Daniel Pitti

L-90: Designing Archival Description Systems

 

9-13 June 2008

 

1)    How useful were the pre-course readings?

 

1: Very useful. The readings prepared us for the background of our discussions and the current state of archival description and technology. 2: Quite useful for framing the discussion. 3: Very applicable. 4: Very. 5: The readings were an excellent primer, especially those on XML and relational database design. 6: Very. The course was structured around the readings and we kept referring back to them. 7: I think the pre-course readings were essential for me to give me some foundation for what we were learning in class. 8: Very useful.

 

2)    Were the course syllabus and other materials distributed in class appropriate and useful (or will they be so in the future, after you return home)?

 

1: Yes. 3-4: Yes. I especially liked various students’ contributions of copies of their notes and digital photographs. 5: Yes. We collaborated on notes, and that shared resource will be very helpful. 6: Very. 7: Yes. The notes that we took from the class will be extremely useful. 8: Yes.

 

3)    What aspects of the course content were of the greatest interest or relevance for your purposes? Was the intellectual level of the course appropriate?

 

1: The various aspects of description were important and relevant, and how they would be used in an electronic environment. The intellectual level of course was appropriate. 2: Those pertaining to how CPF/EAC-CPF relate to EAD. 3: Working through the EAC-CPF format as part of the course was extremely useful, both in the context of the course and for future work in my institution. 4: Both the technical and theoretical elements were very useful, the former provided the vocabulary and background for talking about the latter. 5: The detailed analysis of designing databases for archival descriptive data will help me to improve practices at my institution. 6: Very stimulating discussion, right at my level. My greatest interest was  learning emerging standards, and, in general, sharing ideas with classmates and the instructor. 7: It is difficult to pick out aspects because everything was interrelated. The whole principle of how to organize data in order to get the most out of it was really well conveyed. The explanation of the new EAC-CPF standard was very useful. The intellectual level was challenging, but in a good way. 8: The entire course was of great interest and relevance to my work. The intellectual level of the course was appropriate; if there was an intellectual weakness it was my own.

 

4)    What did you like best about the course?

 

1: Using the whiteboards to sketch out ideas was helpful and appropriate. This provided me with a good example of how to organize this kind of planning meeting and using diagrams for explanation. 2: I liked the collaborative/collegial atmosphere, and DP’s suiting the course content to our experience and abilities. 3: Working with the other students, and the instructor. It was a singular group of professional archivists. 4: Small [class] size, and focused nature of topic. 5: The relaxed and collaborative spirit, as well as the willingness to pursue interesting tangents that always proved useful if sometimes not where the discussion was originally headed. 6: The instructor and classmates. 7: I liked that it was a small group and the group dynamic worked very well. It was really a great opportunity to work on thinking about archival systems in a theoretical sense for a full five days which is a rare thing. 8: The teacher, and how he handled the class and managed the discussions.

 

5)    How could the course have been improved?

 

1: I think there could have been more supplemental material provided during the week by the instructor, although that might have been part of the point of the course. 3: The course would have been more practical if the standards discussed were finalized, yet this is also what made it so useful. 4: Could have been one or two more days! 5: More time! 6: I feel like we could have accomplished truly amazing things with a second week. 7: In truth I could have benefitted from a few more days, because there was more that we could’ve covered, and it was very fast-paced; that would’ve given us a bit more time to digest and reflect.

 

6)    If you attended the Sunday and/or other evening lectures, were they worth attending?

 

1: Yes. We used the topic for discussion over the course of the week. The Monday lecture [No. 506, by Steve Beare] was surprisingly relevant to our subject matter. 2: I attended Sunday and Monday lectures and the Tuesday movies: interesting and worth attending. The “Book Wars” movie was more engaging than the Lindisfarne one. 3: N/A. 4: Yes. Steve Beare was quite interesting. Actually his research came up a lot during the week in class, since we were talking about databases and access to information. The movies were also great. 5: The Monday night lecture was particularly useful as by coincidence the speaker’s research methodology directly related to the descriptive systems we were brainstorming. 6: Definitely! The Monday lecture turned out to be extremely useful for our theoretical discussion purposes. Also, for someone in a “tekkie” class, it was nice to have exposure to rare book materials in the evening. 7: The Monday lecture was good; it is always worth getting user perspectives. 8: Yes. We used the Monday night lecture in our class discussions several times.

 

7)    Did you get your money’s worth? Any final or summary thoughts, or advice for other persons considering taking this course in a future year?

 

1: Yes. None. 2: Yes. I think people taking this course in the future should come prepared to explain their home institutions’ set-up systems. 3: I think so. It provided information directly applicable to current projects and software development efforts underway in my institution, which should help us be more successful. 4: Yes, I think I did. It’s given me a lot of food for thought, some very fantastical ideas for “someday,” and also quite a few practical ideas. I have a new appreciation for the value of making an archival description system as flexible as possible, and if I had to (or were allowed to) design one I feel like I could make a good intelligent stab at it. 5: Yes! 6: This is a very reasonably priced course for the amount of benefit. 7: Good value for money. My advice would be to definitely read the pre-course material; and we could’ve done with some pre-course reading on database modeling too. 8: Yes. I think I got my money’s worth. It was great to have time to think about systems and databases. In the course of one’s daily job you don’t get or don’t have the luxury to spend time thinking like this class gave you the opportunity to do. It was great! I loved it and feel lucky to have been accepted into it.

 

Number of respondents: 8

 

                                                                     PERCENTAGES

 

Leave                        Tuition                      Housing                    Travel

Institution                 Institution                 Institution                 Institution
gave me leave            paid tuition               paid housing              paid travel

100%                           100%                           88%                             88%

 

I took vaca-                I paid tui-                   I paid for my              I paid my own
tion time                    tion myself                 own housing              travel

0%                               0%                               13%                             13%

 

N/A: self-                    N/A: Self-                   N/A: stayed                N/A: lived
employed, re-            employed,                  with friends               nearby
tired, or had              retired, or                  or lived at
summers off               scholarship                home

0%                               0%                               0%                               0%

 

There were 6 archivists/manuscript librarians (75%); 1 archivist/systems department (13%); and 1 digital librarian (13%).