May 2nd, 2008
Archivist, researcher and natural born recordkeeper that I am, it is perhaps surprising that I am a bit slack when it comes to personal digital recordkeeping.
I say a bit, because in some areas I’m quite good. I have a twelve year email archive that is still accessible and in regular use, and I migrated my Masters thesis (early 1990s) from an early word processing format on 5¼ inch discs. A copy is sitting on my laptop as I write.
But I last backed up contents of said laptop in February!
And worse, I have more than two years of certain aspects of my life invested in Flickr, and have yet to investigate ways of extracting all that data into a format I control and will be able to access in twenty years time.
Some while back I pondered the problem of archiving text messages. My solution, ultimately, was to photograph the particular messages of value to me. Where are those photos now? On Flickr and on my laptop…
Greater minds than mine Gunga Din have been thinking about these issues, and I leave you with this reference for now:
Paradigm: Workbook on Personal Digital Papers, Bodleian Library, 2007. (That’s the title of the web version. The hard copy version is Paradigm: Workbook on Personal Digital Archives, which, I think, is more meaningful.)
Posted in flickr, memory, archives, No Comments
March 28th, 2008
You might remember that Iris is the Goddess of the rainbow in Greek mythology, as well as being a beautiful flower.
Can you shorten Iris, or make of it a nickname? I would have thought not, but my two and a half year old nephew started calling Iris “Irie” a while back. We thought it rather cute, and various members of the family now call her Irie.
So I googled Irie, as is my wont, and learned that it has a lovely meaning too. Irie, in Rastafarian vocabulary, “refers to positive emotions or feelings, or anything that is good. Specifically it refers to high emotions and peaceful vibrations.” (Source: Wikipedia)
What a perfectly delightful nickname for Iris, who is eleven months old today.
Posted in trifles, baby, 2 Comments
February 20th, 2008
My use of the photo sharing website Flickr has changed a little over the more than two years I have been using it, and will no doubt change again. Currently the Incomparable Iris is the main subject of my photography efforts (maternity leave does that to you)
What hasn’t changed is my attitude to metadata - that is, data about data - I’m all for it, and here’s why. People find your photos if you title, describe and tag them appropriately. As an archivist, researcher and bod who generally cares about history, I’m happy about that.
Since the advent of Flickr stats, I know that it is photographs such as the sea of flowers outside Kensington Palace after the death of Diana in 1997, and photographs of the Berlin Wall before and just after it came down in 1989, that people want to see - moments in history. Mauritius as a subject, contemporary and historical, is another favourite with visitors to my photostream.
But there are other moments, on a smaller scale - social, familial - which Flickr can bring forth from boxes of old family photographs and negatives. Here is one of them:
Many years ago I told my friend Jo about photographs of myself with a porpoise and a seal, and she had some too. I put them on Flickr in January 2006, which drew forth similar shots from a friend in Canberra and voila - the Porpoise Pool group was born! I knew nothing about the subject, except that the photographs were taken on holiday in Queensland when I was about four (1970). My Canberra friend remembered that they were taken at the Jack Evans Porpoise Pool, Tweed Heads (later moving to Coolangatta) in Queensland. So we titled, tagged and described appropriately, and two years later we finally have a fourth member in our little group, Brett, who writes:
I was browsing around on Flickr and found a group devoted to photos of kids feeding the seal at the Porpoise Pool at Coolangatta. And I thought “I’ve got one of those!”
I found this a couple of years ago in a shoebox of old negatives my Mum gave me. I believe it was taken in December 1972, which would have been only a matter of weeks before the pool closed. I was 6 years old. I have clear memories of being called out of the crowd and wearing a bright red souvenir T-shirt from the pool afterwards, but I don’t remember actually feeding the seal.
Posted in trifles, flickr, memory, 7 Comments
