Contributed by Jenna Marrone
If the stack of empty pizza boxes was any indication, then last week’s Archivists Being Awesome (ABA) event was a raging success!
The meeting, which took place Thursday night, February 28, at Temple University’s Paley Library, featured fifteen-minute presentations from four Philadelphia-area archivists.
Margery Sly, Director of the Special Collections Research Center, Temple University, kicked off the evening by discussing the challenge of making digital video content available to researchers. In particular, Margery described the efforts of Temple Libraries and Computer Services staff to provide streaming video access to their archival WPVI news footage.
Margery was followed by Beth Levitt, Archives Specialist for the National Archives at Philadelphia. Beth spoke on her involvement with the Senior Artists Initiative (SIA), an organization that helps to educate artists who are nearing the end of their careers about the process of inventorying and organizing their artwork and papers. As Beth mentioned at the end of her presentation, volunteers are welcome!
Next up was Alexis Antracoli, the current Records Management Archivist at Drexel University, who spoke on Drexel’s digital accessioning workflow for removable media. Alexis gave helpful examples of how she records information in Archivist’s Toolkit, as well as her process for transferring electronic records to a secure server space for preservation and storage.
The meeting concluded with a presentation from Abby Adams, Assistant Curator of Digital Collections at Hagley Museum and Library. Abby discussed Hagley’s implementation of an electronic records management system, including new accessioning and processing procedures for born-digital records, and expanded on their use of Preservica.
Want to learn more about ABA or last Thursday’s meeting? Check out ABA’s website at http://archivistsbeingawesome.wordpress.com/. Many thanks to Christiana Dobrzynski Grippe, Laurie Rizzo and Scott Ziegler of the ABA team for organizing such a fun and helpful event!
Delaware Valley Archivists Group 