(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".

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.

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!