It’s hard to believe that another year has gone by. I’ve made it a habit to reflect on each year and post about it here. You can see my reflections at the end of 2017, 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012. I’m a big fan of the value of metacognition, so I tend to feel like I get a lot out of taking a little time to round up, reflect, and try and synthesize things at least once a year.
This year, I was able to build, support, and learn from the new Digital Content Management team at work. I made the list of Library Journal “Movers & Shakers” where I was given the headline “Access Forever,” which I feel like captures a lot of what I’m into. I had the chance to teach new iterations of two graduate seminars. I joined a few different boards that are helping me stay engaged in communities that matter a lot to me. Also, my book came out! I get into all of that a bit more below
Building the digital content management team
Over the first three months of 2018, the Digital Content Management section at LC went from seven folks to sixteen. Setting up the functions and structure of the new team and connecting out to all the great work going on across the organization was an exciting, exhausting, and invigorating adventure. I wrote about this a bit on The Signal. I’m really blown-away by how quickly everyone has jumped into things, and very excited by how quickly we transitioned from getting up to speed to doing meaningful and productive work.
I’m particularly thrilled with how I think we have been able to consciously build, maintain, and work to improve a and supportive culture and learning community. You can get a sense of some of the things we have been up to in Signal posts on topics such as; metadata for web archives, animated GIF datasets, library carpentry workshops, and archiving science blogs. Stay tuned for more on our crew’s work on The Signal.
Growing as a coach and manager
As part of my work at the Library of Congress, I was lucky to get to participate in the pilot of a new intensive cohort program focused on developing leaders in the five core qualifications areas for Senior Executive Service; Leading Change, Leading People ECQ, Results Driven, Business Acumen, and Building Coalitions. The program involved 19 days of expert facilitated leadership workshops complemented by a sequence of three 360 reviews on leadership practices, emotional intelligence, and trust.
Workshops covered topics such as; Coaching and Mentoring, Crucial Conversations, Leadership Essentials, Leading at the Speed of Trust, DiSC, Getting Things Done, Leadership Practices, and Navigating Change in Turbulent Times. It was challenging to juggle the program and getting everything up and running. With that said, a lot of the training was particularly pertinent to the work at hand in getting things going. The 360 reviews were especially helpful in getting me feedback from the team on what I could improve on.
My third book dropped
It’s been a long time coming, but just this month my book The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation shipped. Most of the work on the book was done last year, but I did do a bit of work responding to some comments and making some revisions in response to comments that came up from the readers of it for peer review. Over the course of the year the pre-print was downloaded more than 2,600 times. I’m really excited to see what kind of reaction the print copy receives over the course of the year.
This is my third book; the first was a local history book with scans of postcards from Fairfax County VA, and the second is the result of my dissertation research on how power and control work in the design of online community software systems. I really like both of those books, but I feel like this is the first one is the most “me.” Even reading it now, I feel like I’ve found my voice and area where I am able to make my best and most meaningful contributions. Alongside the book, I wrote up a little piece about parsimony and elegance as guiding principles in digital library systems, some reflections on the amazingly good book Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network, and the forward to the No-Nonsense Guide to Born Digital Content.
Getting out there and getting the word out
While I did a lot less work-related travel than I have in previous years, I did still get around a good bit. I was invited to give a talk as part of the National Library of Medicine’s History of Medicine Lectures series.
I ended up with a great turn out for my talk, “Scientists’ Hard Drives, Databases, and Blogs: Preservation Intent and Source Criticism in the Digital History of Science, Technology and Medicine.” At some point, I hope to turn that talk into an article. But it’s likely going to be a while before I get around to that.
I gave opening keynote addresses at two very different conferences. At the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archivists Association’s Conference I gave a talk called Start Today: Digital Stewardship Communities & Collaborations. At the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, I gave a talk titled We Have Interesting Problems: Some Applied Grand Challenges from Digital Libraries, Archives and Museums. I had a ton of fun at both events and got a great response from attendees about the talks.
I also ended up going to Boston twice. Once as a participant in MIT Libraries’ Grand Challenges in Information Science and Scholarly Communication Summit and to the International Conference on Digital Preservation. Both were very engaging thought provoking meetings. I was also able to get out to the Digital Library Federation and the National Digital Stewardship Alliances conferences. It was great to be able to get out to and participate in these events and continue to stay in the loop on developments in the field.
Service work and engaging in communities
This year I moved into a series of new roles to serve and support a series of communities that matter to me. I joined the board for Anacostia Trails Heritage Area Inc which supports community development around history, culture, and nature in Prince George’s County Maryland. I also joined the Digital Library Federation Advisory Committee and have now participated in two of the advisory board meetings.
I became a member of the CLIR’s Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives standing review panel. I also helped to transition the Digital Cultural Heritage D.C. meetup to a model where it now is organized by a board of six of us working on digital cultural heritage issues in the metro area at different institutions. I really enjoy the opportunity to contribute my time and effort to these different groups and their efforts and I feel like it’s something that helps me keep learning and connecting with others working on issues that matter a lot to me.
Teaching digital history and digital preservation
In the spring I taught a revised version of my Digital History graduate seminar. This was the fifth time I’ve taught the course in the last seven years. Given that the course counts as a “tool of research” course for American University’s history and public history programs, I reframed it as “Digital History Methods.” I really like how the course ran. Students came up with a range of smart ideas for digital history projects. You can see links to their projects and reflections here. I’m now gearing up to teach another instance of the course this spring.
I’m just wrapping up teaching my fall semester Digital Preservation graduate seminar for the University of Maryland’s iSchool. This is the fourth course I’ve taught for the iSchool and the second time I’ve taught the digital preservation course. It was also the first time I’ve been able to teach the course using the digital preservation book. Last time I taught the course the course syllabus largely became the format for the structure of the book. I think it worked out well to anchor the course in the book and then supplement it with additional readings each week. I’m really impressed by the results of the work that the digital preservation students were able to do as consultants for small cultural heritage orgs as part of the course. You can read the results of their work on the projects page of the course site.
NOLA, Central Europe, and some good shows
Alongside these various strands of work, Marjee and I also made some great excursions. We were graciously hosted by a good friend in New Orleans for a week early in the year and took off for two weeks for our tenth anniversary to visit Copenhagen, Budapest, Vienna, Prague, and Krakow. If you’re interested, both of those trips are rather well documented on instagram.
We also saw a bunch of great live music this year. I will likely forget something, but we saw; Chad Valley, Rasputina, Tash Sultana, Jack White, Andrew Bird with the NSO, Erasure, and RJD2.