Commenting on the Conference

Doh, the link provided in my last post to the Conference blog doesn't work. Thanks Carrie Schmidt for pointing this out. Here's another attempt: Conference blog.

Thanks also to John Chambers for noting that the conference pages on the SoA site are no longer restricted. They're here. It did seem un-like the Society/Association to shut off these pages.

Archives and Records Association Conference 2010

I am somewhat ambivalent in my response to the Conference this year. Some of the talks were worthy of note, namely Terry Cook’s Keynote Address and Sarah Wickham’s paper. Most of the other presentations I found, in general, to be interesting. It was good to hear the “this is what I do and how I do it” sort of paper. But I was not particularly challenged or inspired or encouraged, nor did I learn anything.

My notes are few. For what it’s worth, here are five thoughts:

• In his opening address “Missing Piece or First Responsibility: Archival Appraisal Past, Present and Future” Terry Cook noted that appraisal is the first and most important archival task from which all others flow. We can debate this, but in the end I think it’s a pretty valid truth.


• Chris Pickford, in his presentation on “Appraisal Issues: Local Authority deposited building plans” noted that appraisal is one area of our work where we truly are a profession because it involves a professional opinion.


• Karl Magee’s presentation on “Embracing the archival muse: finding art in the archives” was really great. Very interesting.


• Louise Ray tried to challenge us with finding a definition, or definitions, of a ‘Living Archive’. Her presentation “The ‘Living Archive’: myth, reality or aspiration?” was the only truly thought-provoking part of the conference and did gain some thoughtful points from the audience (although I suspect not as many as Ms Ray had hoped for).


• Martin Astell from the Essex Record Office played some audio material as part of his presentation “’Not Just Oral History, in Fact Not Just History’: The Acquisition of Sound Archives in Specialist and Non-Specialist Repositories”. It is always a pleasure to hear Mr Astell talk about his work and the sound collections in Essex.

On a final note, I was disheartened to see that the Conference Pages on the Society/ARA webpages are restricted to members only. I understand why presenter’s papers and PowerPoint slides may be restricted, for a short period, but surely some of this information can be opened to the public. The Programme? How do we encourage debate and inspire/attract others if we’re precious with our information?

The Conference blog is, as it was last year, a disappointment. Only four posts! And these didn’t make it past the Keynote Address. Sometimes it appears that, as a profession, we’re not engaging with this new social media technology at all.