the weekend before is a lot

Whew. I’ve had quite the weekend! As usual with my life, I do not feel rested at all before heading back into classes. I’ll be hosting two friends from California for a few days and then my father for another few days. Next week I continue working at the Archives Research Room, but I’m also starting a Digitization class. Days will be full, nights will be fuller.

My weekend began with meeting my mother’s very-long-time best friend, Joyce! She’s from Ann Arbor and everyone really wanted me to attend Ann Arbor for library school, but I didn’t feel like studying the GREs when I was working 5 part-time jobs in 2011. Joyce and her partner, TJ, drove from Ann Arbor to Madison whilst on vacation. They went to Ian’s Pizza because they love it and it was a happy support during the protests here.  In the evening, after we went to rent a car, they met us at the Old Fashioned — which is the first place Derek and I visited when we got here and the first place we had cheese curds.

Joyce and me at the Old Fashioned

The next day, we woke up at 4am and left around 5:30am for East Lansing, Michigan, where MSU is located; the wedding was in MSU’s Horticulture Gardens (beautiful!) and the ceremony was in the MSU Union (really cool). I didn’t have a great car ride; they make me anxious. There were some absolutely beautiful and huge and menacing thunderstorms, though! We arrived later than we wanted to, so we didn’t get to take a nap. Our nap was a shower to wake us up and a 5 hour energy drink. It mostly felt wonderful to be out of the car! And then we were off to my good friend’s peaceful and lovely wedding.

Green Cab was too busy to drive us to the wedding. We showed up in a Shaggin’ Wagon. Seriously.

Chrissy and Derrick — married!

Dinner and dancing, followed by a cupcake.

Me and the beautiful bride :)

We left around 9pm, we were so tired. Chrissy and Derrick had a lot of great friends and family there, so understandably didn’t get  a lot of time to chat with us. (the last 3 weddings I’ve been to were exactly the same in that regard!) It was really just a gift to be able to witness their marriage and then celebrate it afterwards. They did a great job with planning — it really seemed and looked effortless, and for that I commend them! I’ve known Chrissy for over a decade and I’m so happy to see her happy. Derrick is a great guy, too!

We passed out in our hotel room, woke up just in time for a free breakfast, and then headed back out to go all the way home again.

Moar driving!

I was supposed to switch with Derek right before Chicago because I did not feel like dealing with annoying Illinois tolls, but drove us all the way past O’Hare. We went to an “Oasis” to eat and walked around to stretch our legs. It was over 102 degrees in Chicago! I was not jealous of living there in summer. We got back in town by 6 or so, and decided to treat ourselves to a movie, so we saw the Avengers. (I liked it just fine, but don’t really get why it was so big to so many people. Comics just aren’t for me, I guess) We exchanged our rental car for our old P.O.S. car and drove home. SLEEP.

Today has been fairly relaxing. We tried out a new place to us called Monty’s Blue Plate Diner. My french toast was okay, but not as good as I thought it’d be! I loved the atmosphere there though and want to try a lot of new things on the menu. It’s in the Atwood area, which seems a lot more spread out and not as busy as I thought, but it’s a nice area. If we ever move, I think I’d like to move to that part of town. Today I also uploaded a lot of videos, including old ones. Another big, but quick, storm came in, and I watched it while on our porch for a long time. I love Midwestern spring/summer storms. (I could do without the humidity though!)

Well, that’s my long 3-day weekend. I’m very tired, but I really loved being “unplugged.” It’s something I wish I could feel I could do while in my own home, but when I’m in my apartment, it means there’s always things to do, and they almost always require my computer’s internet connection. Le sigh.

How was your three-day weekend?

Teaching a seminar!

I was recently given the fantastic opportunity to teach a seminar on archival basics to a small community in southern Wisconsin. I’m extremely excited about it! For this historical society, I want to help the community members understand that old doesn’t equal scarce and that things like provenance matters — where was that picture taken and who is in it and what does it tell us? The following is the description I just sent off to the community members. Do you have any helpful tips? What would you put into an archival basics course (copyright issues, acid-free boxes, software, etc)?

• June 16th: Back to Basics in the Archives by Dana Gerber
  Are you interested in your community’s history? Do you want to know how to better collect and save the items that are meaningful for you? This Back to Basics workshop is aimed towards people interested in documenting their community’s past with practical knowledge about good archival practices. It will be facilitated by Dana Gerber, a current graduate student at University of Wisconsin, Madison, specializing in the Archives track. By the end of the session, you should know about what constitutes an archive, collection policies, a deed of gift, the idea provenance, the need for good metadata, finding aids, marketing and more. You will have a better idea of what is worth saving and how to do it well!

not my first conference, but my best!

I’m not going to try too terribly hard to be eloquent about a conference after an early morning, a long car ride across a few states, and a huge Indian dinner to top it all off. I need time to stretch my legs and digest (my food) the whole experience.

I can say that I think it is absolutely worth it to attend conferences, even if they sound like stuffy events where people in suits go to suck up, be insincere, and lose snippets of their own dignity. Well, that’s what I thought through most of high school at least. It can be either difficult or downright suffocating to imagine one’s self having to grow up just to slave away (in a suit) in an environment where one completely does not belong.

But the Midwest Archives Conference was fun. I met new people without feeling like I was being disgraceful to myself — it was for the joy of meeting them, knowing what their program or their work was like, learning what they were looking into now and how I’ve never even thought of that. It wasn’t to schmooze for a job at a place I don’t belong. Friends in the program and I have spoken about how we’re not naturally competitive or cut-throat, and worry that a competitive field with few jobs would bend our ideas of ourselves so we could get that job. I felt completely myself the entire weekend — sometimes unsure, sometimes regretful that my resume didn’t look like hers!, but never like I had to conform or be rejected. I could be myself, but just a little more “on.” And that’s a profession I can believe in.

10 of us from UW-Madison went and we felt like powerhouses. 10 is a pretty big number. We were a hit in the Vendor Room because we sold crafts that we lovingly made by hand. The proceeds are helping us to cover costs and then establish a fund to help us attend more conferences, and maybe set up a scholarship for future archives students. Exciting! We also all had our perhaps small, but great personal achievements. And on the fun car ride home, we chatted about putting together our very own panel. Double exciting!

And the group that went, my classmates, I got to know better than I would have had we just said hello to each other in class (or disagreed about a postmodern outlook on archives etc etc). Friday was especially fantastic. I was around truly amazing individuals who are going to help be a part of the future of archives. We all have our places we want to be and I hope that the non-competitive atmosphere of mutual respect and support continues. (this is why I never wanted to try out pre-med in undergrad …)

My throat hurts from talking so much and my jaw from smiling/laughing so much. And most of all, oh boy am I tired, so thank you MAC, and goodnight.

Leslie, pleased with what she sees

Sarah and Nathan checking out the amazing view from Cygnus 27

Laura and Audra, excited but a little tired :)

Dana and Leslie before a session!

New Friends Checking Out Karaoke

The MAC Reception

Dana sitting in Ford’s Cabinet Room (Grand Rapids, Michigan)

Prairie, Nathan, and Laura

MAC Celebrates 40 Years: An Ice Sculpture

Sarah and Eric at the SAA-SC Table

Kate Theimer of ArchivesNext.com

Nathan and Prairie fully enjoying the MAC Reception

Alex, Prairie and Leslie at the MAC Reception

Audra at the MAC Reception

Student Poster Session with Alex, Jen, and Rick

This is what good marketing looks like.

I felt incredibly privileged to attend Bookless, an excellent and extremely well-done event at the Madison Central Public Library. According to a few of my peers in my program who grew up here, the Central Library is one many people know, but it really needs an uplift. And that’s exactly what it is getting! I highly encourage you to continue to donate to the new library here.

Three students in the UW Madison program created this wonderful project centered around art inspired within libraries called Library as Incubator, and it has thrived since originally launched. It’s really quite imaginative and inspiring on its own. Because Bookless was so focused on art within the library, I actually thought the idea came from this project. However, according to their blog, the idea came from the Gallery Coordinator Trent Miller of the library as a fundraiser. And as far as I can tell, not only was the fundraiser a smashing success, the marketing of libraries was one too!

The first great idea that I loved from this event: it wasn’t targeted to only children & families or adults (and hipsters, haha). From 10am to 2pm, families were highly encouraged to come check out the fun. I didn’t attend then but I heard from classmates who volunteered that it was extremely fun to see the kids so excited to paint on walls and do other fun art projects! Then Bookless opened again at 7pm with a bar for us adults. Lots of people were still drawing on the walls. There was a section devoted to stamps and old stickers (I put one of my face, Rainbow Brite style). There was a fantastic photo booth. Downstairs in the basement, music boomed and a trippy video played to it. Ghostlike, creepy figures hung from the walls. Art installations hugged the walls and were placed between the frames of the old stacks. The lockers of the “Lower Staxx!” workers were on display.  The pneumatic tubes were used by the Oracle. Upstairs, the old fiction room was used as a stage for various bands through the night. And, of course, more art was on display!

Everyone I saw seemed to be having fun. Unfortunately for me, it was a little too hot and smokey, so I went home feeling a little faint and overheated. Water and sleep helped me immensely. Other than that, and sometimes too-low lighting, there is nothing bad I can say about the Bookless event. Huge, huge kudos to the Madison Public Library!

Post-Thanksgiving

I’m happy to report that I am at home and not taking part in Black Friday — actually, I think I am going to try and make all of my gifts this year! This coming from someone who in the past has not been very crafty, save for that stint in art class before middle school …

Unhappily, I am home instead writing an Issue Briefing. Maybe I should become a consumerist American.

The real reason I’m here open to this particular page, though: HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Derek and I spent the holiday together … Our first one when it was just us. We both missed our families and California, but we’re very thankful to spend it together. We played board games for most of the day and took a walk post-dinner, pre-dessert. (It’s really not that cold outside yet; the Midwest is lulling me into false temperature comfort)

We had a really wonderful meal. I didn’t want to cook anything from scratch this year because I just didn’t have time, but we still did a great job! We actually bought everything from Trader Joe’s. To start, we had cinnamon buns. Then while playing a board game called Elfenland (and we dearly missed playing with our friends Nicole and Daniel) we ate tons of crackers and goat cheese with pistachios. I also had a banana for good measure. Haha. Then we drank some wine while playing the Game of Life. For dinner, we had a stuffed tofurky roast! Both of us really liked it — and Derek isn’t even vegetarian. For sides, we had salad and garlic mashed potatoes covered in gravy. For dessert, we had delicious pecan pie. This might be my first time not having pumpkin pie, which I LOVE, but we also bought a pumpkin spice cake to have over the weekend. Oh, and we also played Monopoly on my computer, but the AI was beating us to a pulp, so we surrendered by turning off the game and forcing the AI into bleak nothingness of cyberspace.

We both got to chat with our parents on the phone. I sent out some messages to my friends. It was warm inside our apartment and smelled so good. It was perfect. :)

I am thankful, as always, for my friends and family. I am thankful for the chance to attend graduate school. I am thankful for our shelter and for our food. I am thankful for how hard Derek is trying in this very new land. I am thankful, as always.

Wisconsin Library Association – Shift Happens

I’m at my first conference! I’m currently sitting at the “Internet cafe,” which is just two tables with six laptops on them in a corner. It’s near the “Uncommons Area” which is a place to discuss, network, review, and share. It’s also near the table of coffee and food — I have discovered that conferences keep people very well fed, which isn’t what I expected; with how much it cost just for lunch (over $30), I brought fruit and granola bars … but I feel stuffed all the time!

Anyway, my first conference is the Wisconsin Library Association. It’s exciting because I never really imagined myself living in Wisconsin, much less a part of as association in Wisconsin, but it also helps the truth settle in that I am in library school!

People here are extremely nice. They make it seem like all librarians are willing to be mentees to you and also not only embrace change, but love it for the high it gives them. It’s a different atmosphere than even Madison’s library school at times, which for a while felt like it would be a lot of “You can’t do that anymore, get used to it.” They’re the same concepts (“shift happens,” as the keynote speaker Stephen Abram said) but it’s enthusiastic and invigorating here.

One thing I am having trouble with is networking. I have met people I don’t know, but I was introduced by people who did know them. I did just introduce myself to Meredith of the famous Archives Gig, but I had done an informal introduction through email (since we are both at Madison) first.  I suppose my worry is I don’t want people to think I don’t belong here because I am more interested in archives than libraries.

So, for now, I have chosen to sit and listen very well, as I still feel like I am finding my footing. I am learning a lot. I’m also now late for the next workshop which started one minute ago — on Media Permissions and Ethics for the 21st Century!

One last thing that is a bummer: I did something to my upper back, shoulders, and neck that makes it hard to really focus. I think overnight it got even tighter and more painful than it’s been. I just have to keep stretching and hope it goes away soon!

Parades! Potlucks! MetaDiners! Coffee Dates!

I have a personal, unshared journal that I write simply in Notepad on my computer, dating back to 2005. Tonight I wrote, “GAH. I can’t tell if I’m overwhelmed or just not imbued with a super sense of creative lyrical textual ecstasy.” Oh, so pretentious.

I really did not expect to be this active with my program. I don’t mean to say that I thought I’d drift through, not attend any meetings, not bother to meet people, and just try to power-through for the end goal: a degree that is required for so many job postings. However, at Berkeley, I definitely did tend to show up to the first meeting and not the rest — it was even an Activity on my Facebook profile, back when Facebook organized it like that. I tried out clubs like Cooking Club, which seemed like such a fun idea but wasn’t once I met the people.

In a little more than the last week, I’ve been on many outings with classmates and to a lot of meetings. I am rarely alone. I try to go to the SLIS Library to read but really just end up talking to friends more … which I can cleverly mask as “networking,” right? On my calendar, the time between work and school looks so gleefully free, perfect for finishing that last article! Oh but no no, it is never the same every day, and there is always someone new to laugh with.

The MetaDiners has probably been the source of most of my socializing lately. Two weekends ago, some of us took a tour of the Capital Brewery in Middleton. This last Saturday, I planned to go to Green Thumb Farm but was too wiped out from a parade — but someone was able to go! That post should arrive shortly. Also on Saturday, about 10 of us went to Brasserie V, famous for its choice of beer. My favorite part of the night was my Organic Strawberry Ale. Um, delicious? Tonight about 8 of us met up at a cafe called Barriques – a place that beautifully mixes a mocha with peppermint schnapps and serves it up in a socially appropriate mug to drink during the day whilst studying. Tomorrow, we are heading to Nerd Nite to attend … well, imagine a conference, late at night, at a bar, that presents on things like werewolves.

I am officially part of UW-Madison’s ALA student chapter, especially because I was recently elected Webmaster! (I was late to the meeting. Haha.) We had a roaring good time at the homecoming parade doing a book cart drill team. The theme of this year’s homecoming was Bucky Badger’s 100 Greatest Hits, so we all dressed up to represent decades as we did the routine to music from that decade. Also, yes, our mascot is seriously named Bucky, is seriously a badger, and Madison takes homecoming VERY SERIOUSLY. We represented the decades from the ’30s to the present. I got to be the ’40s, which was quite fun as I didn’t even have to buy a new dress! I just bumped my bangs up a bit, put on bright red lipstick, and wore my cardigan over the dress. I decorated my cart with book covers from the ’40s, including The Lottery and The Little Prince. The sides of my cart said “LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS” and “Hi sugar, you rationed?” Lastly, my wig entirely failed, and I kind of hope I never have to deal with wigs ever again.

This past Sunday, I attended a professional development oriented potluck at a prominent archivist’s house. It was great fun — he and his wife made a mean vegetarian enchilada! My classmates also brought a wide, great assortment of food to munch on. Then we sat down to hear a lot about the world of job hunting for archivists. Did I mention? I’m also part of UW-Madison’s SAA student chapter, which stands for Society of American Archivists, not Sexual Addicts Anonymous or Society of American Anarchists. At our next meeting I am hoping we can discuss a fundraiser to get all of us members out to San Diego in August for the SAA conference. It would be a dream!

Speaking of conferences, I’m officially signed up to attend the WLA (Wisconsin Library Association) conference for three days. All of my professors happily signed off on it and encouraged me to attend, even if I obviously don’t have anything to present yet. Perhaps I can speak to someone about my community archive ideas and podcast?

In the end, the good news is I am not feeling as overwhelmed as I once was. I am already feeling much calmer about the process of grad school. This might change once I get into classes that demand much more of me, but right now, I’ll take it.

Deliciousness Arrives at Brasserie V

A tour of the Capital Brewery, a leader in microbreweries!

ALA takes a break after the parade to float in the glamor of our fame. ;)

Image courtesy of Tanya Cobb, of SLIS. Here is ALA representing SLIS!

Image courtesy of Tanya Cobb, of SLIS. The 40s!

What Silence Means

Two Saturdays ago now, I took the step towards TLAM, or Tribal Libraries, Archives, and Museums. We visited the Wisconsin Dells to see H.H. Bennett’s studio, who is possibly one of the first modern “photojournalists.” After lunch, we took a boat tour to the Upper Dells.

The reasons were going were, of course, tied to tribal communities. Bennett, for example, took many photographs (probably embellished though) of Native Americans, specifically the Ho-Chunk tribe. Most of his studio, and our tour guide, did not focus on this relationship. It was actually the very first thing to see in the exhibit, but after that it became a history of Bennett’s photography and inventions. Fair enough, right? Because it’s a museum of his studio, and one can presume that he did not spend his entire life photographing Native Americans. And he didn’t spend most of his life doing that — most of his life was taken by the landscape of the Dells and actually inventing new camera technology.

Our tour guide barely knew anything about the Ho-Chunk or his relationship. The tour guide was a nice man and interested in Dells history, in the past 100 years, at least. The museum was nicely done and also interested in history, but mainly the past 100 years.

When the tour guide and the museum got to the Ho-Chunk, there were pictures from Bennett, a tale of how the Dells were created (a serpent winding its way through the land to create the unique landscape) and not much else. The tour guide barely knew anything — but he also humbly stated that we did probably know a lot more, and warmly welcomed us to share what we knew. One member’s girlfriend who came along for the day told us a lot about the reciprocal relationship between Bennett taking photos of the Ho-Chunk for his own fame and the Ho-Chunk letting him for their own advocacy. Meanwhile, the guide to the museum says they lived in the Dells for a very long time, hunting and gathering. This is history to many people: a vague concept of hunting and gathering until, at last, civilization with its records arrives.

The Upper Dells boat tour was extremely pretty — the perfect time to take it was now, right as autumn is settling in, and the leaves were still turning. It was not too cold and not too hot. The boat tour, of course, grabs hold of the beauty and makes it accessible with a lovely $25 fee. We walked through an extremely interesting set of — caves? I am not sure what it was! They called it the Witches’ Gulf. We wound through the features on a wooden walkway, and oddly passed by people with loads of popcorn and nachos. Oh, right, … there’s an entire concession stand in the middle of this landscape, complete with something probably called blue razzmatazz.

The tour guide on the boat was a sweet kid named Madison (and the captain was named Dane — coincidence? [FYI to non-Madisonians: Madison the city is in Dane the county]) who was fed his script. The only times Native Americans were mentioned was when he pointed out a rock that looks like a generic Indian Chief and generalized folklore about natives stealing something or other. Native Americans, in this tour, did not even exist as hunters and gatherers — they only existed in their relationship to the white folk.

Is the history of a tribe inherently silent to what we conceptualize as our modern society? One member of TLAM, after seeing the exhibit and then the tour, was exceptionally cheerful and optimistic, and did not walk away complaining and huffing about the injustice of the representation. She smiled and said, “Well, now we know what we need to do! We just have to let more people know about the history.”

The archives can seem like a majestic place where scholars can come to find the secrets of every society to ultimately expose. In the stacks of boxes upon boxes, you must be able to find anything. To many, the archives can be a place of power — the information is sitting there, waiting to be found, for justice to be complete. But, just as much as there are letters revealing the true plan of the president, there can be silence. The power is in the information that is not sitting there, waiting to be found. In our archives, the history of a people passed down through speech, not records, can sometimes be the same as silence.

 

The posed image we took for Dells Boat Tour. And then bought. :)

Part of the H.H. Bennett Exhibit

Part of the H.H. Bennett exhibit: the Ho-Chunk Story of the Dells.

Posing in Bennett’s very own studio, the students of TLAM.

The Dells is full of interesting, strange formations!

The part of the Dells I can’t describe very well.

One of Bennett’s inventions was the “snapper,” which could take photos of one moment. He proved it by having his son jump across that gap. Now the boat tour has a cute dog do it.