An amazing amount of new
non-paper Archives have been created by seven individuals working far away from
our Chicago location. One focus has been in audio-visual compilations,
digitization and evaluation.
Michael May in Indiana made
eighteen DVD's focusing on J. W. Mathews speeches. In addition, Don Cramer
in Washington is listening to one DVD each week, identifying the speaker,
evaluating for quality and significance of content.
Frank Knutson in California and
Jim Baumbach in Wisconsin have identified and improved major photo groupings
from Global Archives and personal files. They are all scanned and are
available by subject (i.e. Town Meeting, Fifth City, etc) in the Archive
Office. Walt Epley in Denver has made a complete directory of Paul Evans' audio
tapes which include 105 cassettes from four Summer Research Assemblies.
The
second focus is testing two data systems to determine what will be included in
the on-line introduction to a major Archives Collection. Team leaders Tim
Wegner in Houston and Steve Harrington in Costa Rica are determining the best
options, creating working models, and organizing working teams. The
prototypes will be presented in the April Archive Spring Sojourn to on-site
participants and interested evaluators. It's great to know that colleagues that
cannot make the trip to Chicago are still interested in helping preserve our
history. If you are interested in helping out and cannot make one of
thesojourns this year please contact mphilbrook@ica-usa.org, and see what
other options might be available.