This is just a note of clarification. The book and article reviews are actually entries in an annotated bibliography I am creating. In other words, I highlight the content rather than interact with it. They are in the truest sense of the word “reviews”.
Catherine O’Sullivan’s “Diaries, On-line Diaries, and the Future Loss to Archives,” is a provocative look at the impact of the emerging blog culture on archives. In the article, Sullivan traces the historical development of both traditional diaries and blogs, notes similarities and differences between the two media, and offers recommendations for how to preserve blogs. Sullivan contends that traditional diaries really began to gain popularity in the seventeenth century due to the Reformation and the rise in literacy. Through the centuries, traditional diaries served a variety of functions. Some were private, but others were public. They were used them to confess sins, boast of exploits, keep financial records, keep calendars of activities, and reflect on their lives. Because of the types of subjects addressed, diaries often have significant evidential value.
Blogs show many similarities to personal diaries. Both are easily created with little expense. They can both be private or public, although blogs are generally public. Both contain a variety of types of content. Both diaries and blogs can provide examples that have great evidential value. Likewise, both can provide examples of writers who use them to air the private details of their lives publicly. There are differences, however. Diaries once tended to be a luxury because literacy was a luxury. Now, far more people can read and write, so the content in blogs often varies greatly. More people probably participate in blogging than ever has been the case with traditional diaries. Blogs and diaries also obviously differ in format, with the latter being much easier to preserve because it exists in a physical format. O’Sullivan contends that the Internet Archive or a dedicated server with a web crawler could be used to preserve blogs, although both of these approaches could offer other legal challenges that would have to be addressed.
Because I am an archivist in a religious institution, I often get the question, “How should I take care of my Church’s records.” This is a vitally important question, especially if your church and denomination stresses local church autonomy like mine does. In a Baptist context, each individual church is largely responsible for keeping up with their own records and archives because Baptists do not have a hierarchical ecclesiastical structure. Basically, no one is going to make a church preserve their records. If the records are going to be preserved, the church administration or church members will have to care about it.
While I could make several posts on this subject myself, I think it would be difficult to improve upon some resources that others have already produced. The Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives in Nashville produced a series of helps on how to start and maintain an archive in your church. These articles cover a broad range of topics such as arrangement, description, records management, and microfilming. They also address what to do with those pesky scrapbooks. In addition to these articles, you may want to go to your local library and see if you can find Robert Shuster’s article, “Documenting the Spirit” from American Archivist 45, Spring 1982. Shuster is the archivist at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton. This article isn’t necessary for getting started, but when you have put in a long day’s work organizing your church’s records, and you sit back and ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” you will probably find Shuster an encouragement.
Finally, there are a couple of books that I would recommend for starting an archive in your church. The first is Elizabeth Yakel’s Starting an Archives and the second is David Carmichael’s Organizing Archival Records.
Both of these books are pretty simple, and the Carmichael book even comes with a nice little piece CD-ROM that you can use to help organize your records if you have a computer with Microsoft Access on it.
Totally off topic when it comes to archives, but I found this section of an O’Reilly PSP Hacks book. It explains how to put a keyboard on your PSP.
One problem, though. The hack says you need a server for the keyboard to reside on. Actually, you don’t need a server. You can embed the keyboard in your PSP. Just copy the code provided in the hack into a text editor on your computer. Then save it with a filename you can remember. I called mine kb.html. Next, connect your PSP to your computer, and load the file in the root directory of your PSP. Open your browser, and enter file:/kb.html (or whatever you named your file). Then, bookmark the file, and you can use the keyboard at any time without accessing a server.
Now, if someone could just create a text editor for PSP.
In an earlier post, I complained about the way IE makes the tabs look on this site. Well, I just downloaded the Beta2 of IE 7. Microsoft has fixed the CSS issue that caused this issue. The browser looks really nice. Microsoft should seriously consider calling it IE7.O, and let the O stand for Opera, because that’s what this thing looks like. Still, it has a nice feel to it. I don’t think it will be able to compete with Firefox in the long run because Firefox has extensions that allow it to do anything. I used an extension to wash my car this afternoon, and Firefox is currently cooking my supper. Let’s face it, Firefox is a browser that can do whatever you want. Ever since I switched to Firefox, all I ever have to do is fish and listen to Bluegrass. Seriously, the new IE looks really nice, but I can’t see myself switching back to the dark side. That would be akin to pulling for the Yankees, eating at Applebees, or driving a Ford.
I think Microsoft wants to generate more computer sells through this release, though. You have to have XP with service pack 2 in order to use it. It will not be retroactive to older operating systems. So if you want a tabbed browser on your older machine, you will have to use something like Firefox or Opera.
As an aside, unless you just want to test out IE7, wait for the real thing to come out. Who knows what bugs this thing will have. My laptop is behind enough protection to where I am not that worried, but not everyone’s is. And you know hackers are already tearing IE7 apart to try to find weaknesses to exploit.
Unbelievable. I cannot believe I missed this. I have been using CSS for various websites for around a year and a half. I usually use WestCiv’s Style Master to generate CSS. I consider it the finest CSS tool available, and if you are connected to an educational institution, you can obtain it for a paltry fee. It is well worth the money.
But what I have not realized is that there is a whole site devoted to CSS creation. CSS Creator has various forums related to CSS topics, and they even have a really cool, really simple, really free online CSS generator. It does not compare to Style Master, but if you want to put up a site quickly, it will help lay out basic elements such as the header, body, footer, and sidebars. All in all, the site is CSS Heaven.
