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Our house...our family archive 

 

This is probably the only discussion on this site that is not about information and records management, because it is about my home; but that is also in so many ways a precious family archive. It is about my own and my wife's thinking processes as we thought seriously about the home aspects of retirement. Are you thinking about retiring in the next few years? Baby boomer? Last kid in college? Otherwise ready to downsize your life style without giving up on quality of living—in fact improving on that? Read media stories about Rick Barry's and wife Linda Cox's recently built "retirement home", an alternative to a 50+ year-old only retirement community. "A Turning Tide, One Couple’s Practical Dream Home Is Ahead of Its Time" by Christy Pagans in the Spring 2006 issue of Washington SPACES magazine, Trish Donnelley, Editor. The home was previously reviewed by architect and syndicated columnist, Katherine Salant in, "A House for All Seasons," September 13, 2002.

 This is a new 1-level home designed by Rick and his wife with assistance from an architect using multi-generational (Universal Design) architectural design features, though we weren't aware of that until we were about half way through the project. The house was built by Gruver & Cooley. For other stories on this house, see News & Media section. RB

 

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Recent Content @ MyBestDocs  

Guest Authors (Further description on the Guest Authors page)

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•  I, Digital: Personal Collections in the Digital Era, Society of American Archivists (SAA), Chicago, August 2011, pp. 379, Christopher A. (Cal) Lee, Associate Professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ed. This tightly-knit set of chapter offerings by an outstanding line-up of 10 authors: Adrian Cunningham, Cathy Marshall, Sue McKemmish, Kristina Spurgin, Tom Hyry and Rachel Onuf, Leslie Johnston, Susan Thomas, Christopher A. (Cal) Lee and Robert Capra. For book purchasing link or to view the Table of Contents, Editor's Introduction, Author Bios, and Index, go to the Guest Authors section under Lee. 

• Archivist of the US (AOTUS) blog.                                                                                                                                           

• Bruce Bruemmer's paper "Brown Shoes in a World of Tuxedos: Corporate Archives and the Archival Profession," in the Guest Authors section has been translated into Japanese at the request of the Records Management Society of Japan, translation courtesy of Takashi  Asahi. It has been added to the Guest Authors section.  

• "Preserving Digital Memory at the National Archives and Records Administration of the U.S.," by Kenneth Thibodeau, presentation at the "Workshop on Conservation of Digital Memories Second National Conference," Bologna, Italy, 20 November 2009. This is an unpublished paper that is published here with the kind permission of the author. The author plans to publish in a longer version of the paper at a later date. At time of this publication, it reflected the latest published update on the status of the ($350,000,000+ to-date) ERA system. (Please see Guest Authors Section under Ken Thibodeau's papers.)

• Podcast: "Government 2.0 Taskforce with Adrian Cunningham & John McDonald" (41 mins). Download provided by Julie McLeod (Professor in Records Management at Northumbria University (Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K).& Project Director AC+erm research project www.northumbria.ac.uk/acerm as part of a monthly podcast series on the records management issues affecting organisations and professionals today, from Northumbria University's School of Computing, Engineering & Information Sciences. http://www.northumbria.ac.uk/sd/academic/ceis/re/isrc/. (Please see Guest Authors Section under Cunningham or McDonald for more  details.)                                                                                        

• "Service-oriented architecture and recordkeeping," by Barbara Reed, Director of Recordkeeping Innovation Pty Ltd, an Australian based consulting company serving the pan-Asian region. Barbara is well known to professionals and ARM practitioners in Australasia, other Pacific countries, other Commonwealth countries and North America. See above description in the listing of awards papers and further comments and the paper in the Guest Authors section. 

• "Records and Representations," by Geoffrey Yeo, Lecturer in Archives and Records Management at University College London. This paper was given at the Conference on the Philosophy of the Archive in Edinburgh in April 2008. 

• Understanding Data and Information Systems for Recordkeeping, by Philip C. Bantin, University Archivist, Indiana University, Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2007. Well known for his leadership in the field of electronic records, including his leadership of the Indiana University Electronic Records Project, Bantin explores content management systems, data warehouses, relational databases — the ways an institution can organize and store its information that are changing rapidly. He provides a comprehensive guide to the new technologies that can help us better organize vital documents and information for preservation, search, and retrieval. 

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    Recent Content by Rick Barry 

• "Keeping Records in Changing Organizations," chapter in Controlling the Past: Documenting Society and Institutions – Essays in Honor of Helen Willa Samuels edited by T. Cook, Society of American Archivists, January 2011.

• "Giving it away…about giving it away", a checklist reflecting an experience in donating a family letter to the National World War II Museum, published in the Society of Archivists Business Archives Section Newsletter, February 2011.

• "Attack on Pearl Harbor: A Brother's Story", July, 26, 2011. This article is a revised and updated excerpt from my "Barry Family Journal".

• NHPRC: Testimony to the House Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government," June 14, 2011. Email testimony in support of the reinstatement of National Historical Publication and Research Commission's budget, at least to the previously authorized level of $10 million.

• "Collaboration technologies: it takes more than technology," a PowerPoint presentation given at the February 27, 2009, Northern Virginia ARMA Chapter seminar on the currently hot topic: "Collaborative Techniques and Strategies for Records and Information Management" (See Engagements section for program details.) 

• A review of "Exploring the Essence of Records Management, Engaging with Experts: Proceedings", edited by Susan Childs, Susan Heaford and Julie McLeod, 2006.  The conference adopted a novel and effective "witnessing" approach to its structure. This paper is a pre-publication version of a paper that was published in the Records Management Journal, Vol. 17, No. 2, 2006;  Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Bradford, UK, pp. 124-136, and is published here with the kind permission of the publisher. 

• "Managing Electronic Records", review of the book by the same title, edited by Julie McLeod and Catherine Hare in the context of a literature review of the topic:  managing electronic records. This paper is a pre-publication version of a paper that was published in the Records Management Journal, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2006;  Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Bradford, UK, pp. 57-66, and is published here with the kind permission of the publisher.

•   "Ya Got Trouble (Right Here in River City)" presentation at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in celebration of its 20th anniversary (1986-2006) as an independent agency.  View Webcast. 

OTHER RECENT CONTENT

 

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IN MEMORIAM: Francis X. McGovern: Rembrancer, Recordkeeping Advocate and Practitioner, and Friend — Extraordinaire. See: Frank McGovern: Reflections, by many friends and colleagues, provided by his great friend and then-IBM colleague, Bill Neale.  

 

 

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Check out Archivist of the US (AOTUS) Blog Site. Very good use of Web2 technology for lite but interesting and often provocative ideas and innovations. Reader feedback invited.

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Selected Government Accountability Office Reports re: National Archives and Records Administration 

(For a full listing of  reports go to GAO Reports and Testimonies)

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On a Personal Note...

 

On Personal Electronic Recordkeeping. Barry, R, E, "Barry Family Journal", a personal and ongoing exercise in personal electronic records. This very drafty journal is placed in a larger context of my ancestry, though still very sketchily right now. Largely because of a combination of a quite complete scrap book kept by my mother, Mary Witherell Barry, and the excellent research facilities and resourced found at the National Archives and Records Administration (and its outstanding naval archivist staff) in Washington, D.C. and College Park, MD, it thus far focuses mainly on the World War II period as witnessed by my oldest, now deceased, brother, Charles B. Barry (Ensign through Commander). It cover his role and experiences beginning with December 7, 1941 when as a young naval gunnery officer on liberty at the Moana Hotel on Waikiki beach, Oahu, then Territory of Hawaii when the attack on Pearl Harbor took place and the days thereafter. Also included as an appendix is a virtual copy of an extraordinary and revealing, hand-written letter home that he wrote one month to the day before the historic attack. It demonstrates that a young Ensign seems to have had a greater awareness of the coming storm than some far higher superiors in the chain of command in headquarters centers at Pearl Harbor. The original of this letter has been gifted to The National World War II Museum, 945 Magazine Street New Orleans, LA 70130, where it is now accessible to all researchers and the public more generally. See SAA Business Archives Newsletter article, "Giving it away…about giving it away," by Rick Barry, on the author's experience in searching out and arranging to gift my brother's original November 7, 1941 letter to The National World War II Museum. For a brief article on the author's experience in searching out and selecting an appropriate institution and arranging for a deed of gift of my brother's original November 7, 1941 letter, see SAA Business Archives Newsletter article, "Giving it away…about giving it away," by Rick Barry.For more on this and other references on personal electronic recordkeeping, click here.