Entries Tagged 'Personal' ↓

It's fitting that this the hundredth (gosh, only the hundredth?) post on thesecretmirror.com, because I have rather important news. First, my fellow developers/producers/UX designers at The New York Public Library and I have been dealing with every minute detail on the upcoming, Drupal-based replacement to the NYPL website. You can see a live preview at http://new.nypl.org/. I can proudly say that this project has helped both me personally and NYPL overall play nice in the open source world - we've been actively contributing code, reporting bugs, and sending patches to the Drupal project. Also, our site search is based on Solr, which always bears mention.

In addition, after a working tirelessly as a developer at NYPL for the last year and a half, I have decided to move onward and upward. I am leaving the cozy environs of the still-recently renovated office space I share with my spectacular coworkers. It was not an easy decision by far, but it feels like the best one overall. I am leaving NYPL for the Ivy League; at the end of January, I will be starting as a Digital Archivist with Manuscripts and Archives at the Yale University Library. It's a fantastic opportunity, and I'm looking forward to being part of an incredibly strong archival community. I will be working with fantastic people on interesting projects in the field in which I was educated in and to which I feel the strongest bond. It's the perfect blend of traditional archives work, code and metadata geekery, and digital preservation!

Wish me luck, and if you're ever in New Haven, I'll split a white clam pie and a pitcher of birch beer with you at Modern.

The moderated discussion hosted and sponsored by Nylink went pretty well. Also, I don't need the records to have fun with the data — I just need robust APIs. (In fact, as I said today, I'd prefer not to have to deal with the MARC records directly.) Robust APIs would help making prototypes like this one I hacked together in a few hours into a real, usable service.

Mashing Up WorldCat Holdings Data With Google Maps Using Python and Exhibit

Goodbye, WordPress - I've been drinking more of the KoolAid. I rebuilt my personal/professional site (not this blog) in Drupal. Migrating the content was pretty easy (about 15 static pages, no posts). The functionality is astounding - I only started working on redoing it yesterday and I've already got a great infrastructure. Expect a detailed post before too long, or at least a link to a colophon on said site.

After a little over two years processing, referencing, and cataloging, and hacking at AIP, I'm skipping up to the City That Never Sleeps to join Jay Datema, Josh Greenberg, and company in the NYPL Labs. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't thrilled about this opportunity, and I'm ready to see where my new job will take me. The next major hurdle will be finding a place to live, so if you're privy to anything in Brooklyn, please let me know.

It's been some time since I've had a substantive post, and I don't really intend to write one now. I figured I should mention, however, that I've been featured lately in print and in the blogosphere. Jessamyn West of librarian.net interviewed me for an article ("Saving Digital History") in Library Journal netConnect. In addition, I was tapped by the wonderful folks at Booktruck for the latest installment in their "Ask a Male Librarian" series. I swear someday soon I'll write something much more interesting and less self-promotional.

I won't bother waiting to be tagged to do this, because all the cool kids already are. I read too many blogs already, so here we go.

• Mary Eats is, as one would easily assume, a blog about food. Mary started the blog while she and her husband were living in Korea, and thus there's an overwhelming emphasis on Korean food and restaurants. She moved to Seattle relatively recently and began culinary school, too. My two favorite parts of this blog are when she makes videos and when she makes comics, like this one about konbu.
• Language Log is a blog written by linguistics faculty from around the world, wherein they tackle important and not-so-important issues like linguistic prescriptivism, 419 scammers, the Pirahã language, and cheese steak rolls served at Chinese restaurants in Philadelphia, all with a good sense of humor.
• Information Aesthetics covers all sorts of stuff related to information visualization. Essentially, it's just one massive blog full of data porn, from treemaps to Youtube videos using Isotype symbols. I'd almost suggest that this might be considered a library blog on account of the fact that some of this stuff was my favorite stuff to learn about but not pursue in detail during library school.
• AfriGadget updates infrequently, but when it does, it covers the ingenuity of African bricolage to solve everyday problems. It's a good counterpoint to Make, because many of the things these guys create address important life necessities rather than simple curiosity.
• Finally, Hel-Looks covers on-the-street fashion in Helsinki, which is often infinitely more interesting than what most Americans (even hipsters) try to pull off.

I'm really behind on posting, and I apologize. There are a few action items that I should mention before I clear my brain to allow me to start posting things with actual content.

• ArchivesBlogs moved, but mail to archivesblogs.com was not working for a while. A few people mentioned this to me, but I didn't get this resolved until just last week.
• After who knows how many attempts trying to get something posted on Boing Boing, I finally made it when I had more information about the hottest chili peppers in the world.
• I now have a food blog, so if you're interested, check it out. It's called Feeding the Hungry Ghost.

I've upgraded Plagger (the software behind ArchivesBlogs) to the latest version and it's allowed me to add service links to del.icio.us, unalog, digg, Reddit, and Technorati. I suppose I could add more (ma.gnolia, Furl, etc.), but I'll hold off doing that for the sake of cluttering the interface for the time being. If you have any service links you'd like to see, let me know and I might be able to hack something together.

This report is coming to you from the cool, air-conditioned comfort of the Nevin Kelly Gallery, where Julia works. I met up with her for lunch and now I'm taking advantage of the connectivity here to catch up on e-mail, my RSS subscriptions, and other stuff.

The Archival Solidarity Session was really great and generated a lot of dialog. It was originally organized by Nancy Marrelli of Concordia University (Montréal), but she couldn't make it on account of a family emergency. Trudy Huskamp Peterson led the discussion in her place and did a wonderful job. Essentially, Archival Solidarity is a project involving the ICA's Section of Professional Associations that concerns "international archival development" through bilateral projects. There are several major issues at play. First, existing methods of international development are not working for archival projects, either because of bureaucracy in general or archives being of lower priority in comparison to needs such as sanitation, adequate health care, and the like. We identified that one of the most critical aspects is the lack of communication or methods to share information. There is no central "hub," formal or informal, that allows archivists to share information about assistance needed or offered. The International Fund for Archival Development (FIDA), coordinated by the ICA, was supposed to serve as such, but apparently operational issues prevent it from working effectively. A further concern is that even when other active development projects are underway, organizations such as the IMF ignore the effect of privatization on archives. Furthermore, all of us were concerned cultural imperialism and depatriation of archival materials (by digitization, etc.). Of course, the biggest concern of all was the acquisition of funds.

We discussed a few areas that we could work to start putting things in motion. Most notably, we should create a listserve, or possibly a website, that would serve as a central point for these discussions. There is the possibility of working with Arxivers sense Fronteres, an archival NGO similar to Doctors Without Borders organized by l'Arxiu Nacional de Catalunya (National Archives of Catalonia). We also discussed how the International Committee of the Blue Shield (ICBS) fits in. It seems not to (yet) since it exists primarily as a pressure group and that the United States group is not active. It's also worth noting that the United States has not signed the Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, invoked by the ICBS statement concerning threatened cultural property in the Lebanon-Israel conflict.

So, the questions stand: how do we can we coordinate our strategies to assist archives and archivists in need? I paraphrase Dr. Peterson: Showing a 2,000-year old monument reduced to rubble elicits an emotional response, but to most people, destroyed records would not generate the same extent of a response. How do we prove the value, evidential or otherwise, of records to large NGOs and philanthropists? How do we prevent ourselves from introducing cultural imperialism, and how do we ensure that we will get an effective result?

I’ve finally gotten around to doing some serious work on the site. I’ve completed the first post for Dalliance, my MP3 blog, and it’s about one of my favorite songwriters ever, Dr. Franklin Bruno. I’ve also figured out some of the odd intricacies of Drupal and am finally getting this site to have a look and feel of which I can be proud.

I’ve settled in nicely to Washington, DC, and I’m living in a decent area of town within a reasonable interest of a decent watering hole, groceries, and the Metro. Halloween has come and gone; I dressed up as everyone’s favorite St. Vitus dancer, Ian Curtis, complete with requisite noose. My friend Corey took similar cues as far as the era and scope of his costume, and chose to dress up as Henry Rollins.

The weather has stayed mostly warm, so I’ve been spoiled on that front too. More changes are coming soon, so stay alert.