Oh I really, really [really] want to go to this:
Preserving the Memory of the World International Symposium
Inspired by UNESCO’s Memory of the World Program, the Association of Canadian Archivists UBC Student Chapter is organizing a seminar and conference aimed to opening an interdisciplinary dialogue among the custodians of the world documentary heritage—librarians, archivists, documentalists and museum curators—and the users of such heritage.
Even though any travel is completely out of our budget, I checked flights & they’re about $500. I sent an email to the SI Student Affairs office asking if there were travel grants to attend a conference, but not present [there wasn't a call for papers, otherwise I'd happily send off my archives/cultural genocide one]. While it’s all very unlikely, it doesn’t hurt to try.
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I’ve been working on an interesting project at work. Last week I was given the contents of a drawer from the herbarium, containing the work of a researcher & told “find out what’s in here.” Since a typical archivist task is to describe & arrange offices/drawers/papers, I was excited for my first “real” chance to practice my profession.
It’s a collection of field journals & various photographs from Stephen White, [who I was unable to locate in Google] who collected primarily between 1939 & 1942 in Texas, Mexico & Central America. When he passed away, the University herbarium was the recipient of the journals & photos he had taken during that time. Within the collection are various pieces of ephemera [postcards, fliers, library materials]. Today, a researcher is studying the same areas as White did 70 years ago & any information we have in White’s collection about the plant life will be helpful. And so, I was given the drawer of materials & got to work. It has been one of my favorite projects to date.
The not-so-fun part of this project involved standing at a copy machine for about 4 hours making duplicates of the journals. On the bright side, I was able to listen to a lot of podcasts, specically a few TED talks & Radiolabs.
If you’ve never listened to Radiolab, I highly recommend that you give it a try. The episode I listened to today is a good start. It’s called Yellow Fluff and Other Curious Encounters & in it you’ll hear Oliver Sacks convince you that the periodic table of elements is beautiful, about fields of yellow fluff under the ice near Greenland & about a man who had a botfly larva growing in his scalp & the affection he felt for it. It’s all fascinating.
What are your favorite podcasts??
