for Describing Functions (ISDF). This document has been eagerly awaited by me. I think descriptions incorporating this new standard will provide a powerful new access point, and maybe even cause researchers to ponder new ways of approaching and thinking about their research strategies, their use/interpretation of material and their interaction with life in general. Or maybe none of these things will happen.
August 07, 2008
TNA academic strategy
This is slightly old news, but the UK National Archives has announced a new Academic Strategy. According to the June edition of RecordKeeping, “academic users comprise some 12% to 15%” of their total user numbers. This strikes me as a very small percentage, even allowing for the expectation that most of their users will be Genies. Where are the well-researched history books of the future, which I plan to read, going to come from if new and existing academics aren’t visiting the archives?
July 31, 2008
Ian E. Wilson new ICA president
The ICA Flying Reporters did this interview: http://www.kualalumpur2008.ica.org/fr/node/39730
I would like to thank the ICA Flying Reporters for their excellent coverage of the 16th ICA Congress. Their interviews and reports have allowed me to experience the event in a way hitherto unimagined.
I would like to thank the ICA Flying Reporters for their excellent coverage of the 16th ICA Congress. Their interviews and reports have allowed me to experience the event in a way hitherto unimagined.
July 18, 2008
Training the Archivist
The American listserv at the moment is revisiting the question of qualifications versus experience. While this is rehashing all the old theories and opinions re accreditation of courses, apprenticeships, etcetera, this is always, to me, an extremely interesting question to ask. I think everyone would agree that the practical side of archive work makes way more sense once you’ve been introduced to the history and theory of archival science. And vice versa. You need the hands-on experience and the theoretical knowledge. But how to get it, and get it in the right combination that allows you to have enough of both to make you attractive to employers…this is the question. Or is it the rub?
My institution is currently reviewing its organisational structure, as institutions have a habit of occasionally doing. Interestingly, they seem to also be reviewing the similarities and differences between professional recordkeeping staff and academics. This hearkens back to the time when archivists were simultaneously historians and were expected to publish scholarly articles on what they were cataloguing. Personally, I think it’s sad we don’t do this so much any more. After all, once you’ve finished cataloguing those 40 odd boxes of papers (or other) you are, at that point, the world’s expert on that material. It’s a shame we’re not given time and encouragement to turn this expert and in-depth knowledge into a paper that helps generate interest in the material and publicity for our institutions. I envy those archivists who still get to do this.
But, maybe this sort of academic reporting can make a come back via institutional blogs.
My institution is currently reviewing its organisational structure, as institutions have a habit of occasionally doing. Interestingly, they seem to also be reviewing the similarities and differences between professional recordkeeping staff and academics. This hearkens back to the time when archivists were simultaneously historians and were expected to publish scholarly articles on what they were cataloguing. Personally, I think it’s sad we don’t do this so much any more. After all, once you’ve finished cataloguing those 40 odd boxes of papers (or other) you are, at that point, the world’s expert on that material. It’s a shame we’re not given time and encouragement to turn this expert and in-depth knowledge into a paper that helps generate interest in the material and publicity for our institutions. I envy those archivists who still get to do this.
But, maybe this sort of academic reporting can make a come back via institutional blogs.
July 02, 2008
Wave if you love metadata
Last month I had dinner with some friends. One of them, half way through the meal, declared his animosity for metadata. I was stunned. Who hates metadata? He’s a scientist. Does this explain it? I don’t know. His feeling was that, what with free text searching, metadata is no longer necessary. And besides, he can’t be bothered filling in the elements required by what I took to be his company’s records management attempt to manage the electronic records he creates. Clearly, he was thinking in a narrow arena. The whole conversation was more than mildly upsetting.
June 25, 2008
The life cycle versus the continuum
I feel that I could know more about digital preservation. To help erode my ignorance, I take every opportunity to trawl the web in search of what other, more talented and better funded, people are doing in this area. There are many projects out there. In fact, the number is almost overwhelming and certainly confusing.
I've been struck by the number of projects that engage the life-cycle as a model for looking at the challenges of long-term digital preservation. At least, this seems to be the case in Europe and America. I'm a continuum person myself and I'm surprised at the lack of take-up of this alternative approach to the RM/Archive function, particularly in an electronic context.
The life-cycle model is unhelpful. The continuum model provides a more useful way of looking at the problem of digital preservation. Reasons for this include:
I've been struck by the number of projects that engage the life-cycle as a model for looking at the challenges of long-term digital preservation. At least, this seems to be the case in Europe and America. I'm a continuum person myself and I'm surprised at the lack of take-up of this alternative approach to the RM/Archive function, particularly in an electronic context.
The life-cycle model is unhelpful. The continuum model provides a more useful way of looking at the problem of digital preservation. Reasons for this include:
- it's no longer feasible to divide records creation, use and eventual destruction/retention into time-based stages managed by either records managers or archivists;
- as archivists we can't afford to wait until the end of the cycle to become involved, especially when talking about digital records; and
- the record keeping systems used to manage digital records needs to be conceived of and designed as part of a continual process by all interested parties.
This isn't a question of semantics, as some people think. It's about recognising that electronic/digital records have changed the way we conceptualise and do archival and records management work.
June 13, 2008
June 09, 2008
International Archives Day
Some time ago the ICA and the archive world discussed having an International Archives Day. Well apparently today is it! Yes, 9 June 2008 is the first ever International Archives Day. The date was chosen to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the founding of the ICA. I had no idea a date had been decided upon until I serendipitously stumbled across the announcement on the ICA webpage. I feel caught unawares. While I’m pleased that there is now such a thing as International Archives Day, I’m disappointed it wasn’t better publicised.
May 14, 2008
National year of reading 2008
From April to December of this year it’s National Year of Reading here in England! According to their webpage, the Year “aims to help build a greater national passion for reading in England – for children, families and adult learners alike”. Each month has been given a theme, to help direct our reading activities and ensure we attain measurable benefits from them. The theme for May is “Mind and Body”. This month we’re directed to “celebrate the links between reading and health”. They suggest we do this through the medium of comedy, or more particularly, through the words of comedians. Or, if we’re lucky enough, our local library will have someone read to us while we relax with a massage or workout with a yoga, pilates or aerobics session.
I hope I have the chance to comment on the Year in later blogs.
I hope I have the chance to comment on the Year in later blogs.
May 12, 2008
On holiday
My recent holiday included a trip to Tokyo. I’d never been to Japan before. Tokyo is lovely to look at. It has very impressive, modern architecture. Everything looks new and the streets are clean. The state of their subway really brings home how inefficient, expensive and unpleasant the London Underground is. One thing Japan’s not so hot on though is vegetarian food. 3 days of eating pizza from Italian restaurants and I was ready to leave. While there though, we unwittingly stumbled on the Japanese National Archives. It was opposite the Imperial Palace compound. Being somewhat of an anorak, I took this photo and then popped inside to look at their exhibition.
April 21, 2008
The new photography
Over previous months I’ve attended two concerts. This is unusually social for me. I got a band-promoting t-shirt at one of them, and the opportunity of observing my fellow humans at both. I was struck by two things: 1) if bands are going to charge so much for their t-shirts they should make them out of decent quality material; 2) the number of photographs being taken during the performances.
Re #2, this seemed excessive. One person took >10 shots during one song (I stopped counting after that). Assuming that the photos were taken as an aid to future memory, I couldn’t help but wonder how having >10 almost identical photos is better than having 1 or 2. Now multiply that by the number of songs played….. Everyone seemed to be snapping continuously, even incessantly. It was relentless. Flashes exploded in every direction as people snapped images of the stage, their friends, themselves and themselves photographing the stage.
It struck me that my original assumption was wrong. People weren’t taking these photos as, or merely as, an aid to future memory. For a large part of the audience, taking photos was an essential part of the experience itself. Considering that an individual might have snapped close to, or more than, 100 shots, how many of these images would ever be looked at? How many will be discarded, deleted?
It’s difficult for me to interpret this. But it’s interesting to think how technology effects our social behaviour and our expectations of events.
This is one aspect of the new digital culture that I don’t get. For me, photographs capture moments of our lives and provide us with evidence of our past. At the same time I generally find it annoying to stop whatever it is I’m doing in order to create this evidence. It breaks the flow. So I don’t understand photography so intertwined with life that it becomes part of what you’re doing.
Re #2, this seemed excessive. One person took >10 shots during one song (I stopped counting after that). Assuming that the photos were taken as an aid to future memory, I couldn’t help but wonder how having >10 almost identical photos is better than having 1 or 2. Now multiply that by the number of songs played….. Everyone seemed to be snapping continuously, even incessantly. It was relentless. Flashes exploded in every direction as people snapped images of the stage, their friends, themselves and themselves photographing the stage.
It struck me that my original assumption was wrong. People weren’t taking these photos as, or merely as, an aid to future memory. For a large part of the audience, taking photos was an essential part of the experience itself. Considering that an individual might have snapped close to, or more than, 100 shots, how many of these images would ever be looked at? How many will be discarded, deleted?
It’s difficult for me to interpret this. But it’s interesting to think how technology effects our social behaviour and our expectations of events.
This is one aspect of the new digital culture that I don’t get. For me, photographs capture moments of our lives and provide us with evidence of our past. At the same time I generally find it annoying to stop whatever it is I’m doing in order to create this evidence. It breaks the flow. So I don’t understand photography so intertwined with life that it becomes part of what you’re doing.
February 01, 2008
The King's March witnessed
The weather's turned cold again here in London but on the weekend it was glorious sunshine. On Sunday I popped down to Whitehall to see the king’s army from the English Civil War Society perform their annual commemoration of the death of King Charles I in 1649. On the last Sunday in January the king’s army march from St James’ Palace to the Banqueting House where they place a wreath, say some speeches and give out medals. It’s all pretty cool.
January 10, 2008
Archivists with imagination
There is a piece in the London Metro today “Careers decided when you are six”. Here it is in full:
"A child’s career can be predicted at the age of six , based on their sex and personality. Primary school girls with less imagination tended toward record-keeping jobs while boys chose construction and agriculture said the Aston University study."
If you wanted to insult female record-keeping professionals, that’s not a bad way to do it. I don’t remember dreaming about files while my contemporaries played at being actresses or Prime Minister. In fact, as I recall, I spent many hours being wonder-woman; sometimes I was the greatest sports-woman that ever lived.
"A child’s career can be predicted at the age of six , based on their sex and personality. Primary school girls with less imagination tended toward record-keeping jobs while boys chose construction and agriculture said the Aston University study."
If you wanted to insult female record-keeping professionals, that’s not a bad way to do it. I don’t remember dreaming about files while my contemporaries played at being actresses or Prime Minister. In fact, as I recall, I spent many hours being wonder-woman; sometimes I was the greatest sports-woman that ever lived.
January 08, 2008
Wales
I had New Year in Wales with some friends. It was an interesting and relaxing holiday filled with walks, castles, rain and lovely scenery. Here’s a photo of a sheep.
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