Welcome to my draft, pod people!

Hello, pod people!

So, this is a very drafty draft!! In addition to adding some more case studies (if you think that's interesting to include), I want to pad out the section about challenges and the limits of archives in representing / documenting the performing arts. Here are some other things I know I have to work on / would like your input on:

1. I haven't figured out how to do citations yet, so they appear as in-line citations at the moment.
2. As I said, this is a super drafty draft, so the language needs some significant work! I am sure there typos galore, and I had no time to work on making things sound good. More than that...I am having problems writing in simple language when working on an academic assignment.
3. Characteristics of performing arts archivists...interesting? Boring? Keep it? Toss it?
4. I have a few other resources that just came in via inter-library loan that deal specifically with digital performing arts resources, so I made add a section on this. This would either be in addition to or instead of one of the existing sections, depending on what you think.
5. In terms of media, I suppose I could embed some media from digital performing arts collections. Any other ideas?
   

Looking forward to your comments, and please forgive the roughness of the draft!

Hi Chelsea,

I like your drafy draft and I feel it is a great start. In response to your first comment: citations are . At the very bottom of your page include

. I find the characteristics of performing arts archivists to be interesting but I would be worried about offering a possible stereotype. You could provide an introduction to the idea and note that other academics have noticed these characteristics. I spoke with Greg after our MOA visit to clarify the headings and content he was looking for on our wiki's. From my understanding, we can incorporate as many headings and subheadings that we feel are appropriate to the topic. For each one, we can include content from very brief (introducing the topic and hopefully a future student will contribute more) or we can include a significant portion. For example, the Archives of Ontario include all the archives within Ontario. I won't be able to cover all of the topics but I will introduce as many as I can and elaborate on the ones I am interested in. I hope this helps! As for the media portion, who doesn't love photographs? I am also curious to know whether or not we can include youtube links or links to other pages? Perhaps an addition resources page?

-Lisa :)

Sorry Chelsea, the citation code didn't show up for you to see. The citation is: <.ref.> (minus the two . of course, I am hoping this won't show up like above) and close with <./ref.> (minus the two .). At the end of your page you include <.references/.> (minus the two .). I hope this works!

-L

Hi, Lisa!

Your and Katie's comments have been very helpful! I did figure out the citations, eventually. It was...tedious. I have never appreciated Zotero more than when I wasn't able to use it!

Thanks so much for passing along your conversation with Greg to me, too. That is all good information to have and will help me think about these pages in a different way.

I would love to embed some video and images! I played around with it, and unfortunately, it looks like the video widgets don't a lot of functionality, You just can't do as much in the way of formatting as you can with images. Here is the link to the video widget help page (http://wiki.ubc.ca/Help:Adding_Media/Video) and here is the link to the images and pictures help page (http://wiki.ubc.ca/Help:Adding_Media/Images).

Hey Chelsea, Great stuff so far! I think your topic has the best opportunity for media additions. I was also wondering if subheadings for your Dalhousie case study might be a possibility just to break it up a bit. I think adding more case studies would be useful if they are significantly different from Dalhousie.

Hi, Mariko!

Many thanks for the suggestions about adding media and breaking up my sections with subheadings. Excellent suggestions and will do!

Hi Chelsea, Your "drafty draft" was very interesting to read, especially having never read anything about this type of archives. A few comments/suggestions: 1. Might be good to start off by providing the reader a brief definition of performing arts archives, to immediately orient the reader. Also, the introductory paragraphs have lots of great info, but may benefit from being broken up a bit (differenet subsections, or paragraphs). Or maybe pull some of that info out to make completely new sections. 2. I think adding some media would be great, especially media from performing arts archives. I agree with Mariko that your topic lends itself especially well to the use of media. Sorry, I don't have any other ideas for you though! 3. The Challenges section might benefit from being broken up into sub-sections (funding, access, lack of professional archivists, maybe different sections for the different types of archives) 4. I think the Characteristics of PA Archivists is an interesting section, but could definitely use another source or two to make it more well-rounded. Though I'm guessing there aren't to many out there.. 5.Great idea to include case studies! Helps to solidify the concept of a performing arts archives. I think the Dalhousie one could benefit from some sub-sections, and could perhaps be shortened a bit overall. The elements of this that jumped out to me as most valuable were the brief history of the archives you provided, the discussion of their digitization project, explaining how they provide advice to theaters on how to manage their records, and talking about some of the challenges they face.

~Katie

Hi, Katie!

Thank you so much for your comments, which are very helpful! I think based on your and also Lisa's comments, I should maybe just move the section about the characteristics of performing arts archivist into the "About Performing Arts Archives" and make it just a few sentences. As you suggested, I don't thnk there are other articles specifically on this topic, and basically all that Marini is getting at is that they perhaps have more subject knowledge, have to be more proactive about seeking out materials, and are more engaged with their user communities / more focused on outreach.

Also an excellent point about breaking up my existing sections with more sub-sections. I think where I am going wrong is treating this like a normal paper as opposed to a wiki...too much academic writing may have ruined me forever. And obviously another big weakness of my writing generally is a tendency to be a bit long winded (I know...shocking, right?). I'll see if I can trim down a bit and break things up a bit with more subheadings.

I still haven't been able to go through all of my other sources that came in from ILL, so there will be more content to come...eventually!

Hi Chelsea,

I really liked the section on the characteristics of the archivists...it's an unusual topic but that's what makes it interesting to read.

Thanks, Kathryn!

Yeah, the characteristics of different types of archivists is a super interesting area of research isn't it? I haven't come across anything else like it, which is good from a novelty standpoint, but it's hard to be comprehensive about the topic when there is only the one article. Still the consensus so far seems to be it should stay!

Hi, pod-women.

I think I am closing in on being done with my wiki page, and I wanted to know if you ladies had any last comments, questions, concerns, or suggestions. If so, send 'em my way!

Looking good Chelsea!

A few comments, and feel free to ignore them:

• Have you considered including references for your media, i.e. photographs? I know you can retrieve the source by clicking on the photo but I checked out wikipedia and they seem to be inconsistent in terms of referencing and not referencing their photos. I went with referencing to be on the safe, but redundant side.
• Check out the wiki help page, http://wiki.ubc.ca/Help:Footnotes_and_References It offers information on how to cite with ref names to avoid the long reference list. It may be a pain to correct all of your references but it would certainly tidy up the reference list. By the way, don't place " " around the reference name like the wiki page tells you to. It doesn't work and it took me a bit of trial and error to figure it out!
• Out of fear of losing my work again, I have been working on my edits in a word document and trying them out in a new sandbox page. You can check it out at http://wiki.ubc.ca/Sandbox:Archives_of_Ontario_draft sorry to be an inconvenience! You can also check out how I did the references if you have any questions about it.

Hope this helps!

Hey, Lisa!

All of the citations for my images are in the "Image and video attribution" section, which is just above the references section...but if it's not clear, maybe I should move them directly into the references?

I'll check out the reference list link you sent to me. Thanks!

No problem! Is the Image and Video attribution section listed in the wiki help or is that something you added in? Did I miss that part?

No, I just added it in, inspired by Chelsea B. I thought it was just a more visually helpful way of listing those sources.

Doesn't hurt to keep it!