My Return and THATCamp Prime Recap

So my ambitions to blog and be an intern and study for 10 weeks this quarter and be a librarian and manage a restaurant was just simply one-too-many "ands". So I have returned with gusto! That is until I start classes again in a couple of weeks. Instead of playing catch-up here's some links to the internship instead:

http://citizenarchivistproject.blogspot.com/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizen-Archivist-Project/

So last week I attended my first "unconference" and as a vet conference attendee, might I say that it was a blast. I enjoyed the last minute details being hammered out by a raise of hands. It gives the attendees more of a say rather than following the guidelines of a planning committee.

http://thatcamp.org/

One major disappointment for me...

I attended it with a messed-up laptop. For shame. Nothing more embarrassing than attending The Humanities and Technology Camp with screwed up technology. I blamed Hulu.

Here's the recap

We all met in rainy Fairfax, Virginia at George Mason University on Friday and Saturday June 7th and 8th.
Note to self: don't attend a conference, excuse me, unconference, in the rain, in sandals. Bad move.

As a distance learner and semi-historian I attended first

De-MOOCing the Past — Alternative Approaches to Online History Courses

It was interesting to chat with other educators about teaching, not just about history but teaching in general, when there's a resistance to learning technology, whether if it's the faculty or the student. There were other discussions too but this was my section- resistance to technology. We threw out some ideas about creating an incentive program for faculty to increase professional development to learn the technology needed. If a professor, teacher, etc. feels embarrased about the lack of knowledge- then maybe created a "technology center" where he or she can be paired with a coworker, student, etc. for some one-on-one instruction if there's a lack of interest or fear of group training. I refered the PHD student leading the discussion to my library system because we do the same for technology requests from patrons called "Your Personal Library" where a patron may essentually "check-out" a librarian to receive technology, or any other help. Check out the notes.

Papers of the War Department Transcribathon

 I attended this section simply because it relates to my internship. I'm working on creating box lists for Revolutionary War pension petitions. The Papers of the War Department is an gathering of papers from the War Department that was burned down in 1800. These papers were assumed destroyed forever, but as most information, there were copies found from various repositories all over the country. It's free to sign up for an account and you just work on transcribing the uploaded images. It's actually kind of fun, if you're used to 18th and early 19th century writing- I've had practice. Also, I'm a supporter of access to digital history so I say, go for it. 

Introduction to Omeka

Perhaps a bit too basic for me. I've toyed around with Omeka before although I didn't realize until the unconference that GMU was the creator. www.omeka.net or .org are open source platforms to portray digital collections using Dublin Core as the metadata. .net has a basic, free login with limited space. You could pay for larger accounts, but why do that when you can play around with .org and create a free account as long as you have server space. Mainly you become the content manager and the IT department and have more freedom to edit and design using .org, but requires a bit more technical knowledge...more on that later...

QGIS Introduction

Remember how I said my laptop was messed up? Yeah, this really hindered my learning for something that I was really interested in but have absolutely no experience. Here's the instructor's (Fred Gibbs) notes on the lecture which I have to try later since my laptop took an hour, that's right, AN HOUR to download and run the Quantum GIS software. This was also only an hour and a half course, needless to say, I was disappointed and very confused. BUT I have the software, on my shitty computer, locked and loaded and ready for me to give QGIS a shot again. 

Intermediate Omeka

Since I've already been accustomed to basic omeka.net, I wanted to hear how the .org operated and if I could run it. Oh, my, I'm so excited. I thought I had to run a home server, which is why I've been putting it off so long. I just have to have web hosting space. The help page even comes equipped with suggestions. Duh, now I feel dumb for not reading it and could have started my project already. This will take some playing around with. I bought space with Dreamhost with the domain name shadowbrok3r.com. I'm in transit of moving Clippers website to that new space and mentally planning my new Omeka project. My family has a restaurant in honor of my grandfather. I plan to use Omeka to host digital pictures, oral histories, newspapers, what have you online so that our customers may get a better background of our family history. PLUS I can use this a backing for my technical skills for my resume/CV (YAY!). I'm super excited for my new project, which will also involve moving this blog as well eventually. 

Wrapping up, I enjoyed the atmosphere. Humanists discussing theories and technology behind sharing information with each other and the public was just up my alley. We tweeted, we instagramed, we blogged, we did it all. I'm looking forward to being more involved in THATCamp Virginia in October!

 

 

 

 

Monday.Blogday

Went back up to DC last week. The major problem about going up and back in the middle of the week is that I'm drained and totally out of it. I'm trying to try new restaurants but I just gave up exploring and ate at the same restaurants I was some what familiar with.

I think I'm more excited about going to DC to escape that realizing that I'm back in school. I really need to bunker down and do homework so I don't fall behind. It's already the third week of school and I still feel like I'm on break. Don't tell my professor that I haven't ordered an assigned book either.

Archivist positions are looking a little bleak in Virginia right now. I haven't decided if I should just wait until school's over or just go application happy and apply to all over the country for archivist and librarian positions. I'm just antsy to find a full-time position and to really establish my career.

I will be heading up to DC on Thursday. Shadowbrok3r out.

Candy in the City: DC edition

So I just got back from a week, well, almost a week in D.C. It was a chance to have a mini vacation while expanding my archivist education. I had a pretty well-planned schedule before I got up there. 

Day One- Tuesday- Start my internship

Day Two- Wednesday- Day One of IS&T Archiving Conference

Day Three- Thursday- Day Two of IS&T Archiving Conference

Day Four- Friday- Day Three of IS&T Archiving Conference and Local Natives concert at the 9:30 Club- in reality it was Ditch Day spent sleeping in and wandering around DC and going to the concert alone with a free ticket that I won from WNRN.

Day Five- Saturday- Day Two of my internship.

Internship:

So I am an intern again! I was selected from a group of applicants to help research associates create indexes from records at the National Archives under the title of Citizen Archivist Project. We're mainly working on creating lists of those who have filed pension claims to the Committee of Revolutionary Claims. We're on the 20th Congress at this moment. For the social media aspect we have a Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizen-Archivist-Project/160910240738002

a Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/ArchivalCitizen

as well as a blog:

http://citizenarchivistproject.blogspot.com/

So I will be trekking up to DC once a week for two days, letting both of my jobs miss me during my absence, also whoring myself out for a bed at various friend's apartments.

Conference

I attended IS&T Archiving Conference at the National Archives. As someone interested in Digital Archiving I decided to give this conference a try. Turns out it was a little too soon in my career to attended this conference. I kind of wish I waited until this week to attend the Computers in Libraries Conference, which I am checking in on on Twitter. 

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.

2013

So it's 2013 now. I've completely forgotten about this blog. So I've decided to refresh, revive and reanimate it.

Update on my life thus far. I have a new amazing boyfriend- 9 months strong. I'm back in school- part-time to finish my MLS with Drexel University. I anticipate graduating in December. My family opened a restaurant so I pretty much have no time for a personal life when I work 90 hours/week plus school. You don't want to know when I find time to do homework. I picked up an internship in my favorite city to start working a step closet to my career. I'm working on a digital preservation project in Gloucester Co, VA and I will be making my first professional presentation next month in front of VA historians.

I keep adding things to my to-do list that I want to learn/do. I think I will either drive my boyfriend crazy or end up in a hospital. Welcome to my world. 

This is stuck in my head-- it's not even the good Brian McKnight version