travels

Well, I have about a million things to do right now, but I decided instead to create a flickr account (long overdue, but got a new camera yesterday to justify it!) and repost on this blog. I had originally thought of using this blog to journal my thoughts on electronic records and current events at my work, but I've decided to go against the traditional recordkeeping model and have a joint work/personal blog.

By this time next week, I'll be in Sweden, so I'll try to post to this when I can, while I'm there. Maybe even upload some pics into my flickr account, too. I'm still too wrapped up in looming deadlines and household clutter to be excited to go, but I'm sure once I get on the plane, I'll start acting like a 12 year old.

On the work front, I'm going to try to visit the University Archives in Lund, which is located with the City Archives. The special collections is actually on campus, but I haven't heard back from the "keeper" of manuscripts. I really want to visit, though, since they have a huge collection of Turkistan manuscripts and an important collection of papers pertaining to Ravensbruck and its survivors (a concentration camp - many of the survivors fled to Sweden afterwards).

Iron Mountain and Microsoft?

Every so often I check out Microsoft's Records Management Team Blog and this week they posted a notice on their collaboration with Iron Mountain. I'm really interested in trying out their new release in my own work environment and seeing how it could help with basic RM tasks. This new feature is great for those who have records stored at IM. After seeing their posts from the ARMA Conference, I've moved this activity up a few notches in my priority for creative (a.k.a. low budget or doable to the lone RM-er) RM ideas to check out.

Back on assignment

After some encouragement from eb, I'm posting again. This can serve as my journal through a year+ electronic records fellowship that I just started. My goal is to develop a recordkeeping framework for social scientists conducting data-intensive research.

One of my current questions is that of research data. In the records retention schedule at my institution, grant funded research data has a life of 5 years. But what does that have to say about the long-term value of this stuff? Is this just an excuse to not have to take it in (it can be quite voluminous)?

More to come soon...

first post

This seems weird, but it seems to be the only way I can motivate myself to write about the goings on of my life with records. One would think that I would like to document everything, but its been hard to journal about the trials and tribulations of developing procedures to enact change in the way many view their roles as records creators. So here it goes.