An update to rival Rafia's

I realize that my blog will never, ever, compare to Rafia's blog both in her dazzling visual array and culturally relevant content.

Yet, I will try to update my blog. An ongoing project at work is to go through our manuscript collections and discover which ones need a finding aid, which ones have a finding aid but only in a printout from an ancient word processing system, and which ones have a finding aid but lack essential information as required by DACS. After my spreadsheet is complete, I will develop a plan for processing collections and completing finding aids for collections that have been minimally processed (Hey, Earlham has always believed in MPLP), develop the easiest methods for getting the legacy finding aids up to current technology, and update the finding aids that just need a few more pieces of information. At the same time, we are going to implement an EAD project in the next year.

Most of the students and researchers I have talked to like the idea of having more information available regarding the content of our collections, but what they really want is everything digitized so they can search it and view it without having to come in. I'll get that done in the next couple of months, probably.

On a personal note, my mom is visiting this weekend and I'm looking forward to it! I'm also looking forward to Thanksgiving, when I will take my first days off since I started work in July. I love my job, but I know I'm going to be ready for a day off or two by then.

Planning for Another Trip

I started my job at Earlham College in July, and I love it. I'm very happy and the work is challenging. I'm contemplating writing more about some of projects I'm working on, but we shall see. Meanwhile, I'm planning my next road trip. This means having to save as much money as possible as I have to start repaying my student loans next month. Anyway, I'm going to take a road trip in January to visit my good friend Rafia who now lives in Arlington, Texas. I'm going to take a few days to drive down there and visit Graceland, the new B.B. King museum (tentative), Port Neches TX where my grandfather was born, and San Antonio. Then it is on for 3-4 days hanging out with Rafia!

Stay tune for possible updates.