First Conference Presentation

I feel all grown up this week. I made my first professional presentation about my research last Friday March 23, 2013 at the Virginia Forum in Ashland, Virginia http://virginiaforum.org/. This is a place where Virginia historians gather together to present and discuss research projects that focus on various aspects of Virginia history. This was not only my first presentation at this conference but also my first attendance. I will plan to go back next year when it's held at George Mason.

I wasn't as nervous presenting as I thought I would be. Our presentation was titled, “Preserving a Mercantile History : Digitizing document artifacts of  the Ware Neck general store”. Our session was about Digital collections so we focused on the technical aspect of our project, not necessarily any research, especially since we haven't gotten to that point yet. We presented with a husband and wife, she showed her organization's(AAS- American Antiquarian Society) digital collections, while he showed how his research benefited from digital collections. The session flew and I'm glad I didn't end up being as nervous. I stumbled over a couple of lines but didn't completely bomb it. We received two rounds of applause. During the Q&A part, we had one question about the steps of scanning and also praise for using our own equipment for the project. While we were leaving we were stopped by a woman who told us that she wanted to enlist us for some help, unfortunately, I was too frazzled to remember to give her my card.

I'm looking forward to the next phase of this project!

http://www.wareneck.omeka.net

Metadata

Yesterday I attended a webinar provided by the Society of American Archivists at the Virginia Historical Society. Although it's for credit for DAS certification, in which I am nowhere near but now want, I thought, "what the hell, it's free and local" and went. Soooo...yeah, I now want a DAS certification and I believe it would be attainable for me. This was the "Beginners to Metadata" and explained 1). what is metadata (data of data...blah, blah....technical definitions) and 2). a quick overview of the similaries and differences of the main standards: MARC for libraries, EAD for archives and VRA for art museums. I liked the analogy that you can think of these and the tons of others as forms of "speech". They all have semantics, structure and syntax. So it'll be comparing your own local vernacular- for me that would be- English with a Southern accent(not that big though- but compared to someone say from Massachusetts) and I say "soda" instead of "pop". The same is for metadata typology. There seems to be a base "English" and then "accents""Southern" and then local vernacular terms "soda".

In short, I approved of this webinar and highly recommended to any library/museum/archive person just generally confused about metadata standards.

So I'm determined to finish learning HTML, then I'll move onto XML and SQL, and hopefully learn EAD on the way. I'm also striking the idea of getting a PhD(come on, I don't like history that much) and focusing on getting certifications- SAA Archivist, GIS and SAA DAS(Digital Archives Specialist).

And yes, I totally spent down time at work practicing HTML instead of commenting on blackboard. HTML was way more entertaining, believe me. My mom and my boyfriend both agree that I'll be a good programmer, I just think I found my ambition. Gotta make it happen.

Technology Craze

With light of my boyfriend going back to school to finish his IT degree, I'm really starting to get into more technological endeavors. My library system offers a "university" for county employees. So once I'm finished with the current acting program, I'm going to start taking classes to be a certified "Information Generalist". Which just means I know how to safely surf the internet and can help people with Microsoft Office 2010. Wohoo- resume builder.

On off-desk time, I'm taking HTML classes through codecademy.com. Although more information fields rely on XML, SQL, or RUBY- I thought I would give HTML a try. I know I need to learn EAD for archives, but I'll get there. So far:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title style="color:purple">Reasons I'm Doing This</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>
These are my reasons for choosing HTML
</p>
<ol>
<li>It's free</li>
<li> It's a resume booster</li>
<li> I'm crazy</li>
</ol>
</body>
<html>

Future plans: Fix my laptop Bojangles- he needs a new fan. Play around with Linux some more. Make Bojangles a server. Move the Ware Neck collection from Omeka.net to Omeka.org with Bojangles as the mainframe. I wonder if I can do all this.