Posts

After two weeks of use, Plagger has proven itself to be pretty resilient. I've been asking myself how I can make ArchivesBlogs even better, and I've finally got a few ideas.

• A site redesign. I'd like different colors.
• Categorizing the feeds, e.g. separating blogs by individuals from repository blogs. This will probably end up with me creating a couple of Plagger configurations and dumping them into different subdirectories on ArchivesBlogs.
• Better support for tags. It'd be nice to pull them out and have automagically linked Technorati tags.
• Scrubbing HTML from the feeds to create valid XHTML for the syndication page(s). Plagger supports the Perl module HTML::Scrubber so it seems. This is a Big Deal to someone like me.
• Adding a directory - most likely in OPML - for as many blogs about archives and archivists as possible since it's just not possible to do that for some blogs using Plagger. The most straightforward example are archives with blogs that are part of a library-wide blog and therefore don't have their own feeds. Usually what happens is that the archives or special collections department gets their own category within the blog. There are quite a few of these, and from pretty large places as well: University of Georgia and MIT are the first two I found.

As always, I'm willing to solicit suggestions, so let me know!

ArchivesBlogs has been going strong for over a week now. If you use Blogspot and had a blog previously syndicated by ArchivesBlogs, your content may be temporarily unsyndicated. The specific problem is HTTP 502 error, which seems to indicate a problem with a proxy server at Blogspot. In any rate, they should return soon enough -- it would be nice to have the 9 blogs back!

I've upgraded Plagger (the software behind ArchivesBlogs) to the latest version and it's allowed me to add service links to del.icio.us, unalog, digg, Reddit, and Technorati. I suppose I could add more (ma.gnolia, Furl, etc.), but I'll hold off doing that for the sake of cluttering the interface for the time being. If you have any service links you'd like to see, let me know and I might be able to hack something together.

Since my last post about syndicating blogs about archives, I've played around with the idea and different software packages to do it, including Planet and Plagger. I'm happy to announce that after a few days work I was able to put something together.

ArchivesBlogs is an aggregator for blogs about archives. It runs Plagger and updates hourly, outputting HTML, RSS, Atom, OPML (for import into other aggregator), and a FOAFroll. The site design is simple, but i'm happy with it. I took whatever archives blogs I knew about and added them, so if you know of any others or you want yours removed, let me know.

The Archival Solidarity Session was really great and generated a lot of dialog. It was originally organized by Nancy Marrelli of Concordia University (Montréal), but she couldn't make it on account of a family emergency. Trudy Huskamp Peterson led the discussion in her place and did a wonderful job. Essentially, Archival Solidarity is a project involving the ICA's Section of Professional Associations that concerns "international archival development" through bilateral projects. There are several major issues at play. First, existing methods of international development are not working for archival projects, either because of bureaucracy in general or archives being of lower priority in comparison to needs such as sanitation, adequate health care, and the like. We identified that one of the most critical aspects is the lack of communication or methods to share information. There is no central "hub," formal or informal, that allows archivists to share information about assistance needed or offered. The International Fund for Archival Development (FIDA), coordinated by the ICA, was supposed to serve as such, but apparently operational issues prevent it from working effectively. A further concern is that even when other active development projects are underway, organizations such as the IMF ignore the effect of privatization on archives. Furthermore, all of us were concerned cultural imperialism and depatriation of archival materials (by digitization, etc.). Of course, the biggest concern of all was the acquisition of funds.

I'm at the Hilton Washington, the site of the SAA conference. I've registered and picked up my free totebag. I, and others, have bemoaned the lack of connectivity in the conference area. Wireless is only available in the lobby, so it seems, and it's rather pricy ($5.95 for 4 hours or $9.95 for 24 hours). I know archivists are often thought of as being technologically behind (whether we are is a Pandora's box that I won't open in this post), but I feel that some sort of net access is necessary at every conference. I'm just barely able to get it through my cell phone, which is how I'm posting now. Unfortunately, I get no reception on the conference floor so I needed to make my way up to the lobby anyhow.

I missed the Standards Committee meeting since I was a little late and I didn't want to barge in since the doors were closed. It's nearly time for the Archival Solidarity session, which sounds interesting to me since I'd like to get involved in ICA. I'm trying to figure out a way to get to their university and research symposium this September in Reykjavik since I'd love to go back.

I'm one of several bloggers attending the SAA conference the rest of this week. Nothing against CoSA or NAGARA, but I'm attending the conference for the organization to which I belong. My schedule is pretty packed, and if you're one of us be sure to attend the Description Section meeting since I'm running for Vice-Chair.

I'm going to be on the latest installment of the SocketsCDR audio zine, curated this time around by Rebecca Mills of The Caution Curves. Sean, the SocketsCDR label honcho, just posted the cover artwork for it and it looks like a great line-up, including friends like The Plums and Stamen & Pistils. This will be my first release in a while (other than the collab CD with myself, Cotton Museum, and Actual Birds on Casanova Temptations). More details will follow, naturally.

Upon hearing about yesterday's release of Kubuntu 6.06, I decided to upgrade from the previous release, Kubuntu 5.10. I'd like to say that it went off without a hitch, but it didn't. It did, however, go mostly well, and I realized that my problem was that I continued to use applications while Adept installed the new packages. I couldn't install all the packages, and I ended up with a minorly disfunctional kernel that wouldn't allow ndiswrapper to load properly, preventing me from using my internal wireless card. Once I rebooted (and used a spare PCMCIA wireless card to gain connectivity), I was able to finish installing the rest of the packages that had not finished properly and rebooted again. Everything pretty much worked, but I'm having to tweak some lost settings, most notably in KMail. Other than that, it's been working out fine!

The technical services world has been in an uproar lately, between LC's decision to stop creating series authority records (particularly since they didn't consult PCC members beforehand) and the fallout after Calhoun report. We might as well have another drink, because as librarian.net reports (along with several others), OCLC and RLG are about to merge. It's mindblowing to think that RLG employees did not find out any sooner than the rest of us, and that either organization has yet to consult its members. However, RLG plans to do so, but it will be interesting to see how this pans out. In particular, some folks worried about the merging of data and the future of RedLightGreen. I know it's not considerably better, but they seem to be overlooking Open WorldCat.