blogging with IMPunity
Coverpicture: Old book bindings at the Merton College library by Tom Murphy VII.
Latest Posts
University of Glasgow ASC: A Catalogue Analysis
The sIMPly Archivists analyse the University of Glasgow Archives and Special Collection’s online catalogue, and how its service can be improved by existing and future users.
Objects as Evidence: my first D&D dice set
Despite the fact that I had two enormous luggages when I first set foot in Scotland (all the way back to 2014), I deliberately chose not to bring anything of value, or particularly sentimental with me. On one hand I was afraid of the prospect of possibly losing the objects; on the other, I wanted…
Objects as Evidence: Swiss Pencil Sharpener
In ‘Mind in matter: An introduction to material culture theory and method’, art historian and material culture scholar Jules David Prown outlines a three point methodology for analysing objects: description, deduction, and speculation.[1] In this blogpost, I will be applying this method to analyse a personal object – namely, a Swiss pencil sharpening machine –…
Objects as Evidence? The little glowing cat
Objects are evidence of their owner’s or user’s experience. This experience consists of sensory and intellectual encounters with the object which create a certain value for the user. Archivists face the challenge to detect the original intended users as well as their original experiences with the object and the value it used to have. To…
Masquerade: the Hunt For the Golden Hare
When is a book not just a book? I’m aware that there are a LOT of answers to this question but in this instance it’s when it’s also a treasure hunt. In this week’s lectures we’ve been discussing ideas around material culture and objects as evidence so I want to take this opportunity to discuss…
Objects as Evidence: Embroidered Folk Art
Description: Embroidery onto white cotton muslin fabric, machine sewn onto navy cotton fabric with small white hearts. This could possibly be considered a decorative folk art piece. The embroidered words read “I’ve been taken again, kidnapped before dawn stolen by these songs, oh damn them all.” and also include an embroidered double cross with blue…
Objects as Evidence: Running Shoes
Rachel Talbot applies Jules Prown’s Three Point Model (1982) in relation to a pair of running shoes.
A closer look: video recordings and the potential digital preservation challenges they pose for the University of Glasgow
It is apparent from the University of Glasgow’s Archives and Special Collections’ Collections development policy that the university would want to capture a former graduate and professor of Information Studies’ professional records. While both personal and professional materials were given to the university in the form of a laptop, external storage, etc., we have decided…
Transformational Technology: that time I destroyed two VHS tapes by liking them too much
Looking back at my childhood, there is probably nothing that had such a lasting impact in my life as VHS tapes did. So strong was (and still is) my love for animation, that over the course of the 90s and 2000s, I collected every animated movie in existence that I could get my greedy child’s…
GIMP: the free software to realize creative visions
When I was a child, I loved to play around with ‘Painter’ on our old Windows ’89 family computer. I took random pictures from the internet and “painted” over it, or just simply painted something with the programme itself. Over the years, I discovered new image editors on the internet that allowed me to create…
Oh Snap! The Rise of Digital Cameras
Through my lifetime I feel like I’ve encountered so many transformative pieces of technology that it’s difficult to narrow it down and choose just one thing. Something that has had a big impact for me personally has been the digital camera. Digital cameras (not our current definition of ‘digital’) have existed since the 1970s, but…
The Garmin Forerunner 235: Ready, Set, Record!
Rachel Talbot discusses why the Garmin Forerunner 235 was a transformational piece of technology in her life and what it says about digital obsolescence.
Mixtapes and mixed feelings
In the late 1990s, I had moved to a new country and had started learning English through picture cards and songs. Ms Ushi, my English teacher, introduced me to music by Jack David, apparently ‘one of America’s foremost children’s recording artists’, according to his online bio. Ms Ushi’s daughter and I bonded quickly over these…
The Netflix Revolution
One of the most exciting parts of my weekends as a child would be going to the local VHS rental store to pick a movie to watch. These tapes were bulky and stored in colourful cases that really appealed to my curiosity. Lithuania never had its own branch of the iconic (and now rather infamous)…
Transformational Technology: Like Music To My Ears
Having been tasked to write a blog post for the group work we had done in class, where I had to write about a digital technology I consider transformative for my life, I was stuck as to how I would write about my chosen object. There are several technologies that I could have selected, some…
Transformational Technology: Sibling Bonding Through Video Games
As is the case with most siblings, my relationship with my brother was tumultuous in our younger years. The only thing that could curb this, and give our parents some peace, was our shared Nintendo 64. Originally released in 1996, the Nintendo 64 was Nintendo’s answer to the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn. Despite being…
The Versatility of the Zoom Recorder
Handheld Zoom recorders have been used by musicians, podcast hosts, filmmakers and so many other creative professionals for years. I had never heard of the technology until working as a graduate assistant at UNC Charlotte’s University Archives and Special Collections. I was working on interviewing black white couples in North Carolina for my thesis and…
Lessons from Katrina: What Climate Change Means for Archival Planning
In 2005, the United States experienced one of the most devastating storms to ever hit the country: Hurricane Katrina. The result was thousands of lives lost and hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. No disaster management plan could have mitigated the damage to libraries, archives and special collection repositories. The American Library Association estimates…
The Truth Is Out There: FOIA and the Calvine UFO sighting
In 1990, one of the most famous UFO sightings in Britain occurred over the Scottish village of Calvine. Thirty years have passed since then, meaning the photos taken by two unsuspecting hikers of the event are due to be released into public record on January 1 2021. However, the Ministry of Defence has recently halted…
Observing the Uncensored Library experience: what can be learned from unconventional methods of digital data preservation?
Originally developed by Mojang Studios,“Minecraft” was initially released for Windows, OS X and Linux to the general public on November 18th 2011. Over the course of ten years, the game has greatly widened its audience, being released also on other popular gaming systems such as Playstation and Xbox due to its enormous success. To give…
Black Cultural Archives London: the educational power of archives
In connection with the Black History Month in October 2020, it is worth having a look at the Black Cultural Archives in London which celebrates Black history all year long. Since their foundation in 1981, the archive collects, preserves, and celebrates the histories of African and Caribbean people in Britain. I want to highlight in…
The Old Fossil and the American Heretic: The Story of Jenkinson and Schellenberg’s Archival Feud
Sir Hilary Jenkinson and Theodore R. Schellenberg are widely considered to be the co-fathers of modern archival theory. Their input in regards to record-keeping techniques and principles is so substantial that archivists wrestle with their ideas to this day. They also represent the polar opposites of archival thinking. Jenkinson was a classicist who believed that…
The Digital Landscape of the Indigenous Archive
In this period of social isolation, we have found ourselves lucky to be enriched with a quality of technology that allows us to connect to one another through the online. As a feature that has been recognised during the Covid-19 pandemic to connect family and friends together during isolation, the digital landscape is even more…
Digitisation Decision Making and Access During Covid-19
Covid-19 has presented us all with a range of challenges, personally and professionally. Restrictions have made archives, libraries and museums across the globe rethink access and how we provide vital services to the public. I’d like to focus on the role of digital collections and digitisation projects in providing access to archive and library collections…
Occasional frenemies: records and democracy
Joy Nam explores the entanglements between archives, records, human rights, and democracy by reviewing and comparing two articles: Jarrett M. Drake’s ‘Insurgent Citizens’, which analyses the police shootings that occurred in New Orleans’ Danziger Bridge in 2005 and the subsequent fabrication of records; and Kristen Weld’s ‘No Democracy Without Archives’, which exposes the dramatic rise…
Archivist and Historian: Natural Bedfellows
The Archivist and the Historian, name a more iconic duo? Rachel Talbot takes a look at the shared history of these professions and how they can work productively in the future.
The lost Grenfell Tower records: oversight or archival mismanagement?
When investigating the causes of the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, it was recently discovered by the inquiry that emails, documents, and design drawings relating to the refurbishment at Grenfell Tower were lost forever after being wiped from a laptop. Was this an oversight or was it an instance of grievous archival mismanagement?
Blogging with IMPunity…
This blog is managed and written by a group of aspiring archivists currently undertaking the Information Management and Preservation course at the University of Glasgow. The course aims to develop and refine professional skills related to the management of archives and records both in their physical and digital forms. In this small archive of ours…
sIMPly archivists 