Thing 1: This thing.

Greetings, friends and fellow archivists, information specialists, and librarians, library students, lions and tigers, and bears, oh my!

This Blog represents Thing #1 of 23 Things for Archivists 2011, an online self-paced education program from the Society of American Archivists Reference, Access, and Outreach Section. 

::cue inspirational music::
Together, we will be embarking upon a journey of web tool investigation, attempting to make ourselves better aligned with the future of our profession, yippee!  I'm excited.

Thing #1: create blog, i.e., This Thing.  I have spent many a loquacious hour on Blogger. I love this tool.  It's simple, aesthetically pleasing (or not, if you want to go all navy blue & black on your readers), and is part of an enormous network of Blogs covering every possible topic, genre, disposition, and level of professionalism.  And, since Google purchased Blogger, you can now run everything from your regular old Gmail address, and feel way more productive than when you're using it to sneak onto GChat secretly at work.  The tool will automatically archive all your posts, making this a potential archive of archives, or metaarchive.  ::Nerd Alert::  Writers and readers alike can connect on all pithy points of interest, inter-link, include pictures, videos, sound clips, export to social media sites, import other blogs or web material automatically-- and all without having to stop and scream into an empty Hollinger box in frustration.  I wrote a paper in 2010 about the essentiality of archiving Blog content, because I handily believe that Blogs are the diaries of the contemporary world.  But, as this project reveals, they are, too, tools of the modern archival profession.

About me.
Since my actual Blogger "About Me" (previously created) is a tongue-in-cheek nod to the dictionary definition of "me":
My name is Sarah.  I am a graduate student at the Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science of Boston, Massachusetts.  I have an Archives Management Concentration, which brings me here.  When I'm not in class, I work at a medium-sized branch of giant international corporation, volunteer on a Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners grant project in Lexington, and do some contract work at the up-and-coming Wellesley Historical Society.  I also write for Charles River Rugby.  And, like all of you, I'm sure, I love to read and love to learn.

Here's to an enriching, educational archival enterprise.

Best wishes, everyone!

Sarah

They call me "Bee".