Conference Day 2

The second day of the conference is over. It was a lot more exciting than day 1, primarily because this was the first day of actual programming. The day started out with a panel session. I went to one about participatory archives. There were three presentations that focused on ways to involve users and the general public involved in archives for the purpose of adding knowledge or content. One example that came up several times is What's on the Menu, which is a project at the New York Public Library. Its goal is to transcribe the library's menu collection to make it searchable by dish. Click on the link to check out its website.

In the afternoon I attended a second panel session. This one was about copyright. It was a fascinating look at ways to deal with copyright and privacy issues in digitizing collections. There were three presentations, the best of which was one by Cornell University Senior Policy Adviser Peter Hirtle. The gist of it was that we should be respectful of copyright laws and not afraid of them. A close second was a presentation by Barbara Aiken who works for the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art. The focus here was on issues concerning privacy and appropriateness of materials for digitization. For the AAA, this can be an issue since they have a lot of material that contains nudity and even some personal information.

However the day did not end there. The evening began with the graduate student poster session. We had an entry, which focused on our trip to Yale University last year. Look for this poster to be on the website, hopefully by next week. While there I found out about a conference put on by the University of Indiana at Bloomington for graduate students and recent graduates. I will post more about this at a later date. An alumni reception followed. Turn out was good. It was fascinating to see how widely spread UAlbany alumni are. The event was also a great opportunity to network with those already in the field. The night ended with a trip to a local bar. Tomorrow I should be able to make a final post about the conference summarizing the entire experience.