So the first week of school in upon me and I find myself the victim of excessive grad-school meet-and-greet; I am wildly hungover after hosting the welcome/welcome back history graduate student BBQ at my place. So, rather than pedal over to the archives, I decided I'd share with my readers (all three of you) my excitement over my new purchase: a HP printer.
And staying close to my bed and toilet is pretty appealing today, I must admit.
My old printer died after a surprisingly long life, considering how many times I swore at it, bashed it, and threw things at it when it would take up four pages printing all the web page backgrounds I told it NOT to do. Have a happy afterlife my friend, and frolic with plump toner cartridges , you deserved it.
The new printer I got at best buy, and am floored at what it can do: Color, 2-sided printing, fax photocopy and scanning. Did I mention wireless connection? Hell yeah! What really got me excited, in relation to my thesis and my extended goal is the scanner. It can do letter-sized high-resolution flatbed scans. Good enough for photos and documents. In fact, the posters in my new gallery to the left of this post is mostly the result of me figuring out how to use the scanner properly over an afternoon (2 sided printing is another matter; cue the baptism of the printer in profanities).
In terms of my work, it means I can easily put photos and paper ephemera into my database and hopefully into my thesis. In relation to my mandate to collect and preserve whatever materials I encounter and am asked to find a safe, secure home for, this is awesome. I can scan them, ensuring a long-term record of any fragile materials, and reproduce them for any number of archives, regardless of where they materials are physically kept.
This purchase is timely too: Last week, I was contacted by a person who said that they had 3 boxes of old newspapers, organization documents and photos that are their basement and are beginning to get moldy. The person wants the documents to be preserved and kept in Ottawa, and not sent to the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives. My initial response was, "cool, I can scan all the materials I think are really important and give a disk of them to the archives!"
However, with deeper reflection problems present themselves:
- I can scan all this stuff now, but what if I get deluged with material(oh please oh please oh please deluge me)? How much scanning can a 130 dollar scanner do before it's fried?
-do any archives have the technology to use an external hard drive and make the material available for researchers?
-how much time could scanning and sorting add to my thesis time? Ideally I'd like to be done by next August, maybe December. Yet, if I am preserving materials as well as interpreting them for my thesis, can I make the time? Will I have a mountain of work to do after I publish, to keep my promise to myself and to the people whose memories I've been entrusted with? Don't get me wrong, I don't mind doing it, but I am wondering how much I've decided to take on, and if it's manageable in a year.
- Where can I send it, if not to the CLGA? To me, Toronto makes sense for several reasons: it's one of the first places people doing queer history go to when they start research; it has a permanent, funded home with staff and a stable core of volunteers to look after the collections. In Ottawa, I am not sure there is a place that would be both prominent enough for researchers to find materials, and funded and stable enough to preserve materials. Perhaps the Woman's Archive at U of O, or the city archives. Any suggestions?
Finally, I am left pondering how all this commitment will be reflected in my thesis review. Now don't get me wrong, I am not doing this blog/gallery/forum just for marks, but it would be nice if it was considered by my committee. Especially if it's a senario where they go "well, his theory is weak, --he doesn't even mention Foucault-- but look at all the work he's done for the community; let's pass him."
Hell, I'm not fussy: a pass is a pass. So long as you call me Master.
I am excited for you and your printer!
ReplyDeleteListen Master , before you go ruining all these newspapers with your sweaty little palms and George deletes everything on the scan memory, talk to a professional archivist about even temporary storage. Otherwise the final grade will be: great writing, great analysis, excellent research, well referenced but he obliterated the records - el flunko
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments, Mada. Let me assure that I am not going to let my handsweat ruin anything; did I mention that I have six months training as an archvist, and that I used to volunteer at the Smithsonian Archives in Washington DC?
ReplyDeleteAside from my personal credentials, every historian is trained to respect documents and treat them with kid gloves partly out of respect for the document and its value to your research, partly out of respect to the researchers that will follow you. Proper treatment of archival documents is a cardinal rule, otherwise, what self-respecting archivist would let us into their archives?
Nor will George (my Maine coon) delete anything...he's a bit of a Luddite.
As for temporary storage, it's and interesting idea, but frankly I think it's problematic to ask a archivist to take something in and then let it go later on; I think it is against their DNA to do that! I suspect that even if an archivist did allow for temporary storage at their facility, it would not amount to much more than a dry space to pile up boxes, I can do that in my guest room.
Six months training as an archivist? Who knew? Not me. I may need some help from you then on a project that I may be doing. I will even call you Master with a straight (maybe poor choice of word) face
ReplyDeleteDon't send them to Toronto.
ReplyDeleteWhat's the point of doing a local history, after all?
Ottawa has nothing to draw on for itself. Just because you don't know what to do now doesn't mean you won't figure it out later.
Just a thought but as the donor has stipulated s/he doesn't want the material to go to the Toronto Archives, perhaps another Archive could be the beneficiary. University of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon) has a large glbt archive based on a massive donation from Neil Richards, a librarian and thorough collector of glbt materials. This may or may not be a welcome addition to those archives. Just a thought, the plus side is of course western researchers wouldn't have to plague themselves with a journey east to avail themselves of source material.
ReplyDelete