The Collected Poems of John Holmes contain several poems about spring, but this one is particularly apropos:

Spring on the Hill (Audio)

Spring on the Hill

Spring on the Hill is sweeter far
Than springs before or after are.
The time will come, for time’s old reason,
When spring will be – another season.
Remember then, remember well,
The curving paths, the chapel bell,
And think of mornings when the sun
Lighted your windows one by one;
Of how the trees arched overhead
To shade the Row; how shadows spread
A dappled pattern on the grass
Where you went by with books to class.
Call back the memories you made
Of where you lived and loved and played
Four Mays, four Aprils, and four Junes,
And countless drowsy afternoons.
Remember most of all the trees,
And then their murmuring in the breeze;
The ivy by the window stirring;
The mower’s hard impatient whirring;
The green sweet smell of grass and sun;
The roads that like a ribbon run . . .
Remember any April day,
And many a moonlit night, and say,
Spring on the Hill is sweeter far
Than springs before or after are.”

Tufts University has recently implemented its next generation Responsible Use Policy. University Information Technology recently announced the new Information Stewardship Policy and three supporting information policies. These policies will officially replace the Responsible Use Policy on May 7th. UIT has also provided a synopsis and a PDF version of each policy.

The Information Stewardship Policy is supported by the

• Use of Institutional Systems Policy
• Information Classification and Handling Policy
• Information Roles and Responsibilities Policy

The new Information Stewardship Policy and the three supporting policies provide a policy framework for managing information and developing other information policies that are specific to an administrative unit (school, division, or department) or to an information system/tool (such as email or mobil devices). The policy framework provides a structure and syntax that gives managers the flexibility to develop information and IT policies that meet the needs of a particular system or administrative unit while enabling connections to terminology and frameworks common to the entire University. The Information Stewardship Policy and three supporting policies also allow other information policies to speak a common language and logically “hang together” as a broader information policy framework.

The people who really need to read all four of these policies in full are those involved in information governance and information policy management. The vast majority of faculty, staff, and students who just want to know what they should and shouldn’t be doing with information and IT resources at Tufts can focus on the summary of all four policies at http://uit.tufts.edu/?pid=786.

The new Information Stewardship Policy and three supporting policies do not substantively change anyone’s rights concerning their use of information and/or IT resources at Tufts. Implementing these policies is about updating policy language and, most importantly, about establishing an information policy framework. The new policies do not shift the balance of rights between the individual and the institution.

If you have questions about the policies you can send a message to infopolicy@tufts.edu.

One of key strategies for protecting personal information is ensuring that we are not unnecessarily keeping records with confidential or sensitive information. These are records that no longer have a business, legal, financial, or historical value and that should be destroyed. These records provide no benefit, only risk.

Determining when records can be destroyed, what records need to be keep, and what records need to be preserved for the life of the institution can often be a complicated task. The most important tool at Tufts for helping people determine what to keep and what to destroy is the general Records Retention Schedule. This policy, administered by the Digital Collections and Archives, lists types of records and defines how long to keep records and what one should ultimately do with those records.

Some important characteristics of the Records Retention Schedule:

• It describes 50 types of records that are organized into ten categories.
• It is format neural and applies to electronic, paper, and microform records.
• It is a general policy that describes how long to keep and what to ultimately do with records; it does not get down to the details of how a particular office should manage and store its records. The policy provides a framework for managing people’s records, it does not manage your records for you.
• It applies to the entire University. Some schools and departments have their own records retention schedule or records policy that gives them more detailed information about retaining their records. If a division, school, or department wants to create a specific records schedule for itself, it should consult with the Digital Collections and Archives. These schedules should not conflict with the general Records Retention Schedule.
• It identifies many types of records that have enduring value that should be permanently retained. These records, both paper and electronic, can be transferred to the Digital Collections and Archives for enduring preservation. See the transfer instructions for more details.

Using the general Records Retention Schedule to destroy records comes with a very important caution: Do not follow the Records Retention Schedule to destroy records that are currently part of–-or you are aware that they are going to be part of-–any legal action or proceeding, litigation, audit, investigation, or review. For more information, see the Subpoenas for University Records Policy.

People who have identified records that they should destroy can also consult the guidelines on Confidential Records Destruction.

If you have questions about interpreting the general Records Schedule or developing a schedule specific to your division, school, or department please contact Eliot Wilczek, University Records Manager (eliot.wilczek@tufts.edu | 6-2439).

Interested in becoming our new Archivist for Digital Collections?

The Archivist for Digital Collections (ADC) oversees the formulation, preparation, and management of digital objects and collections for the DCA with a particular focus on developing tools and workflows to maximize efficiency in digital collections management. This work includes: database manipulation, scripting, supervising student workers, developing policies and procedures concerning digital objects and metadata, implementing appropriate standards and best practices, conducting quality assurance for digital collections, undertaking preservation activities, and managing the DCA’s locally-developed collections management system, CIDER. The ADC, working closely with the Director, acts as project manager for projects yielding digital collections including proposal development, and implementation and oversight of funded projects, and serves as a primary point of contact for faculty requiring assistance managing electronic research materials. The ADC collaborates closely with department colleagues on workflow development and implementation.

Apply here.

(All the legalese is available at the application site but know that we are actively seeking applicants from diverse backgrounds.)

Do you find some of the laws in your state odd?  There are various lists out there of laws that are still on the books that seem ridiculous, not only for the present, but for any point in time.  Personally, I love that Massachusetts still has a law that bans the use of tomatoes in clam chowder.  But there are stranger laws as well – in Boston there is an ordinance that requires you to carry a gun if crossing Boston Common in case of bears.

But, like many of the things we discover here at A New Nation Votes, this is not a new complaint.  As far back as 1823 people were complaining about the odd laws of their forefathers.  I have here a piece from The Sentinal (Butler, PA) of October 18, 1823:

“BLUE LAWS.  The Blue laws of Connecticut have often been a source of meriment to the citizens of the present day.  But it is not generally known that some of the acts of the legislature of Pennsylvania are equally queer.  About the year 1683 or 84 the legislature of Pennsylvania, passed a resolution that, ‘no member thereof should come to the house barefooted nor eat his bread and cheese on the steps.’ “

Apparently in 1683 it was a concern that, not only might the members show up without shoes, but that, heaven forbid, they might eat their lunch on the steps of the state house.

So go ahead and complain about your state’s silly laws.  It’s a time honored tradition.

Tufts Professor of Philosophy Daniel Dennett has received the 2012 Erasmus Prize from the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation, joining the ranks of such luminaries as Mary Robinson, Simon Wiesenthal, Fatima Mernissi, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Marc Chagall. The foundation, when announcing Professor Dennett’s award, said:

Dennett is an eloquent teacher who addresses the questions of our time with great audacity. He is optimistic about science and demonstrates in his work the importance of knowledge, critical thinking, and an open attitude to ‘other’ ideas. He is a source of inspiration to both his colleague-scientists and to a larger audience.

The foundation also praised Professor Dennett for “his ability to translate the cultural significance of science and technology to a broad audience“. Professor Dennett is so dedicated to communication with the broadest audience that he has donated his papers to the Tufts Digital Collections and Archives, making an Open Access commitment to share his scholarship with the wider community. Most of Professor Dennett’s articles are available at the Tufts Digital Library.

Congratulations, Professor Dennett, and we thank you for your commitment to Open Access and discussing philosophical ideas with the larger community of global citizens.

James Leach, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, presented Philip Lampi, the driving force and researcher behind the A New Nation Votes project, with a commendation “for scholarly perseverance and tireless research into election returns from the earliest decades of the American republic” at a ceremony at the American Antiquarian Society on February 16, 2012.

DCA would like to send out our congratulations to Phil and thank him for his years of work that have made A New Nation Votes a reality. Phil is a tireless researcher, a keen scholar, and just about the nicest person one could ever hope to meet.

Did Tuesday’s results in the Republican primary confuse you?  As explained here, by the New York Times, the three elections on Tuesday didn’t really award any delegates.  Yet, that didn’t stop people from voting in them (not a lot of people, as turnout was quite low, but thousands of people nonetheless).

This prompted one colleague to ask me, is there any historical precedent for this?  Or have we just gone crazy, voting for nothing?

The good news (maybe) is that we haven’t gone crazy.  There is a long, storied historical precedent for this.  A perfect example is the 1824 Presidential election.  Do you remember this one?  It’s the one where the President was actually chosen by the House of Representatives because none of the four candidates received a majority in the Electoral College.  There are already a number of misconceptions running around about this election, namely because several states, including New York, which had by far the largest population, didn’t directly elect their presidential electors, and so the popular vote that we have is far from representative of the country as a whole.  But New York wasn’t the only state who didn’t direct elect their electors.  South Carolina was another state where the state legislature elected the electoral ticket.  The rest of the population had absolutely no say in who the legislature would choose.

But that didn’t stop them from saying it anyway.  As can be seen here, there were polls around the state throughout the summer and autumn where the people chose to have their say.  Luckily for them, when the legislature did actually make their choice, they went with a ticket dedicated to Andrew Jackson, the same person who overwhelmingly won the state poll.  But there was nothing that required that the legislature agree with the rest of the population.

And it could have been even more confusing.  At least in South Carolina they knew who they were electing.  In Delaware, they weren’t certain who the electors would vote for and there was a question as to whether they were legally elected.  As seen here, one of the three electors chosen by their legislature ended up voting for William Crawford in the Electoral College.  But of the eight newspapers that reported on the legislative election, five of them listed him as a supporter of Henry Clay.  And there were 30 members of the Delaware legislature at the time and two of the electors only received 15 votes.  “Through a strange and unexpected interpretation of the state law governing tie votes, the president officer of the senate cast an additional vote for each of the Crawford men, both of whom were declared elected.” (History of American Presidential Elections 1789-1968, Volume 1, Arthur M. Schlesinger, jr. Editor, p 374)  And even then, thanks to the confusion in the newspapers, the people still didn’t know who their electors were voting for.

So, cut the people in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri some slack.  They’re just following historical precedent in casting votes that don’t mean anything.

In the course of doing our work at Tufts, we create or receive a lot of records in paper and electronic form. Many of these records are drafts, copies, or other records that we will need to dispose of at some point. (See the general Records Retention Schedule for rules on how long to keep records and when to destroy them and which records to transfer to the DCA for enduring preservation.) A lot of records we handle at Tufts has confidential or sensitive information that we need to protect. So when we need to get rid of these records we should’t just throw them away in the recycling bin or just leave them on thumb drives or computers that we later throw or give away. This exposes the University to the unnecessary risk of a data breach.

We should all take care to destroy these records confidentially. Fortunately, Tufts has a new set guidelines that explain the best way to destroy records confidentially at Tufts.

Guideline highlights:

• Confidential records destruction should be a habit rather than an exceptional activity.
• Use a cross shredder or Cintas’ destruction bins. Cintas is Tufts’ vendor for confidential records destruction services. More details about using Cintas are in the guidelines.
• Contact your IT support group about what to do with old workstations and laptops. Computers store data in a complex manner that is not readily apparent to end-users. Don’t assume you have manually deleted all confidential or sensitive data on your computers.
• Contact your IT support group about disposing of CDs, flash drives, or other media. One should not give flash drives or other memory devices to family or friends for reuse. Memory devices store data in a complex manner that is not readily apparent to end-users. Deleting files may not fully destroy files on these memory devices.

You may be asking yourself, “why is DCA posting about the Poetry Society of America?”  If you are asking that question, you don’t know about Gustav Davidson. Davidson was executive secretary of the Poetry Society of America from 1949 to 1965, after which time he was elected executive secretary emeritus, and DCA has his papers. I am personally very fond of this collection in that it was one of the first collections that I processed. Additionally, it was a somewhat unique experience for our Archives in that it consists primarily of books.  But before I get into the collection materials, here is a little bit more about Davidson himself:

Gustav Davidson was born in Warsaw, Poland on December 25, 1895.  His family moved to New York City in 1897.  He received his bachelor and master degrees from Columbia University in 1919 and 1920 respectively.  During the twenties and thirties, he wrote and published both dramatic works and poetry and founded and edited several literary magazines.  In 1940,  he founded Fine Editions Press and he was an integral part of the American poetry establishment through the rest of his life. In 1965, he published his most well known book, A Dictionary of Angels, Including the Fallen Angels. Davidson married Mollie Strauss in 1942.  He died February 6, 1971 in New York City.

As for the collection, the majority of this material consists of books from Davidson’s personal collection, many of which are inscribed.  There are some letters, clippings, photographs and promotional brochures interfiled with the books.  Also included in the collection are photographs, clippings, diaries, correspondence, drawings, awards, poems, programs, bulletins, and publications.

Items of special note include a drawing of Robert Frost by Oscar Berger and a letter signed by Robert F. Kennedy (which made me tear up a little as I held it). The full finding aid is available on the Tufts Digital Library.

Materials were donated to DCA by Babette Bandler in 1999.