Archival Vaudeville: Rethinking Outreach with Collaborative Programming

When a group of archivists in Pittsburgh started meeting for happy hours, talk inevitably turned to the great things we were working on and how we wished more people knew about the archives found in our city. Comparing notes quickly turned to making plans for a public program that would allow local archivists to introduce themselves and their repositories to an audience beyond the circled wagons of our profession. In planning for this event, several decisions were made at a theoretical level that had real impact on the structure and success of the program. The loose formula created by the program planners could be adapted by other archives who wish to expand the reach of their repository but who have neither the funding for outreach nor a large enough staff to undertake such a program on their own

Customizing hybrid products

We explore how the convergence of the digital and physical into hybrid products leads to new possibilities for customization. We report on a technology probe, a hybrid advent calendar with both paper form and digital layers of content, both of which were designed to be customizable. We reveal how over two hundred active users adapted its physical and digital aspects in various ways, some anticipated and familiar, but others surprising. This leads us to contribute concepts to help understand and design for hybrid customization – the idea of broad customization spanning physical and digital; end-to-end customization by different stakeholders along the value chain for a product; and the combination of these into customization maps

Exile Vol. XXXI No. 1

Drawing by Chris Bradley 1 How Goes the Wombat, Prithee by Jennie Benford 3 Holy Shit (for Mary) by Stephanie Athey 4-5 ..... blues by Britton R. Creelman 6 Photograph (anonymous) 7 Prose by Leigh Walton 9-12 San Jacinto by Petersen S. Thomas 13 Rebuttal by Betsy Oster 15 Running Alone by Ann Townsend McMullen 16 Windows in Florence by Michael Parr 17 Rangers by Caroline Palmer 19 Salamapo by Mary Deborah Clark 20-21 Funeral by J. K. Rand 22 Deeds Give No Title by Douglas Jones 23 Be Careful, There\u27s a Straight Bar Next Door by Karen J. Hall 25 The Rivers of Saigon by Alex Dickson 26 2 Sketches by Alfred Sturla Bodvarsson 27 Upon the Occasion of Reading 236 sonnets at One Sitting by Jeff Masten 28 I just believe in Me by Rob Jackson 29 Close by Stephanie Athey 31 Teller by Katherine Fox Reynolds 32 Woman in Greece by Michael Parr 33 Part of the Job by Joan DeWitt 35-44 Contributor Notes 46 Editorial decision is shared equally among the seven member editorial board. -title page Polymorphous: Cover Lithograph by Aimee Creelman - title pag

Playing Games with Tito:Designing Hybrid Museum Experiences for Critical Play

This article brings together two distinct, but related perspectives on playful museum experiences: Critical play and hybrid design. The article explores the challenges involved in combining these two perspectives, through the design of two hybrid museum experiences that aimed to facilitate critical play with/in the collections of the Museum of Yugoslavia and the highly contested heritage they represent. Based on reflections from the design process as well as feedback from test users, we describe a series of challenges: Challenging the norms of visitor behaviour, challenging the role of the artefact, and challenging the curatorial authority. In conclusion, we outline some possible design strategies to address these challenges

Archival Vaudeville: Rethinking Outreach with Collaborative Programming

When a group of archivists in Pittsburgh started meeting for happy hours, talk inevitably turned to the great things we were working on and how we wished more people knew about the archives found in our city. Comparing notes quickly turned to making plans for a public program that would allow local archivists to introduce themselves and their repositories to an audience beyond the circled wagons of our profession. In planning for this event, several decisions were made at a theoretical level that had real impact on the structure and success of the program. The loose formula created by the program planners could be adapted by other archives who wish to expand the reach of their repository but who have neither the funding for outreach nor a large enough staff to undertake such a program on their own

The Pittsburgh Jewish Newspapers Project: Digitizing Archival Newspapers for Full-Text Searching

The Carnegie Mellon University Libraries was asked by the library director of a local synagogue to digitize a singular collection of three historic Jewish newspapers, all of which were published in Pittsburgh. These three newspapers, the runs of which span the 19th to the 21st century, posed unique digitization challenges, both as unwieldy, fragile physical objects and as unindexed, dense analog datasets. Using a combination of revamped workflows and repurposed equipment, the Carnegie Mellon Library staff rose to the challenge, creating a full text searchable set of 160,000 digital surrogates for under $100,000. As of 2009, fundraising to secure another$100,000 is underway to support creation of 75,000 more images, creating a searchable database of approximately 235,000 images by project end. In its current incarnation, the Jewish Newspapers Project provides open access to a one of a kind collection of social, genealogical and demographic information about the Jewish communities in and beyond 20th century Pittsburgh. This article is an examination of how a successful archival digitization project was launched by retrofitting earlier workflows, utilizing existing equipment from other projects, and by cobbling together a likeminded group of participants, all of whom have some stake in the end product