Yes. I know. My last blog post was way back in May of 2014. I suspect some of you have assumed this blog was defunct.
When I first launched Spellbound Blog as a graduate student in July of 2006, I needed an outlet and a way to connect to like-minded people pondering the intersection of archives and technology. Since July 2011, I have been doing archival work full time. I work with amazing archivists. I think about archival puzzles all day long. Unsurprisingly, this reduced my drive to also research and write about archival topics in the evenings and on weekends.
Looking at the dates, I also see that after I took an amazing short story writing class, taught by Mary Robinette Kowal in May of 2013, I only wrote one more blog post before setting Spellbound Blog aside for a while in favor of fiction and other creative side-projects in my time outside of work.
Since mid-2014, I have been busy with many things – including (but certainly not limited to):
- my day job as an archivist at the World Bank Group Archives
- Tweeting @spellboundblog
- writing and publishing short stories
- taking photos (and using them to create a calendar and other fun things)
- designing stickers
- and creating a book about digital preservation and collaboration (the image at the top probably already gave it away)
I’m back to tell you all about the book.
In mid-April of 2016, I received an email from a commissioning editor in the employ of UK-based Facet Publishing (initially described to me as the publishing arm of CILIP, the UK’s equivalent to ALA). That email was the beginning of a great adventure, which will soon culminate in the publication of Partners for Preservation by Facet (and its distribution in the US by ALA). The book, edited by me and including an introduction by Nancy McGovern, features ten chapters by representatives of non-archives professions. Each chapter discusses challenges with and victories over digital problems that share common threads with issues facing those working to preserve digital records.
Over the next few weeks, I will introduce you to each of the book’s contributing authors and highlight a few of my favorite tidbits from the book. This process was very different from writing blog posts and being able to share them immediately. After working for so long in isolation it is exciting to finally be able to share the results with everyone.
PS: I also suspect, that finally posting again may throw open the floodgates to some longer essays on topics that I’ve been thinking about over the past years.
PPS: If you are interested in following my more creative pursuits, I also have a separate mailing list for that.