While the scenario is a little hokey, the basic ideas it presents -- obsolescence and migration -- are critical topics when dealing with digital materials. Nothing make one's heart sink faster than opening a box and finding a stack of 3.5 inch floppies with files of unknown format on them. Can you open the disks? Can you identify the file types? Are converters available for the file types? These are issues archivists deal with, sometimes on a daily basis. At DCA we have been working to create crosswalks that provide original file types with the MIME and format types listed and the corresponding preservation file types. This process has been a challenge, but it has also been really rewarding. We can open our boxes and stare down a stack of floppies without fear. We have a plan!

Honestly, It's not all that often that archivists come up in a public forum like the Daily Show. I'm not offended. Maybe I should be. But I get the joke because it's not the first time I have heard someone express surprise at the need for a Masters degree to be a librarian or an archivist. In fact, I think most people I meet have no idea what an archivist is, much less what kind of education is needed to land a professional job in the archives. When I told my family years ago that I was going to library school, they had no idea that you needed a masters to be bun wearing, shushing bibliophile.

So why all the education?

The answer is simple. It's really hard to get control over all of the bibliographic knowledge in the world. That's what I learned in library school and this is how I explain it to people wondering why librarians need all that education. I ask them to just think for a moment about every book, article, website, pamphlet, blog, correspondence, photo, and recording in the world, ever, since the beginning of history. Now think about organizing it all so you can find exactly what you're looking for. That's what librarians and archivists do and that's what we're trained to do. Basically we're control freaks with the altruistic goal of making the universe of information available to everyone. And I'm happy as long as I can do my small part as an archivist to get information to the people. Because information is power. Power to the People!

Ok. So, no one wonders why doctors or lawyers need a masters degree. But I'm over it, we don't need that kind of recognition. We're the masked crusaders of information. We're not worried that Jon Stewart doesn't know how we got that way. No, we're used to that. We're thinking about the issue at hand. What would you actually do with traces of drugs found on archival material? Seriously! In the context of the Grateful Dead, this kind of evidence could arguable have some archival research interest. Now don't you feel safer knowing that there are archivists out there thinking about that.

(Warning: In linking to and quoting from our collection of books from 19th-century London, this post references terminology and attitudes around people with disabilities which we do not consider acceptable any longer. The words are still there, however. Be warned.)

One of my favorite new blogs is NARAtions the blog of the United States National Archives. One thing I love about this blog is that they ask readers for help answering some of the tough questions we all face. For example, their most recent post asks how to efficiently transcribe NARA's billions of pages of handwritten documents.

I'd like to take a page from their book (but not a handwritten page!) and ask you all for help. We are going to start the process of redesigning the user interface of the Tufts Digital Library to make it more useful and user-friendly for our users. Question: What features do you like to see to help you browse digital collections?

One thing we can do while designing our new website is a focus on the principles of accessibility and universal design. This means not merely testing with adaptive technology and conforming to stable and emerging accessibility standards, but making sure the site provides a rich user experience for all users. Let's not have any more of the attitude we see in another volume of Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor, when he writes of "Of the Crippled Street Bird-Seller".

In 1898, the 75 (!) women of Tufts College elected officers for a club to serve the intellectual and social needs of Tufts women - the All-Around Club. From 1903 on, every woman at Tufts or Jackson was considered a member of the club. The club organized receptions, dances, musical events, and faculty teas like the one pictured here.

The goal of the the club was "to promote unity and loyalty in the college; to further the social, intellectual, and athletic interests of the student body; and to encourage the personal responsibilities of its members." To that end, in addition to organizing social events, the club published Jackson College directories and guides, organized food drives, and provided a representative for the Student Council. But the late 1960s and early 1970s saw a rise in the number of new student organizations, and around that time the All-Around Club disappeared.

Not that the proliferation of clubs and organizations is a bad thing, but to the archivist's ears just having to track a single one-size-fits-all organization sound pretty good!

To learn more about the All-Around Club and see more pictures click here.

Since the students have returned and we’re well into the fall semester, I thought it would be a good time to share some of my favorite Tom Hart photographs from the Tufts Digital Library.

Tom Hart was a 1968 graduate (B.S. in Biology) who documented life at Tufts while he was and student and after graduation. Though our earliest student photographs are charming reminders of a bygone era, I also enjoy Tom Hart’s photographic perspective in capturing the Tufts campus in the 1960s and 70s.

Wren Hall dorm room, October 1966

Class on breakwater, Cape Cod, spring 1966

Gordon Dobey, David Gold, Oscar Porter, and Peter Wadler pushing a car that was stuck in snow on College Ave, illuminated by headlights, 1976