Hailstorm and broken windows

          Recently Abilene was hit by a major hailstorm – golf ball to baseball sized hail.  Over 200 cars were severely damaged.  The hail even went straight through some roofs.  One of the universities had the windows damaged on one side of virtually every building. Plywood was brought in by the truckload.  You get the picture.  The Special Collections area of the library has large windows on the damaged side of the building although only the study tables are directly behind those windows. Fortunately the archives are in a separate room without windows on the damaged side.  That brings up the need for both organizations and individual to have a disaster plan.  Prevention should be at the top of your to do list.  That means proper storage for your valuable papers.  Some people have fireproof safes or rent safety deposit boxes in banks.  Universities and other organizations have duplicate copies of the most valuable material in off-site storage.  Now, of course, computers offer another mechanism for storage.  Backing up in lots of places, as you know is important and really essential - the cloud, external hard drives, thumb drives, CDs.  For organizations microfilm is an excellent option. 

             For material that is important to you, like photographs, store them in a dark room or closet without windows.  Keep the material off the floor.  Don’t store anything that shouldn’t get wet in the basement.  If you must use a basement, keep items off the floor six to twelve inches to protect from flood damage.  For different reasons, an attic is a bad place to store valuable papers, photographs, and so forth.  The heat will cause rapid deterioration.  Do remember where you put things so you can access them quickly.  Make a list of what’s where if you have to.  My cousin lost some old family photos to a fire because she forgot what drawer she put them in and couldn’t find them in the rush of evacuation.  Make copies and store them elsewhere if you can.  Keep up with the changes in technology and update your records accordingly.  The internet is a great place to store your material, but it isn’t foolproof.  What is accessible today may not be tomorrow.  Just think Betamax.

               Off to New York tomorrow. More on disaster planning later.

Apps for Archives (and Everybody Else Too)

             At the Social Media training that I attended last week the most valuable information was an introduction to the various apps available to assist in the dissemination of information. The ones that interested me most deal with the addition of graphics to a Facebook page or a website.  I have been a committed Adobe Photoshop user up until they went to the monthly fee approach so I’ve been looking for alternatives.  One that was suggested in the training was picmonkey.com.  I haven’t worked with it yet, but from the demonstration it looks like it provides all the options that were available in the early versions of photoshop before it got so complicated.  Photoshop is great for graphic artists and professional photographers, but for me Picmonkey sounds like it provides everything I need for free. Two other options that help with graphics for social media page designs are listed below. These apps provide the correct sizing of images.  The sizing is in pixels and the program sizes the image without distorting it.  Either of the following work well according to the trainer:

 http://socialmediatoday.com/tara-urso/2393561/social-media-dimensions-blueprint

http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/social-media-image-dimensions_b44957

More after I try to design a business page on Facebook and go get a smartphone.  

Social Media Training

           Went to an all day training last week.  The topic was social media - in particular Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest.  The workshop was aimed at non-profits and was sponsored by the Texas Forts Trail, a state funded program promoting tourism in West Texas.  (Note: In the early days of settlement, a line of forts to protect settlers was established from Ft Worth to what is now the Mexican border.  These forts were moved westward from Ft. Worth as settlement expanded.  The fort in Abilene, which was only used briefly, was founded in the 1850s) But I digress.  I figure I’m the last person in the world to join the 21^st century and learn about the value of these social media applications for organizations like archives.  I don’t even have a smart phone but will have to have one if I start using Instagram. 

One of the most appealing aspects of social media is that usage is free, but as the trainer pointed out "nothing is really ever free".  You can sign up for free, but to expand your audience you have a choice of different levels of paid ads.  They are reasonable and they do offer stats to measure their effectiveness, but you have to have a budget that includes outreach expenses and many non-profits don’t.  Of course the biggest expense for all social media apps is time.  To be of any value content must be ever changing.  For an organization that means staff time both in meetings to decide what should be added or by an individual assigned to constantly add more information. According to the trainer, the first step if you are an organization is to establish guidelines of what will be uploaded to social media.  Next for all of the apps except Twitter the information must contain graphics.  Sometimes all of the effort may be worthwhile and sometimes it may not be.  It certainly is something to consider before you commit your organization or yourself.

            Facebook is a good example of an app that needs frequent attention. As you probably know, you have to start with a personal page in order to launch a business page.  I think the most valuable benefit of these apps is to provide links to your website.  As the trainer suggested these apps can help promote special events, new exhibits, the availability of new collections, and get you known. Still you really have to consider if it is cost effective.  If you have enough staff and an advertising budget go for it, if not you really need to consider what your goals are and what you hope to achieve.  Maybe local newspaper and radio coverage reaches your audience more effectively. I’m going to see for myself with facebook.  Don’t think the others would work well for me, but they sound fun - all except Twitter which has no appeal to me.  I guess you either love it or hate it or so I'm told.

Losing Our History One Page at a Time

           One of the opportunities that I have had while working with archives is to do research at local small town courthouses here in West Texas.  Courthouse documents are treasure troves of information about the development of a town, the buying and selling of land, and other legal matters. Unfortunately the court records in the counties I visited are slowly deteriorating.  Some are stored in cellars, which could flood if it ever were to rain.  All are used on a daily basis some quite extensively because of the current oil boom.  As far as I know the counties do not have back ups although recently title companies are copying the land records.  Texas is late adopting title insurance.  Historically land records, known as abstracts, were and still are kept by the individual property owners rather than a title company.  Abstracts provide a copy of every legal transaction that has occurred to the property if it was recorded in the courthouse.

            Courthouse records need to be put on microfilm so that the information is preserved.  Microfilm is the one of the few backup material that will last when the paper is gone.  If that can’t happen due to financial constraints then the material should be scanned and stored in the cloud.   Someone will have to be assigned to insure that the material is upgraded when the technology changes, which you may have noticed is frequent.   The West Texas Digital Archives will be scanning records from Abilene City Hall (mostly City Council meetings).  Hopefully we will be able to expand this to courthouse records in surrounding towns. What a great project that would be!  You should look into the preservation steps that your local government agency is taking to preserve their records. If you are a genealogist or a historian these records are invaluable