23 Things for Archivists: Fair is Fair

Hello, all people who still inexplicably follow this blog after a two year hiatus! I am updating here because I am reviewing the SAA Reference, Access, and Outreach section's 23 Things for Archivists site for an upcoming issue of Archival Issues. This will be my first review in an Archival publication, and it is very exciti--

"Wait a second", you say. "You have been blogging, tweeting, etc. for several years now, if sporadically in some cases. You may or may not know a lot of this stuff already! How in the name of God are you going to review this fairly?" A fair question! And one that I asked myself while starting to go through the site. Is "playing dumb" the solution? No, because I DO know a lot of this stuff as covered, and to a certain extent can't hide that.

Then it occurred to me: I should go through the site as a participant! That way, I can see to what extent the instructions they give regarding use of the various Web 2.0 tools and concepts are useful and meaningful for other archivists. And, on the flip side, I do see not a few things, particularly in the intermediate section that I'm not as familiar with as I probably should be, especially considering I tend to be the techie guy in the UWM Archives. So this will be a good learning experience for me, in addition to being a good framework for the review. (Plus: I can use the posts I create for notes for the review itself, which is nice.)

OK... so let's see... Thing one has you set up a Blog... Uh... awkward. So, yes, OK, a little bit of playing dumb will be needed. Let's go to Wordpress and see if we can't figure something out from there-- I do technically blog there as well, but at least I haven't set one UP over there before. Progress? I think? I will crosspost my findings here, if for no other reason than to breathe some life into this moribund excuse for an Archives blog and maybe get me posting regularly again. Stay tuned.