Getting back into the swing of things...

Greetings from the Archives of Michigan. Yes, I am still here plugging away. We finished an extremely busy fall which included over 20 Family History Month programs in October and a flurry of grant writing. We capped the Fall season with a music concert titled "Shout Sister Shout" a tribute to 30's and 40's Jazz standards. The highly acclaimed band Steppin' In It performed the show with singer-songwriter Rachael Davis; local artist Jen Sygit opened the show. Thank you to the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs for sponsoring the show with a generous grant.

Why music? A colleague once chided me for trying to mix the terms "archives" and "fun." Music ties in so perfectly with the burgeoning concept of cultural heritage or cultural tourism--which like it or not--is our new mantra. Music has the potential to stir emotions about people, places, and days past. These are the same terms we use when describing history.

And it is fun.

The concert brought about 85 people to the Michigan Historical Center, about 50 had never been to the Center before. We ran a power point of historic images above the stage that garnered many questions and comments. Not huge numbers but mission accomplished nonetheless.

For the past year I have been working on the finer points of a "Michigan Heritage Collection." The focus is Michigan Artists from original manuscripts to music scores to comic art. While some may argue that these types of materials have little research value, I would counter that it is an issue of relevance. The more we can show the importance of documentation in various parts of our life the more relevance our institutions and collections will have.

Let's face it, many people see historic documents as nothing more than an aesthetic novelty or money making venture on Antiques Roadshow or Ebay (ever been to Bennigan's?). Or historians see the arts (music and movies!) as inaccurate or too sentimental.

I am not suggesting we substitute academic rigors for movie night or a sing along. But, if I host a concert or film that has 50 new visitors and can talk to them about our facilities and expose them to our collections, I would want to do a concert every week (ok, maybe every month--lots of work).

If Woody Guthrie's song about the 1913 Italian Hall disaster in Calumet, MI makes someone curious about the details of that fateful Christmas Eve or John Sayles' "Matewan" makes someone curious about labor history, I say "great!" and don't worry about what others might think. The arts spark our imagination. The materials in our collections fuel our curiosity. So give yourself a break, sometimes it is ok to watch the movie before you read the book.

Check out the band Steppin' In It's website at: www.steppininit.com or www.jensygit.com They have free audio streams. Another great Michigan artist is Sufjan Stevens.

Jen warms up the crowd













Steppin' In It knocks out the standards.











One last request. If you read this, post a comment. Writing a blog is a two way street. It helps build community when we talk about issues whether we agree or not.

If you ever look at RefDesk.com you might be interested in today's "Site of the Day" it is none other than the Internet Public Library. Of particular interest is the Archives section under the Arts and Humanities. There is a listing for all of the state's official archives: http://www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/hum03.00.00/ and more.

It began out of the University of Michigan School of Information and is gathering new partners. Check it out, spread the word!

Good morning. Just a quick post to talk about a few websites I was told about recently. The first is really a software program called "Memory Miner"(www.memoryminer.com) This is currently a Mac-only beta program. But watch the Quicktime demo, it does some very interesting things with photos and timelines.

Second, is the search engine "retrievr" (http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/). This allows users to sketch the shape of what you want to search--you draw it--no text. The idea is very exciting, however, the execution is somewhat lacking. Try it out, see what you think. At this time, it only searches images on Flickr.com, a free photo sharing website.

Finally, the beta e-commerce site www.Etsy.com uses some unusual search methods for products. Sometimes the small shops are the only ones to be bold enough to share new ideas. What's this to do with archives? It is exciting to see how technology interfaces (or how it does not) with historic records. It also is interesting as we think about new and improved avenues of access to our collections. (thanks to U of M SI student Cathie Tosach for the heads-up on these sites).

I finally figured out how to get an RSS ("Really Simple Syndication") feed for the blog (if you are interested in background on RSS start here) . For those of you who haven't used this, it is a way to get automatic updates when I post new content to the site. If you need help getting started, let me know. You can use these feeds:


http://feeds.feedburner.com/ TheAnecdotalArchivist

http://anecdotalarchivist.blogspot.com/rss.xml

http://anecdotalarchivist.blogspot.com/atom.xml

You can use a number of readers including Google, GatorNews, FreeReader http://www.feedreader.com, or Pluck http://www.pluck.com/index.html among others. I have also changed the settings to allow non-members leave comments. So please, comment away!.

We hear so much about electronic records these days. The speed at which they are created, the variety of formats, and the complications in long-term preservation. These 1's and 0's are the subject of an increasing number of conference sessions, listserv postings and blogs. The recent issue of the American Archivist includes an interesting article by Reagan Moore explaining building preservation environments with data grid technology. The Archives partnered with the San Diego Super Computer Institute along with other states to pilot a preservation environment for Michigan election records. As I prepare to leave tomorrow for the joint SAA/NAGARA/COSA the problems of electronic records hit home.

To the left is a work titled "Singlebing" by Ava Harvey, my 2 1/2 year old daughter. She, with the assistance of my wife (typing e-mail address and saving file), created this on an iMac using the paint program. They converted it to a .pdf and e-mailed it to me. Being an archivist I have a large folder of her artwork. Being largely sentimental, I realized this was now the very first e-mail from my daughter. I flashed forward 50 years imagining a discussion about that very first e-mail--which probably will be obsolete by then.

So what do I do with it? Print it out? Save it as a .tif? The electronic record issue found its way into my own home at last (okay, it was already there with 1,800 plus digital images sitting on my Mac). To me, paper is a comfort. It is a history unto itself. Technology is exciting, especially when we apply it to historic records to create new avenues of access and retrieval. I suppose paper and electronic data will coexist for hundreds of years to come as it is hubris to think one generation will make a medium of the millenniums obsolete. So, what did I do with Singlebing? Kept a copy in my Gmail account, backed a copy up on my external hard drive, copy on my Mac hardrive, and a copy to my Treo phone. Ok, that's overkill, but you cannot overestimate the value of Singlebing!

July 19th: Welcome to Owosso, Michigan! If you have not spent a day here. Plan to do so in the future. Owosso, MI is just north of I-69 via M-52. It is located in Shiawassee County, near the county seat of Corunna. The purpose of my visit was to meet and advise the County Historical Museum and Archives on their collections. We had a good visit. I was duly impressed with the board's attention to detail. Their organization and storage is better than some larger institutions. The board's questions centered around appraisal decisions, storage medium and other administrative problems. Hopefully they will benefit from my suggestions.

One item that arose that is an ongoing problem is the locating of public documents in private organization's holdings. State or local government records' ownership cannot be transferred to private hands; they can be placed on permanent loan however. If you or your organization has public documents, or think you might, E-mail me at harveym@mi.gov or call me at (517) 373-1415 to discuss the options.

Owosso is filled with wonderful historic homes and factories. It is home to author James Oliver Curwood's Castle. For you Canadians, Owosso has a 24 hours Tim Horton's! Per the usual, I cruised the town on my way home to see the sites and share some interesting photos. Enjoy.

The Tuscola and Saginaw Bay rolling stock













Steam Railroad Institute

July 14, 2006: Friday picked up where Thursday left off. We have had a great influx of student help from Wayne State, U of M and Michigan State. Doug Elbinger of Elbinger Studios is working with the Archives to digitize his collection that he will donate. Our most recent student, Cathie Toshach, myself and Doug met to talk about doing digital contact sheets for Doug to review and approve for future use. Cathie has a great photographic background which will be a great asset in the project. Doug is a protégé of Tony Spina. Tony credentialed Doug as a teenager and sent him on assignments he couldn’t make. One of these was the Beatles first trip to Detroit. We are beginning to digitize his political material including governor’s photos, presidential trips to Michigan and other notables such as Jimmy Hoffa and Henry Kissinger. We are extremely excited about this partnership.

After Doug left I pulled my stuff together to head out to Ann Arbor. My first item of business at the Bentley Historical Library was to drop off the blueprints of the Ransom Olds Residence. These are the only known paper copies of drawings by the architect Darius B. Moon. I think this is the first house to have an attached garage. Ransom could drive his car into the “autoroom” on to a turntable and then spin it so he could drive straight out again. A local paper, the City Pulse wrote an article on the drawings.

Jim Craven and Ann Flowers (pictured) will be doing the restoration which will include paper repairs, mulberry paper backing, and encapsulation. Hopefully we will have these back in several months so we can begin using it for educational programs.

Before I left the Bentley, Karen Jania and I spent some time discussing the recent MAA meeting in Frankenmuth. I delivered the keynote address that challenged the group to think creatively about its future. As I told Karen, this sort of “encouragement” can only work with an enthusiastic president. Karen has taken the challenge and already expanded on some of the ideas outlined in the address. As a reminder, the MAA listserv is heating up with good discussions. Check it out whether you are a MAA member or not. Only a year into this job, I am excited about the growing relationship with places like the Bentley. I currently am a mentor in the School of Information Archives practicum, the Bentley’s delegation of Chinese archivists visit the Archives of Michigan annually (well almost annually), and now Karen’s presidency is one more link between the two institutions. Time to sign off and head to South Boardman, MI for the annual Uitvlugt Family Reunion—if I am lucky I’ll sneak away and do some flyfishing on the Boardman River.

July 13, 2006: Today proved to be very busy. In the morning I spoke to the Michigan Genealogical Council at there quarterly delgates meeting. MGC gets updates on current and future Archives projects plus they wanted a demonstration of the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC). I hadn’t used NUCMC since my graduate research years. At that time I still used the published version (oh, I have dated myself now!). Now the web based solution is much easier to search. NUCMC is a searchable database comprised of three sources: catalog entries from the Research Library Group (RLG), the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), and those that have submitted forms for free cataloging by NUCMC catalogers. Unfortunately, to conduct a search you have to search RLG’s union catalog and then OCLC’s—they are not combined. Also, you have to look at the tagged display usually to figure out who holds the records. This means taking the institution code and figuring out who is who.

In my research for the talk I learned more about the NUCMC catalog and more importantly about the process for cataloging manuscripts for free. I called the director of the program Tony Gonzales to get more information. Tony said that any qualifying institutions (see http://www.loc.gov/coll/nucmc/ for details) can submit collection information for free cataloging. The backlog is about a year, which considering the enormity of their project and the fact they only have 4 catalogers is quite amazing. This is interesting as we have been talking about how we might assist small libraries and historical societies to get their uncataloged local history collections cataloged.

I also learned that as of July 1, 2006, RLG and OCLC merged. RLG is planning to add its Union catalog to WorldCat. Now if they could only partner better with NUCMC it would be the definitive archival database in the world. Not sure how Archives Grid fits into this. WorldCat is also poised to be offered for free in the future. Tony at NUCMC was uncertain about future partnerships with OCLC. Stay tuned.

After meeting with a prospective donor, I headed out for Kalamazoo to visit Sharon Carlson at the Western Michigan University Archives and Regional Historical Collection. The Archives is part of the Archives of Michigan Regional Depository System. This sounds like a very formal arrangement but the reality is that the regional’s store local government records for the state with little support. This is one of the issues that I am trying to address so that we can better support the regional programs.

WMU’s archives is located in the historic East Hall. Built in 1904, this structure was one of the first on campus. It is perched on a bluff overlooking downtown Kalamazoo. This has been the temporary location for the Archives since 1999. Sharon said they get close to 3,000 onsite researchers per year (impressive!). They are collaborating with other university departments including one with the College of Education for an oral history project. Sharon recently received a grant to digitize some of their Civil War diaries which is always a popular research topic.

I came away from the meeting with a better understanding of how valuable this collection is and that we need to support Sharon in any way we can to advocate for a facility worthy of such a collection. Sharon also took me on a tour of the campus and we discovered we have a mutual love of historic homes/buildings.

On my way out of town I took the opportunity to snap some photos of East Hall…what a gem.WMU needs to save this—or at least acknowledge it’s importance. I tried to talk to the folks at Heritage Guitar to encourage them to save some of their Gibson Company literature (alas they were gone). Heritage is located in the historic Gibson factory, with some holdover employees from Gibson before they left town for Nashville, TN (Note the smokestack).

I also have an odd fascination with industrial sites. Must of have been nurtured by Dr. Hyde at Wayne State. He once gave a presentation at MAA on employee graffiti at the Dodge Main plant. Here are some pictures of the Checker Motors Plant. One of the original showrooms still has some tarped Checker models inside. You will not find this on the National Automotive Heritage Tour but it should be. Think of the anomaly of a midsize independent automaker 175 miles from Detroit!

Well, this is the end of a busy day. I pulled back into Lansing around 7pm.

More news tomorrow after my trip to Ann Arbor.

Welcome! Well, I always doubted the usefulness of blogs but if for nothing else, this will be a good method for me to document what we are doing, what we want to do and what we have accomplished. I am going to start carrying a camera with me on my trips, so don't be shy, if I visit I will probably try to take your photo!

This month's calendar is starting to fill in nicely. I will visit the Bentley Historical Library conservation lab this week; also this week Sharon Carlson of WMU and I will visit in Kalamazoo. While in Kalamazoo, I hope to continue a conversation with the folks at Heritage Guitar Company (In the historic Gibson Guitar factory) about preserving their records. The Archives is holding a long overdue appreciation day for our volunteers and students on July 27th with goodies from the local Roma Bakery (great Petit Fors!)

I was saddened to hear of the passing of Justice John W. Fitzgerald last week. His accomplishments will not be forgotten both locally and statewide.

We have been fortunate to have serveral excellent student workers here this summer (all good employment candidates I might add). And, we look forward to working with WSU and U of M with practicum students this Fall and Winter. So, stay tuned. I will be updating at least once per week and will be filling in my erratic ramblings with photographs.