Thing 14: Augmented Reality

About a year ago I met a woman who was touring with Riverdance and while performing in Limerick asked to come and see the National Dance Archive of Ireland.  When we had shown her the premises and told her everything she wanted to know about the archive, we sat down with her for a cup of coffee and asked her how the performances were coming along.  Her greatest source of regret was that audiences seem to have lost their ability to live in the moment and to interact with a performance, being too preoccupied with recording it on their tablet or smartphone or whatever mobile application they use for the purpose.  This left her as a performer feeling ignored and undervalued, almost irrelevant.

This struck a chord with me.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not a complete technophobe and I understand the importance of teaching digital literacy to children, I just feel that we run the risk of overdoing it. Going to an art gallery and pointing your phone at a painting to find out all about it is well and good but where exactly does that leave us?  Will we get to a stage where we just point our phones at a book and it will give us the plot, character analysis, reviews and an  interview with the author thus conveniently eliminating the need to engage in a real life reading experience?  Instead of reading a book we just read about it.  And another thing: who ultimately is responsible for the information channeled to us in this manner?  Will we accept everything that is fed to us through our phones and lose our ability for critical judgement?  This is already a problem with the internet and I can't see augmented reality helping at all.  The problem lies in the very word - who augments, what, how, and to what end?

I have never understood the obsessive attachment people have to their mobile phones, and augmented reality leaves me ice cold.  I find reality is complicated enough without any augmentation and frankly how boring can your life be if you feel a compelling need to enhance it through technology or to escape from it into a virtual one?  Instead of encouraging children to watch bees buzzing in an augmented reality poster, wouldn't they be better off going for a walk in a meadow and watching real bees doing real buzzing?  Are we going to turn our backs on current issues such as climate change, energy crisis and pollution and escape into a perfect virtual world in which such issues do not exist?

There is an old saying that fire is a good servant but a bad master.  I believe the same applies to technology.  It is important to remember that technology is not an end in itself, it is a tool, and as such it is only as good as its user.  Properly harnessed it can streamline and enrich life but if given total control it will take over, enslave and ultimately destroy us.

Thing 13: Professional Organisations

I have been a member of the Archives and Records Association (ARA) since I started my Archive Administration degree course at Aberystwyth University back in 2006.  It was one of the first things on the agenda on the first day of our study school - application forms were circulated around and we were strongly advised to join.  I don't know how many of us did but I thought it made perfect sense, particularly since they had a special subscription rate for students - I think it was something like sixteen euro per year which was incredibly good value!  For professionally qualified archivists the subscription fee is tied up with your salary range - the lower your salary the lower the fee.  They also have very low special rates for the unemployed and the retired.

ARA operates nine sections of special interest that members can join - I subscribe to Specialist Repositories, Preservation & Conservation, and Film, Sound & Photography sections.  There used to be a charge of a few euro per section but these days belonging to them is free.

I have nothing but good things to say about ARA.  They publish a magazine once a month full of news and information.  Members can contribute articles about events, projects, new acquisitions and any number of other topics.  I have contributed to it a couple of times and find it a great way to spread the news within the archival community.  The Irish branch also publishes an e-zine three times a year and we have contributed to this also once or twice.  ARA also publishes a peer-reviewed academic journal twice a year to which needless to say I have not contributed...

In addition to the magazines and newsletters, ARA publishes recruitment notices twice monthly and organizes a range of workshops both in the UK and ROI throughout the year.  They also run an Registration Scheme which enables full members to pursue accreditation by ARA.  I started on this path a couple of years ago but I have to say it entails an enormous amount of work and effort and is definitely not for the faint-hearted!

I would highly recommend membership of a professional organization, it is a great support network, keeps you up to date with news and developments, provides professional advice and is useful in myriad other ways.

Thing 12: Attending Conferences

Not only am I the only archivist on this course, I also seem to be the only sad individual who has never in her life attended a conference in a professional capacity!  One of the reasons I guess stems from being self-employed and not being in a position to ask for somebody else to cover the cost of travel and attendance.  Ironically, for the likes of me networking would be a really good idea so not attending conferences is probably not a very smart move to make.  On the other side of the coin, archival conferences in Ireland aren't exactly ten a penny (no pun intended!) and the ones that are held usually centre on topics such as records management or digital preservation which bear little or no relation to my particular line of work.  Archival conferences can also be on very specific themes such as scientific archives, archives of world faiths, community archives and so on which again would have limited application to me.

And then there is of course the bottom line that just about the worst thing I can imagine is sharing knowledge with a hundred strangers!

I subscribe to an electronic mailing list for archivists, and about a month ago I came across a notice of a three-day interactive conference in the UK which kind of tweaked my interest.  The conference is aimed at community groups, museum curators, academics, local historians, independent researchers and anybody else interested in exploring or showcasing recent research relating to the First World War, particularly everyday life on the home front during the war years.  Contributors can choose what form they want their presentation to take - for example a talk, round table discussion, workshop or poster - and on what topic they want to centre it.

The reason I became interested in this event is that since 2012 my colleagues and I have been working on a web project which follows the lives of a single family throughout the war years through weekly posts of diary extracts, letters and photographs.  A large-scale event of this nature would give a fantastic platform for us to showcase our work and gain new followers.  However, this is not the only - and not even the most important - reason for my interest in attending. Putting together the weekly posts is hard work, particularly to somebody like me who at the start of the project knew nothing about the First World War saving the fact that it took place a hundred years ago.  It would be great to make contact with experts with a strong knowledge of the subject area to save us the pain of wading through multitudinous and often contradictory accounts of events and trying to make sense of it all.

LIkewise, we don't always have suitable photographs, documents or artefacts to use as illustrations and often have to turn to external sources which can be difficult to unearth.  It would be wonderful to create a network of contacts who might be able to point us into new and previously unexplored directions!  It would also be interesting to find out what other groups and organizations are doing to commemorate the centenary of the Great War, what challenges they have encountered and how they have overcome them.  I would hope that the conference would also act as a springboard for other exhibitions or events unrelated to the First World War that we may like to host in the future.

I think my only fear about attending this conference would relate to the presentation - how to pitch it, how to make sure it stays within the 20-minute time limit, how to ensure that technology won't break down half-way through, and of course overcoming the blinding panic of talking to a large audience!  However, as there is no way I could ever afford a three-day jolly in London, and safe in the knowledge that the deadline for submitting proposals has almost passed, I think I can sleep easy!

Thing 11: Reflective Practice

I began this course thinking that one hour per Thing would be more than enough to get me through on time.  What I didn't realize was that we had two Things to tackle each week!  Nor did I allow for the fact that, as a relative newcomer to Social Media, I would need more than an hour for most Things to grasp what they're all about.  Although I am allowed to allocate work time towards the course, it has proved difficult.  Having made up for lost time during the August Bank Holiday, I find myself once again lagging seriously behind.  However, I am not going to waste time worrying about all the Things I should have completed by now, I just take one task at a time and do it to the best of my abilities.

My slowness is not so much because of time management issues, but because of my inherent resistance to Social Media!  I have been self-employed for virtually all of my working life and the one essential skill anyone in that position must possess is the ability to manage time.  For some people, this comes naturally, others (like myself) learn it as they go along.  It is a slow learning process and one that is probably never fully perfected.

When you have a number of projects going on simultaneously and tight deadlines to meet you need to be able to identify short-term goals to keep each project going and then prioritize those goals so that the most important things get done first.  Deadlines can be very stressful but they can also be thought of as an ally: they focus the mind and ensure that stuff actually gets done.  If nobody's breathing down your neck it's easy to put things on the long finger and then leave them there permanently!

Another stressful situation can arise when work is scarce.  Worrying about your mortgage is a natural thing to do but it's also a terrible waste of  time.  Instead, you must regard a hiatus of this nature as an opportunity to further your career.  You might do a course to improve or broaden your skills, or increase your presence in Social Media to create a more prominent professional profile (look who's talking...), or update your CV to better reflect your abilities and experience.

When working under pressure it's important to ensure that the pressure doesn't get to you.  You must make room for downtime, whatever form it may take.  Read a book, go for a walk, watch a movie, paint, write a poem, take a nap, meditate, have a chat with friends over coffee - whatever does it for you.  It sounds like utter frivolity but I have learnt the hard way that it is essential for your overall well-being.

Finally, don't sweat it.  In the words of Creighton Abrams, when eating an elephant take one bite at a time.