Last night, the UCLA AMIA Student Chapter hosted a “Conference 101” session focused on the upcoming AMIA conference in New Orleans, and on conference-going in general as an important part of professional life. The organizers kindly asked me to speak (and provided pizza!) but everyone present contributed something of value: Continue reading →

Do you know the best time to be looking at open positions in your field? It’s ALL THE TIME. Whether you’re actively job-seeking or happily occupied in a position that’s perfect for you, ads for jobs like the one you have (or want to have) should be among your regular professional reading. Here are a few reasons why: Continue reading →

Home Movie Day Promo 2014 from Center for Home Movies on Vimeo.

This year marks the fifteenth annual observation of Home Movie Day — a project I co-founded with four cherished colleagues when I was just starting out in my career as an audiovisual archivist. For the students I’m teaching now, it’s the best example I have of how you can create your own opportunities to learn, grow, and make an impact professionally. Continue reading →

Ever meet someone at a professional gathering and just instantaneously have that feeling like, “We are going to work together on something. I do not know what that will be, or when that will happen, but it will be AMAZING”? Continue reading →

Last week, I attended the International Association of Chiefs of Police’s annual Technology Conference (IACP Tech) for the first time. My teaching schedule prevented me from attending as much of the event as I’d have liked, but I was there long enough to present a workshop session with a SWGDE Video Committee colleague (Sgt. Brandon Epstein of the New Brunswick PD — see slides from our talk on hiring and training staff for effective management of video evidence here). I also got to meet and talk with some interesting people from agencies all over the US and Canada, and I took a walk through the exhibit hall, where I talked to over a dozen vendors about their products and services. Continue reading →

The recent federal budget outline, with its proposal to entirely dispense with major agencies that support arts and cultural programming, perpetuates a false dichotomy that’s already been around for too long: That in an industrialized nation where half a million people are homeless on any given night and entire communities don’t have potable drinking water for months at a time, spending public funds on pretty pictures or escapist fiction is frivolous at best, and perhaps even morally suspect. Continue reading →

The SAA Records Management Section kindly invited me to participate in one of their regularly scheduled Google Hangouts this month, to talk about records management implications of new police body-worn camera (BWC) programs. You can tune in to that Hangout live (Noon Eastern, 9:00 AM Pacific) or watch the recorded version here. We plan to leave lots of time for Q&A, and you can tweet questions in advance using the #saarmrt tag–with help from the moderators, I’ll try to get to everything! Continue reading →

TL; DR: My tips for How to Read an Article (PDF)

This year, I’m teaching a newly-revamped version of our Intro to Media Archives and Preservation course. (Download the syllabus as a PDF here.) There’s a lot of reading, which poses some key challenges: First of all, how do you assign a ton of reading without completely freaking your students out? Continue reading →

Provided below is a transcript of my opening remarks from the recent “On the Record, All the Time” National Forum meeting held at UCLA August 17-19. Our project team is currently preparing a whitepaper summarizing our meeting outcomes, work products, and next steps; check the OTRATT site for further news and updates.

Welcome and thank-yous

I’d like to join my co-organizer, Jean-François Blanchette, in welcoming all of you, and in thanking the many people and institutions who have made this event possible. First and foremost, we thank our primary funder, the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ Laura Bush 21^st Century Librarian Program, Continue reading →

Working in academia doesn’t mean you get to take the summer off. In fact, for many of us, the end of classes is the start of a very busy season. Summer is when we revise recruitment materials and the student handbook, submit course changes to the registrar, rework our syllabi and course schedules, and otherwise get our ducks in a row for the upcoming academic year. Faculty count on this time for research trips and writing; a huge chunk of what you read from academic presses gets researched and/or produced during their summer “break.” This fall I’ll be teaching three classes, one of which is entirely new (a course on surveillance, archives, and records management practice); Continue reading →