Looking at Archives in Cinema: Recent Representations of Records in Motion Pictures

Archivists who followed the Best Picture Nominees for the 2013 Academy Awards would have noticed the appearance of a recurring character – records. The winning film, Argo, depicts the rescue of six American hostages during the Iran Hostage Crisis. Lincoln, praised for Daniel Day-Lewis’s portrayal of the Sixteenth President, presents a look at Abraham Lincoln’s Presidency during the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. The most controversial of the three, Zero Dark Thirty chronicles the events leading to the capture of Osama bin Laden. While archivists and archival repositories are absent from these three films, records and records creation play a central role in the development of each of the stories. This paper will analyze the depiction of records and records creation in these three films through the use of the framework proposed by Barbara Craig and James O’Toole in their analysis of representations of records in art. Craig and O’Toole argue that the way in which records are depicted can lead to an understanding of how the creators and audiences of art understand records, suggesting that these representations may further our understanding of the “cultural penetration of archives.”i The authors suggest that in art, records are depicted in a number of ways: as props, as representations of specific documents, as the central subject, and as information objects that are created and used. We expand Craig and O’Toole’s framework with the addition of two themes: the integration of original documentation into the films themselves, and the use of source material that has an affective influence on the mise-en-scène

Research Data Management Service Delivery Model for the ULS

This document presents a service delivery model for research data management at the University Library System (ULS). It presents three levels of participation and expertise around Research Data Management (RDM) services at the ULS. It outlines membership at each service level, level competencies and activities, and organizational support for service providers

Creating Digital Collections with Omeka

This workshop was held on January 26, 2016 as part of the ULS/iSchool Digital Scholarship Workshop & Lecture Series. This workshop introduced participants to Omeka.net, a free, web-based tool that can be used to organize, describe, tell stories with, and share digital collections

Telling Online Stories with Omeka

This session builds on the “Creating Digital Collections with Omeka” workshop held in January 2016 at Hillman Library. In this session, we experiment with creating digital online exhibits with Omeka collections. We look at examples of Omeka exhibits, explore relevant Omeka plugins for exhibit creation, brainstorm goals and intended audiences for your digital stories, and begin to build

THE REPLEVIN PROCESS IN GOVERNMENT ARCHIVES: RECOVERY AND THE CONTENTIOUS QUESTION OF OWNERSHIP

To an attorney practicing law in the common law system, the term “replevin” describes a legal remedy for recovering personal property held by another party. In this civil procedure, the determination of rightful ownership falls to the court. Archivists and manuscript collectors have appropriated this same term to describe any effort by a government archives to recover public records in private hands, whether these efforts involve the courts or are carried out informally through discussions and negotiations with private parties. The number of “true” replevin cases involving disputed public records is small and existing commentary in the archival literature focus on these judicial decisions. This dissertation examines the quieter cases, developing a sharper understanding of what replevin means to individuals who are charged with preserving records and to those who are personally driven to collect. Three state archives serve as case studies and semi-structured interviews with institutional employees, archival records, active records, statute and case law as data sources. A consistent message emerging from discussions with government officials is that each replevin case is singular in the manner in which it is resolved. Still, there is an apparent pattern to the replevin of public records, conceptualized in this dissertation as a six-stage process. Each case begins with the discovery of the alienated record and results in a custody determination favoring either the government or the private party. This dissertation determines that variances in statute, case law, and the involvement of legal counsel strongly influence a government’s decision to pursue, the shape of negotiations, and the state’s ultimate ability to recover the targeted record. The issue of replevin is one that has provoked friction between the community of government archivists and some members of the collecting community, a friction largely stemming from an ambiguous understanding of the nature of a “public record” and disagreement as to whether an archives should lay claim to records that never have been in its possession. This study probes the motivations of public officials pursuing public records and argues that it is in the public interest for public archives to have an active replevin agenda

Applying Translational Principles to Data Science Curriculum Development

This paper reports on a curriculum mapping study that examined job descriptions and advertisements for three data curation focused positions: Data Librarian, Data Steward / Curator, and Data Archivist. We present a transferable methodological approach for curriculum development and the findings from our evaluation of employer requirements for these positions. This paper presents " model pathways " for these data curation roles and reflects on opportunities for iSchools to adopt translational data science principles to frame and extend their curriculum to prepare their students for data-driven career opportunities

Designing the MLIS: How Design Thinking Can Prepare Information Professionals

In recent years, the library profession has embraced the value of design thinking for designing services, serving users, and organizing physical spaces. This paper describes the developments that led to the incorporation of design thinking in a Masters in Library and Information Science program at the University of Pittsburgh. Through a three-course Design Methods Sequence (DMS), students engage in sustained partnerships with organizations in the local community. This paper provides insights from a pilot instructional year, highlighting ways in which the DMS may serve as a model for MLIS programs that aim to build experiential learning opportunities for students

Distilling jargon: A case study examining the efficacy of government information visualizations

In 2010, the federal government passed the Plain Writing Act, a piece of legislation that calls for clearly and concisely written government information. While this statute focuses on textual communication, its passage illustrates the government’s broader concerns with improving the accessibility of all government information. The same principles should guide the creation of non-textual communications, including visualizations intended to illustrate and accompany government information. This poster applies a case study approach to consider how current visualization methods and techniques might be modified in the future to more equitably distill government jargon. The case study looks at the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and how this act is currently being visualized for lay audiences. We compare and contrast the text and visual versions of the ACA to examine what information is lost when concepts are transferred into visual format, as well to consider the efficacy of the visualization.ye