Carrying on the theme from my last post about a technology-themed SAA meeting next year in San Francisco (thanks to those who commented!), I have an informal announcement and a suggestion. As I said in response to a comment, an unofficial, non-SAA-sponsored wiki for the Chicago meeting is being set up. It will be announced on the listservs in mid-July, we think, but anyone who’s really interested and wants to help contribute to the early population of pages, please let me know in a comment and we’ll get in touch with you.
And, following up on the post from the Archives Hub Blog about the class some of them attended on “Sharing Made Simple: a practical approach to social software” made me think about how and where we could set up something similar. (Take a look at the program description, if you haven’t already.) How feasible do you think it would be to try to get people interested in these kinds of topics together in Chicago? All we need is some kind of a meeting space—we can announce it on the wiki (and the listserv too, I suppose). I was already thinking we should do a blogger get-together, but why not expand it and see what we can do? Put together some workshops and sessions, or just some sort of information sharing network? I’d be willing to put my time into an online tutorial—or maybe we can just find some existing resources to point people to. There’s a lot of great stuff out there that explains these concepts. What we need are people who can help explain why archivists should care. As someone said in a comment here, we just need to start doing these things and building the tools ourselves. That’s what 2.0 is all about, right?
Archives 2.0, Conferences, Society of American Archivists (SAA), Technology for archives, Wikis | Kate T. | 
June 6, 2007 7:57 am 
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By Mark Matienzo, June 6, 2007 @ 10:24 am
I’d like to see archivists gather together and do something like Library Camp. I went to Library Camp East last September; it was really great being there just to meet people and see what other people are doing — or what they even just want to do but don’t know how. At code4lib 2007, there were lightning talks and breakout sessions. Granted, these were whole- or multiple-day events, but there’s no reason why we couldn’t come up with something similar. Ideally, an environment like this would need a projector and network connectivity, which seem to be the big question marks at SAA2007.
By ArchivesNext, June 6, 2007 @ 10:35 am
But we could get together in Chicago and start planning. Maybe even try to do a mini-pilot or something at a MARAC meeting since a lot of us are in that region.
By jordon, June 6, 2007 @ 10:51 am
I haven’t had time to look at the program for this year’s meeting yet, but I think your “blogger-get-together” suggestion is great in the absence of any formal discussion about exactly how the archival blogosphere is being used and can be used both as a means of sharing ideas among archivists and with the larger public. (Thanks to Mark for cracking this wide open with archivesblogs.com.) Alot of us bloggers are prompted to write posts based on information that comes from a range of sources–including the spheres of technology, education, design, and libraries–that wouldn’t seem relevant to the profession at first blush. It would be nice to come together and discuss this further in person. Just name and time and place in Chicago and I’m there.
I have recently been thinking alot about how the blogosphere circumvents traditional ways of sharing information, particularly among the academic community, and I hope to be blogging about it soon once I have more free time than a lunch break.
By Mark Matienzo, June 6, 2007 @ 11:45 am
Oh, I’d like more info on the wiki, too!
By Jeanne, June 6, 2007 @ 1:15 pm
Hurrah for enthusiasm and visions of an Archives Bar Camp.
As far as organizing things at SAA in Chicago: I think that as long as we post info on the Wiki, the listserv and put up some flyers on site – we should be able to get interested folks together. While a projector would be nice.. part of me dreams about either a big white board – or one of those big flip chart pads. I like the idea of those interested in talking taking turns presenting ideas they are enthusiastic about. Something along the lines of what is described in this post as Speed Geeking.
If we could have someone taking and posting notes on the wiki, then those who speak can go back later and add any links or examples they like.
By Mark Matienzo, June 7, 2007 @ 8:17 am
Jeanne, it seems like in some ways speed geeking is a bit like the lightning talk idea, if not a little more unstructured. At past events I’ve found that a good replacement instead of standard flipchart are Post-it easel pads.
By Jane Stevenson, June 8, 2007 @ 6:05 am
I was one of the organisers of the event that we held in the UK: ‘Sharing Made Simple: a practical approach to social software. There is a page about it at
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/archivists-2007-06/
This includes links to the exercises that we did – although we had problems with Web 2.0 services being blocked by the firewall, as we were in a college where they have concerns about their students being diverted by the likes of MySpace and Flickr!! Kind of ironic as we were looking at the collaborative, communication and learning benefits of these sites.
There is also a programme for the day available. We found people liked the mix of presentation, case studies and hands-on, with plenty of time for discussion.
Anyway, the course was very well attended, very lively and very worthwhile. All of the exercises are under a Creative Commons licence so anyone can use them for educational purposes. We’ve come away with a huge number of possibilities for where to take this next, but probably the first thing is to run the course again as it was over subscribed. After that, we want to think about ways to discuss these issues. We set up a wiki at http://sharing-made-simple-2007-06.wetpaint.com/ which is a good start and allows us to continue to get feedback and ideas.
By Tiah Edmunson-Morton, June 12, 2007 @ 3:20 pm
I’m so glad to hear other people are so enthusiastic!
I was a part of the 5 Weeks to a Social Library course last winter and all the course material is still there for anyone who wants to check it out. http://www.sociallibraries.com/course/