The Workshop: Copyright
Fundamentals for Archivists and Librarians Led by Peter Hirtle
Peter, whom you’ll remember from this blog post: http://hereandthere123.blogspot.com/2011/08/interview-with-peter-hirtle-senior.html
or perhaps this one: http://hereandthere123.blogspot.com/2012/01/peter-hirtle-weighs-in-on-sopa.html,
has physically moved from Cornell University Library to the Berkman Center for
Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, where he is a Research Fellow. He
continues to use his Cornell email and serves as Senior Policy Advisor to the
Cornell University Library on intellectual property rights issues.
I had heard great feedback about his workshop from other
MARAC members, so this time I took it. Even though the title focuses on
fundamentals, the course also dealt with risk assessment; “copyfraud” (the
notion that institutions are asserting rights that they simply do not have;
e.g., a work is in the public domain and a museum states on its web site that a
copy photo has “All Rights Reserved.”); reproduction of copyrighted works; and
key for cultural heritage institutions, fair use. During the day-long course, I
participated in group exercises with my table neighbor, the very bright and fun
Caitlin Goodman (link to her twitter: https://twitter.com/caitlinest)
from the Free Public Library of Philadelphia. Peter’s instruction was useful
and fun, and the day flew by.
Friday Plenary and
Concurrent Sessions
The Friday Plenary session featured Danna Bell,
Past-President of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and Educational
Resource Specialist at the Library of Congress. She spoke about professional
development for archivists, and where improvement was needed in educational
offerings. I wished that she had recognized the people who deliver consistently
good workshops at MARAC, but maybe she was preoccupied about her talk.
The first session I attended was S2. Lessons Learned: Legal Aspects and
Ethical Principles of Oral History, with speakers Christine Anne George of
the University at Buffalo, SUNY, and Cara Howe of SUNY Upstate Medical
University (formerly of the Pan Am Flight 103 Archives at Syracuse). Christine
spoke about her recent research on the Belfast Project at Boston College (she
is not affiliated with BC), and mainly focused on the legal quagmire. The New Yorker magazine recently published
an article that gives the history and the ethical issues connected with the
oral history project (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/16/where-the-bodies-are-buried).
Cara, whom I’d seen speak before, talked
about the extensive oral history project for the Pan Am Flight 103/Lockerbie
air disaster. I’m especially interested in her work, not just because it’s
inherently interesting, but because she and her team invested a great deal of
time documenting what they did and adhering to best practices.
The afternoon session was S11. Nurturing Nature, and it was where
I presented for the first time at a professional conference. I had answered the
call for speakers specifically because it was a “lightning” session, and we
each would have about 6 minutes to present on our topics. Because Chester
Library is the designated local repository for the EPA’s records on the Combe
Fill South Landfill, I wrote that I could speak on the records for a local
superfund site. Greta Suiter from MIT, the session moderator, was pleased, so I
joined the 9 other speakers on the slate.
Each of the speakers had great presentations,
but I’ll just spotlight a handful here. One of my favorites was Sean Fisher’s
(Mass. Dept. of Conservation and Recreation). He has an enormous job locating
Mass. Parks materials stored in attics, crawlspaces, and essentially anywhere
people could put stuff all over the state of Massachusetts. Miles Crowley also
from MIT, spoke about pollution in the Charles River. Both Katie Hall and Sarah
Denison represented the Delaware Public Archives. Katie focused on mosquito
controls (and was hilarious). Sarah took a novel approach to her presentation
on the storm of 1962 by running color films of the storm damage on a loop while
she talked about the records (it was very effective). Liz Banks from the
National Park Service, Northeast Region hit on a number of areas, but mainly
focused on Yellowstone, especially Thomas Moran’s diary and paintings and the
wolf research (some of which John and I had the pleasure of seeing when we took
the Yellowstone archive tour). Rachel Donahue from the National Agricultural
Library’s presentation was lots of fun, and spotlighted plant specimens.
NJ/NY Caucus Meeting
This meeting was the first time I’d experienced a combined
New Jersey and New York Caucuses meeting. It was led by Laura Poll of the
Monmouth County Historical Association (more from her later) and Michael Martin
of the New York State Archives. The meeting was an opportunity to hear what
kinds of things are going on in each of the caucuses, although it was a bit of
a shy group. It also could have been that it was at the end of the first day of
the conference. Usually at MARAC meetings, the caucuses meet in the morning. I
almost forgot to introduce myself as the incoming President of the New Jersey
Library Association’s History & Preservation Section, but I squeezed it in
and mentioned that I’ll be working with Laura on getting together some more
H&P/NJ Caucus/Princeton Preservation Group meetings, since there’s so much
of an overlap.
Saturday’s Events
On Saturday, I started the morning by attending the MARAC
business meeting and enjoying the tasty breakfast buffet. The NEA folks also
had a buffet and their business meeting in a different location at the venue.
At our meeting, I learned that MARAC now has a Café Press site (http://www.cafepress.com/marac).
Outgoing Chair John LeGloahec from the National Archives and Records
Administration also mentioned that changes to the Bylaws were in the making and
he recommended that we attend a lunch session on the topic. There will be more
discussion at the next MARAC in West Virginia, but I won’t be attending that
one because I plan to attend the SAA annual meeting in August in Cleveland (and
there’s only so much budget to go around).
The second plenary of the meeting followed the business
meetings. It featured Sands Fish of MIT, who talked about networks in data and
his project, Media Cloud.
The first session of the day I attended was S15. Provenance vs. Artificial Collections:
To Restore or Not to Restore? It was the most controversial session I
experienced at the meeting. The speakers were Molly Stothert-Mauer of the
Perkins School for the Blind, Laura Poll (see the Caucus meeting earlier),
Linda Hocking of the Litchfield Historical Society, and Lindsay Turley of the
Museum of the City of New York. The speakers talked about the individual
experiences with dispersed, intermingled, and artificial collections, and more
importantly, the justifications for the choices they made. I think all of the
choices were valid, although I think in some cases I might make more use of
subject/genre/etc. terms in finding aids to keep created collections together. But keeping the researcher the top priority regardless
of the arrangement choice is the bottom line.
Another aspect worth considering is the idea of connecting
previous indexes and cataloging efforts to the new arrangement. Laura pointed
out that an archivist could create more of an issue if he/she didn’t invest the
time to make clear the ties between the old and new. It also seems even more
important to document all of those decisions and methods so that those who come
afterward aren’t lost in the tangle of archival threads.
The last session of the day for me was S21. Physical vs. Digital and the User Experience. The moderator
was Susie Bock of the University of Southern Maine and the speakers were Jane
Metters LaBarbara of West Virginia University, Samuel Smallidge of Converse,
and Anastasia S. Weigle of the University of Maine. Each speaker had a
different perspective on the topic to be sure, but Samuel’s argument for practical
uses of digital media for internal use at Converse in order to produce a new
product (based on one from the 1970s) was pretty persuasive. I didn’t expect to
learn about Chuck Taylor sneakers when I came to Boston for MARAC, but now I
have a better understanding of some of the structural changes in them over
time. By using digitized images of sneakers, he was able to help designers and
marketers put together a custom sneaker for consumers in time for a big
anniversary at the company.
The Conference Venue
and Where I Stayed
There was a bit of construction in the Boston Park Plaza
during the meeting. Because Boston had spent much of the winter under more snow
than was reasonable, the work that was targeted to have been completed long
before our arrival was still underway. In fact, the construction workers were
laying carpet in some of the conference areas on the first day. It was
inconvenient to be sure, but nothing we archivists/librarians couldn’t handle.
I didn’t stay at the conference hotel, although I’d
originally booked there. When it came closer to the event, my buddy John
Beekman, Assistant Manager of the New Jersey Room at Jersey City Free Public
Library, mentioned on the MARAC Facebook page that he’d checked TripAdvisor.com
to see if the construction had been finished. After I saw his post, I read the
comments from recent visitors, and changed hotels to Hotel 140 (http://www.hotel140.com/). They were very
accommodating and helpful. The hotel is located a few blocks away from the
Boston Park Plaza, which wasn’t a big deal except that on the first two days,
it was cold and very windy. However, the room was clean, the bed was
comfortable, and no fragrances were used on the linens (key for those of us who
are sensitive to heavy, synthetic fragrances often used in detergents).
Dining at Davio’s
Last, but never least (this was originally a food blog, you
know), something about the restaurant I frequented. My pal Jane Ingold, a
Reference Librarian at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, and I made plans
to have lunch together during the Thursday break during both of our workshops.
We dined at a lovely Italian restaurant that caters to GF people like me,
called Davio’s (http://davios.com/bos/menus/gluten-free-lunch)
located across the street from the Boston Park Plaza. The food was very tasty and the service was
attentive, albeit a bit slow. However, when I returned for lunch again the
following day with another friend, Jacqueline Haun, Archives Librarian at The
Lawrenceville School, I mentioned I was pressed for time (because I had a short
presentation to make at 1:30 p.m.). The waitstaff made sure to get us out the
door by the time specified, and we were grateful. In case you were wondering, I
enjoyed the chopped salad (sans bacon) and the GF tomato pizza (on both days,
they were that good, and I had leftovers for my little hotel fridge).
Wrapping Up
As always, I enjoyed the MARAC meeting, made some new
friends, and learned a lot more than I expected. The best advice I can give to
new archivists and librarians is to join your local/regional professional
society and get involved. Next is the NJLA meeting in April, complete with a
full day of History & Preservation Section sessions for attendees to enjoy.
Can’t wait!
