Summer 2024 Update
Much of the work going on this summer has been on figuring out next steps on material items and spaces.
Hibbs 340, is for the moment, a space where I have stored backup drives, print and media materials awaiting digitization, including, for instance, tapes of Larry Levis. That space may be taken away from the project in fall of 2025 over space concerns as it is slated to become a private office.
The department had also previously assigned an office for the journal in Anderson 101-A, but “unassigned” it after Covid, but with no plan, nor directive, to clear it out. The new editors have no stake in it; the current TAs do not work from it, and so, again, by default, though it is not space assigned to me or the Founders Archive, for the good of the journal’s legacy, and in an attempt to preserve select papers, award plaques, art, and photographs from the room, I will be meeting with Mary Flinn to try to start clearing that space ASAP rather than letting those materials be cleared as trash. (Our first attempt more than two weeks ago on a day when the building’s AC was broken, was brought to a halt when trying to run the room’s AC to compensate tripped a breaker and blew out the overhead–and only–light.)
My focus has been away from the digital archive in summer has been centered on finding, organizing, and some start of scanning materials that I want to make sure are preserved in the archive annex pages. Likewise, I’m making certain to preserve some of our early correspondence, a slow process.
The departmental web site updated the Blackbird information page and included a link to the Founders Archive. The change did not have an updated logo, had a broken link, and omitted my name as the person heading the archive edit. Those issues were corrected and published on 7/29.
My next material step in the archive itself will be to visit videos that were disabled by the previous loss of a video flash server. When I republish media content, I will do so on the Kaltura account owned by blackbird-archive. Once these media files have been found, republished, and repaired in pages, I will then begin the process of moving/republishing all media content on the Kaltura site under the blackbird account, again, making sure that media on legacy issues that depends on a media server is all pointed to the blackbird-archive managed site.