Elizabeth Skene

Today I had the honor of meeting with Barbara Ibrahim, wife of Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a leading Egyptian human rights activist, currently in exile. She, myself & my project mentor met to discuss the acquisition of Saad’s papers and records into the archive at AUC.

It was absolutely fascinating to discuss these records. A large part of the reason the Ibrahim’s want to give them to AUC is that they don’t believe the records are secure in their home. However, complicating this transfer is the fact that Saad has twice been sentenced to prison by the Egyptian government for “tarnishing their reputation” & he is hesitant to return to Egypt – it’s unclear how the university and government would react to AUC accessioning & publicizing this collection. Additionally, my mentor has  suggested processing this collection could be part of my Fulbright fellowship proposal – something I’m incredibly interested in & eager to pursue, however my proposal needs to be accepted by the Egyptian government. Lastly, these records contain a number of security and privacy issues that would need to be addressed, both regarding the Ibrahims & anyone else that may be documented.

Anyways, I’m having trouble summing up a short meeting after a long week about events I’m vauge on when I’m very sleepy & incredibly excited about tomorrow. Really, such a long week, made longer by three days with temperatures over 110 degrees.

BUT TOMORROW!
Pete & Martha, two Peace Corps volunteer friends, are coming to visit!! They’re wonderful & lovely people who I haven’t seen in two years & I’m looking forward to catching up, showing them around Cairo & having an absolute blast.

None of my blog posts seems to make sense lately.
I blame it on the Cairo summer.
I fly home in just 17 days!!

Here’s a picture of one of my favorite things here – fresh juice. So delicious & so cheap [a giant cup of mango juice is about 75 cents]

Lance, of New Archivist, has been so kind as to have me as a guest blogger with a post about my Alternative Spring Break experience at the National Library of Medicine this past March.

Even if you aren’t a U of M SI student, there’s information for organizations — you could host an SI student next Spring Break! –, for those interested in medical archives/librarianship — they have a great fellows program — or anyone who wants to learn more about volunteering.

Check out my post, but also be sure to browse through the other posts there – there’s a LOT of great resources for those of us who are [or hope to be] information professionals.

PS – The title ‘na gosti’ [на гости] means ‘to have, or be, a guest’ in Bulgarian.

It’s Thursday!! It’s the weekend!!
My exciting plans tonight involve attending a webinar & I have some time to kill before then, so here’s a blog post!

Digitizd has a really interesting post called How Is the Internet Changing Us? that nicely summarizes some recent articles on the way that the Internet is changing our attention spans & the way we consume information.

I absolutely love this article by Peter Bregman in the Harvard Business Review – Why I Returned My iPad. It perfectly sums up my love/hate relationship with technology. It’s too easy, it’s too gratifying, it’s too instant. In my drive to be ever productive, I lose something:

They are the moments in which we, often unconsciously, organize our minds, make sense of our lives, and connect the dots. They’re the moments in which we talk to ourselves. And listen.

To lose those moments, to replace them with tasks and efficiency, is a mistake. What’s worse is that we don’t just lose them. We actively throw them away.

I’m already so distracted with a laptop as it is, I don’t need a phone, an iPod with applications or an iPad to waste all my time with. This is a good reminder to spend intentional time sitting, in the grass, watching the clouds roll by & contemplating whatever my brain brings me.

I’m doing better in my 50 books in 2010 challenge. I’m up to 15, which is still 10 behind for where I should be by the end of the month, but I’m slowly but surely making progress.

The National Archives is holding a photo caption contest – it’s being judged by none other than the Archivist of the United States himself AND the winner gets 30% off a purchase from NARA’s online store. My husband saw my tweet about it & submitted a caption of his own. If he wins this, he’s going to be the very bestest husband in the world [one step up from his current position as 'best husband in the world']!

Time to sit back & experience my first webinar!
Have a good weekend, all!

Here at the RBSCL@AUC [Rare Books & Special Collections Library at the American University in Cairo], I’ve become quite the social media guru. I’ve been blogging, tweeting & Facebooking for the library and, last week, my mentors mentioned starting a Flickr page. As an avid user my of Flickr myself, I was excited about the opportunity.

Today I sat down, explored the servers and hard drives at AUC and found some really amazing images and photographs. After loading them them onto Flickr, I posted a blog and sent out tweets inviting users to comment/tag/note them.

We’ve talked a lot about crowd sourcing, community participation and folksonomies in my classes at SI, most notably Wikipedia and the Library of Congress Flickr, but this is my first time being directly involved in such a project.

To my surprise, after a half a day, we already a lot of tags, comments and other descriptive information added. I’m so excited about this and I can’t wait to add more photographs.

Here’s an example of the types of things we have up:

Feel free to check it out & add information!

It’s hard to believe, but as of today I’ve been in Egypt one month. Just 6 weeks until I head back to the States.

This weekend has been really great.
Friday night, about 10pm, Opal & our friend Muhammad came to get me & we went to a cafe. We spent a few hours sipping tea, smoking shisha, laughing & people watching before leaving. We decided against a cab & instead walked about 45 minutes through two neighborhoods back to our place – it was really nice.

Last night, a group of us [including new friend & fellow expat Dan], made a trek to Jesuit Cairo to attending ‘Egypt: The Musical.‘

Although we left at intermission because we were all very hungry, it was a cool experience. After a nice dinner [at a place I actually went to when I was here three years ago - random], we came back to our place & stayed up late hanging out, taking & trying to play the rababa Opal & Muhammad bought me from our local street vendor.

This afternoon I tried baking again [you can read about my cookie making adventure here]. We had some brown bananas but no bread pan, so Opal suggest banana scones – they turned out pretty good! Some cinnamon would have made them extra good, but all the spices looked the same at the store & I probably would have ended up with chili powder. Regardless, they’re done & good & comforting.

I also picked up an ice cream mix. The process is the same as instant pudding – mix with milk & let sit, only apparently after two hours in the freezer you get ice cream. It’s freezing now & I’m interested to see how it turns out!

The rest of the day holds laundry, reading, Skyping, relaxing & generally enjoying myself before heading back to work tomorrow. Happy Memorial Day weekend to everyone back home!! [I wish I was at the cottage with my husband, dog & friends!]