NeoArch

On last Wednesday afternoon, we had session 2 of the ALABI meeting. What follows is my summary of the second session. But first, I want to mention to talk about the disaster preparedness forum that I forgot to mention in my last post.

Disaster Preparedness Forum

The forum involved Bill Sumners of the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, and Jeff Griffin, the director of the library at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Read the rest of this entry »

For those who have been waiting for reviews of the sessions, I apologize for the tardiness of this review of session 1. I have been pretty busy over the past week. I will try to get the others done as soon as I can. I am a very bad blogger.

This year’s meeting was not as well attended as last year’s but I think the members that attended really enjoyed it. The Campbellsville University community was very welcoming. The food was good, and the conference room in the new chapel was extremely well suited for the event. I especially enjoyed the tour of the library and special collections that Dr. John Burch, the university librarian, graciously provided for us. Read the rest of this entry »

In my previous post on wet blogs (ie. Baptist blogs), I noted that I would be doing a series of posts dealing with preserving wet blogs (and blogs in general). I just wanted to point out a couple of people that seem to have similar concerns.

First, Marty Duren posted today about the relationship between blogs and traditional denominational media outlets. He argues that media outlets such as Baptist Press should be more open to publishing blogs and bloggers on their sites. Marty rightly recognizes the influences of blogs on denominational life.

Second, Timmy Brister, Owen Strachan, and Tony Kummer have developed a collaborative blog project called Said at Southern Seminary. The project aggregates blogs from many bloggers related to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and publishes content on a variety of issues. Appropriately enough, you can find out more about the project at its About page. While this project in no way guarantees the permanence of blogs or blog content, it demonstrates the concern of some bloggers for bringing together blogs related to a common object of love.

Yesterday’s meeting was pretty informative. I will post a more detailed report of all sessions sometime this afternoon. During the business meeting today, I will be presenting the report for the communications committee. Our report will propose some fairly major changes to the web site. If it passes, we will probably have constantly updating content on the site. Hopefully, more content can generate interest in the organization and can be a medium for encouraging the type of wider participation that I suggested yesterday.

I am at ALABI 2007 today. Thankfully, it was near to home this year. Last year was Richmond, and me and my buddy Andrew had to make that long haul through KY, WV, and VA in order to go. This year it’s at Campbellsville University.

The meeting will take place in the chapel here at Campbellsville. This year, their will be four sessions. The first session will address disaster preparedness, and there is a panel discussion following it. This afternoon, Charles Deweese, the director of the Baptist History and Heritage Society, will talk about the mission statement of the Baptist History and Heritage Society. Read the rest of this entry »

For Baptists, especially Southern Baptists, it’s been a busy year. If you don’t believe me, one Baptist blogger has been keeping a log.

Ironically, it was about this time last year that I struck up a conversation with another Southern Baptist archivist about Baptist blogs while attending the ALABI meeting in Richmond. I mentioned that the whole idea of Baptist blogs and how to preserve them really troubled me, and I asked if his organization was doing anything in the way of preserving blogs. Read the rest of this entry »