Catching Up

I have truly fallen behind on my 23 things and the monthly core values. So, I am going to try to catch up in this single blog post. Maybe it will be too much at once, but I am going to try.

I want to start with the monthly core values. In December, we were to talk about improving quality of our user service. Sometimes I get overwhelmed with how much I need to do, but I have found that if you start focusing on one thing at a time that you can begin to chip away at bigger problems. One area that I want to improve as far as service in the University Archives is to alleviate some of the confusion in offices about what to do and who to call for help when transferring materials to the records center. My plan is to approach this in two ways. First, I want to study the web page and see if there is some way to improve the instructions and clarify the difference in the services of the university archives and the records center. Second, I would like to restart the training sessions on the services of the records center and university archives. I believe this would help with the confusion. It would really be great to record one of these sessions and have the podcast or several podcasts with instructions on our web page. It is a dream, I know; but you have to dream in order to know the direction you want to go.

The January core value involves accountability. We were supposed to identify a project that we wanted to accomplish in the coming year. I have so many that it is hard to choose one to focus my attention. I think one that I want to describe is the effort to rewrite all of the records retention schedules for all of the offices and departments in the university. This is not going to be accomplished in a single year--I know. Still, my hope is to plan the process and make a beginning. First, we need to get the schedules in machine readable form. This process is already under way. Second, we need to track the old schedule items to the newly revised North Carolina guidelines. Third, I would like to create templates for new schedules common items that would be in similar offices. Finally, we will need to consult with the individual offices and department and finalize their schedules. I would like to test these ideas in the coming months by completing four or five schedules. This will be a collaborative effort with the records center manager and individuals in the chosen offices.

I have used Web 2.0 technology in my previous position as director of the Archives of Appalachia with great success. I have a love/hate relationship with the web and web 2.0 technology. Many times, I have said that when I retire I would love to withdraw from all of this technical intrusion. Still, I know the value of using many of these tools--especially in times of budget reductions. At the Archives of Appalachia, I created a Facebook page for Special Collections--Thing #5. I was amazed how quickly the number of fans grew. Within a few months, we had over 600 fans. It was a wonderful way to showcase new collections, get assistance in identifying photographs, and announce special events. The "friends" decided it was a wonderful way to get our attention and began posting reference questions, making requests for particular photographs that they wanted us to post to the site, and helping each other with research. In my opinion, it was a great success but did require significant time in responding to questions and encouraging discussions.

My first encounter with Prezi was at a Society of Tennessee Archivists conference. Ronee Francis, a librarian at Vanderbilt University, gave a wonderful presentation on Institutional Repositories. I was so impressed with the way that she had put together the presentation slides and knew that it was something other than PowerPoint. I wondered what it was but never had a chance to ask her about it. When I looked at Thing #4 and explored Prezi, I found her presentation and the mystery was solved. I haven't tried to actually create a presentation of my own yet, but I would like to try it.

I think that I haven't caught up on everything that I missed, but I have tried to cover some of the things.