Tufts Technology Services and the Digital Collections Archives will be offering the following trainings about managing and protecting institutional data and records at Tufts:
Tufts Technology Services is offering “Information Protection and Management,” a half-hour webinar at 11:00am on the following days:
May 23
June 20
June 28
Click on date you want to register.
The Digital Collections and Archives will be offering two in-person training classes on managing institutional data and records on the Medford and Boston campuses. To sign up for these classes send an RSVP to Eliot Wilczek (eliot.wilczek@tufts.edu). All the classes have an enrollment limit of 20 people.
June 4, 12:00-1:00pm (Bring Your Own Lunch)
Cabot 702, Medford Campus
Institutional Data 101 What’s the Right Thing to Do:
General strategies and recordkeeping rules at Tufts
June 11, 12:00-1:00pm (Bring Your Own Lunch)
Cabot 702, Medford Campus
Institutional Data 102 How to do the Right Thing:
Storing, destroying, or saving records at Tufts
July 23, 12:00-1:00pm (Bring Your Own Lunch)
Sackler 220, Boston Campus
Institutional Data 101 What’s the Right Thing to Do:
General strategies and recordkeeping rules at Tufts
July 30, 12:00-1:00pm (Bring Your Own Lunch)
Sackler 220, Boston Campus
Institutional Data 102 How to do the Right Thing:
Storing, destroying, or saving records at Tufts
On Monday, May 6, 2013, the DCA held a special luncheon to celebrate our amazing student workers and the incredible amount of work they have completed this school year.
And it was a truly astounding amount of work they accomplished. Here are a few stats:
- 403 new record cartons processed and sent off-site
- 502 reference questions answered
- 12,372 Engineering student folders cataloged
- 16,084 Transcripts cataloged
- 5,710 Publications in the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ) collection cataloged
Sadly, the end of the school year also means that many of the students will be leaving us. We will greatly miss Mae Humiston who is graduating on May 19th. Mae has been a student employee at the DCA throughout her time at Tufts, and we can’t believe four years have already flown by! Not only is Mae an outstanding student employee, but she is an incredible human being. The staff of the DCA is so proud of her and the work she has done on campus around sustainable food production, recycling, and issues of justice and equality. We will miss her, but we know that she will continue to do so much good as she goes out into the world.
Also, graduating are several of our Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science students. Sarah Gustafson, Molly Bruce, and Erin Faulder are finishing up their library degrees this spring. The DCA has been very fortunate to be able to bring Erin on in a staff position, so we won’t be saying good-bye to her any time soon. However, Molly will be moving on to an internship in Austria and Sarah will be moving to Rhode Island by the end of the summer. CHEJ, Accion, Edward R. Murrow, the new CIDER collection management system – these are all collections and projects which could not have been undertaken without these three and as they graduate, the staff of the DCA is proud to have them as colleagues and valuable members of our profession.
Those are our graduates, but we also want to acknowledge our other student employees:
- Bridget Boyle
- Lancy Downs
- Tiffany Locke
- Elizabeth McGorty
- Misako Ono
- Lydia Puzzullo
- Tim Walsh
- Morgan VanClief
- Krista Zegura
And we would also like to acknowledge the staff working on the New Nation Votes grant project:
- Betsy Baldwin
- Mary LaBombard
- Katie MacDonald
- Luke Pomorski
- Emily Shafer
- Betsy Sherman
The family history of Dr. Martin H. Deranian, whose papers are preserved at DCA as the Hagop Martin Deranian papers, 1931–2008, has been the topic of a recent article in Tufts Now.
“Resilient Women” talks about Armenian women and the Armenian genocide, in particular the experiences of two women who inspired Joyce Van Dyke’s play ‘Deported’ first performed in Boston in 2012. The two women who were deported and eventually immigrated to the USA were friends: Elmas Sarajian, the playwrite’s grandmother, and Vartar Nazarian, the mother of Dr. Martin Deranian. Dr. Deranian taught dental history at Tufts School of Dental Medicine for 40 years and still has a dental practice in Worcester, Mass.
DCA is currently working with Dr. Deranian to obtain, among other material, his unique collection of diary-like binders which go back to his student years and which include much of his family’s history and Dr. Deranian’s consistent efforts regarding Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
We are excited to announce that the papers of Ellen Lutz are processed, and a collection guide is now available in the Tufts Digital Library.
Ellen Louise Lutz (1955-2010) devoted her life to the defense and advocacy of human rights as a prolific lawyer, teacher, writer, world traveler and activist. She worked in several positions at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy from 1995 through 2004, eventually serving as Executive Director of the Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution. Ellen’s papers provide a unique resource of primary material that document the diversity and richness of Ellen’s efforts in support of international human rights.
Some of the earliest material in the collection dates from 1971 to 1972, when Ellen travelled to Uruguay as a high school exchange student, an experience that influenced the course of her future career. While in Uruguay, Ellen witnessed the turbulent months preceding the military dictatorship that controlled the country from 1973 through 1985, and her papers include correspondence from friends in Uruguay during the period directly preceding and following the establishment of the military regime.
Years later, in September of 1997, Ellen travelled to Bosnia-Herzegovina as an International Election Supervisor for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). During this trip, Ellen took hundreds of photographs available now in her collection. These images poignantly capture the beauty of the country’s land and people; a setting that still evinced the devastation of the Bosnian War two years after the Dayton Peace Agreement was signed in 1995.
Other activities documented in Ellen’s papers include her work for Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Fletcher and the Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution, and Cultural Survival. Topics covered include reparation, torture, universal jurisdiction, accountability, democracy, human rights in Latin America, transitional justice, and the application of negotiation and mediation skills in human rights advocacy.
With the crazy, gloomy weather today, it’s hard to remember that it is spring and the Patriots’ Day — and the Boston Marathon — are right around the corner. So in celebration, here are a few pictures of marathons past to get you in the spirit.
Clarence DeMar, winner of the 1927 Boston Marathon, at the intersection of Exeter and Boylston Streets, April 20, 1927 (from the Bostonian Society)
Tufts Marathon Team Practicing, 2005
Running a committee and need to distribute meeting agenda and documents to a lot of people from several Tufts schools and divisions?
Working on a document with a group of Tufts colleagues across the University?
Part of a project with people outside of Tufts that requires a lot of document sharing?
Sick of emailing documents back and forth? Trapped in a document versioning nightmare?
There are a lot of document sharing and collaborative work options out there that people use to do their work. Some of of the tools are well known (like GoogleDocs and DropBox) and some of them you can happen to trip over (like your cousin’s wife’s brother’s best friend’s start-up company’s cloud-based service).
While using any of these cloud-based services can seem convenient, they come with risks that you may not have fully considered. Do you know the terms of service that you are agreeing to? Did you really read through the entire click-through agreement? Are you monitoring changes to the terms of service? Do you understand the service’s security provisions? What if your cousin’s wife’s brother’s best friend’s start-up goes out of business? Then what happens to your data?
In short, be careful about signing up for a self-provisioned cloud service to support your Tufts work because, as the draft Cloud Computing Services Policy notes, these services are “unvetted environments with significant unmeasured risks or are subject to changes in risk with or without notice.”
“But,” you say, “I need a document sharing tool for the work I have to get done at Tufts right now.”
And for you, there is the Tufts Enterprise Box Service.
Tufts Enterprise Box is a centrally provisioned cloud service that allows users to easily share and collaborate on files and other documents with people inside and outside of Tufts. The University has negotiated a Terms of Service with Box.com for this service, which means that it is an environment whose risks are better measured and accepted by Tufts.
“That sounds like what I need. What cool features does this service have?”
- Provides an online workspace for collaborative work with people inside and outside of Tufts.
- Includes tools for group discussions and comments.
- Includes version control.
- Files stored in Box are accessible from any computer, tablet, or mobile device.
- Log in uses Tufts Username and Tufts Password. No extra password to remember.
“Who can get a Tufts Box account?”
All members of the Tufts community.
“What am I waiting for? How do I get this Tufts Enterprise Box party started?”
Go to http://it.tufts.edu/box for more information about Box and on how to get an account started.
“What else should I keep in mind about using Tufts Enterprise Box?”
“What if I have questions about Box or need help using the service?”
If you have questions, request help via TechConnect, send email to it@tufts.edu, or call the Customer Support Center at (617) 627-3376.
For support based on your school or division, see Help by Affiliation or view the Faculty and Staff IT Support Provider Contact List.
Class Day time capsule. ca. 1910
Like a time capsule, you can use the Tufts Enterprise Box to store documents. We recommend you use Tufts Box (or other Tufts services and systems such as Trunk or Network Storage) to store your documents instead of using a time capsule. Here are ten ways Tufts Box is better than a time capsule:
- Much easier to manage who can access your files in Box than in a time capsule.
- Don’t have to wait 50, 75, or 100 years to access files in Box.
- Much harder to lose track of your Box account.
- Can’t access your time capsule remotely.
- Can’t sync your time capsule files with your mobile device.
- Time capsule feature upgrades are non-existent.
- Time capsule collaboration tools are weak.
- Your time capsule is not connected to your Tufts user name and password. Instead you have to keep track of another key.
- Accessing files in a time capsule can turn in big production, usually requiring proclamations and speeches.
- Tufts Box: No digging required.
Prospectus for Linked Archival Metadata: A Guidebook Released
Tufts University Digital Collections and Archives announces the release of a prospectus for Linked Archival Metadata: A Guidebook. The Guidebook is the primary deliverable of Tufts’ IMLS-funded National Leadership Grant planning project, Linked Archival Metadata (LiAM). Tufts is calling for comments and feedback on the prospectus for the Guidebook to be submitted by April 30.
LiAM is focused on planning for the application of linked data approaches to archival description. Our goal is to better understand the benefits that linked data could bring to the management, discovery, and use of archival collections while also investigating the efforts required to implement these approaches. Central to this effort is identifying graduated approaches that will enable archives to build on existing description as well as mapping out a more ambitious vision for linked data in archives.
Read more about LiAM at the project website: http://go.tufts.edu/liam.
The Guidebook prospectus is available at:
http://sites.tufts.edu/liam/prospectus-for-linked-archival-metadata-a-guidebook/
We look forward to your input. Comments or questions may be posted on the website using the comments feature.
There is a unique personal letter in our archives from 1905 which covers two amazing aspects of life at Tufts at the time. Forrest Herbert Bolton wrote a letter to his friend Flossie [full name unknown] in December of that year. In his letter he reported two incidents without commenting on any possible historical connections between the two. You can read the letter by clicking on the following link:
Forrest’s letter to Flossie, December 1905
In the first incidence (starting on p. 3) Forrest describes hazing between freshmen and sophomores at Tufts. A week before writing to Flossie, one freshman had been blindfolded, stripped of all clothing, covered in molasses and then sprinkled with small pieces of paper and soft snow. He then had to run across the floor blindfolded, slipped on the molasses, and was subsequently covered with even more molasses. At the end of the ‘fun, the sophomores gave him a thorough scrubbing in a bath tub. While the freshmen decided in a meeting that this type of hazing went too far, Forrest does not point out that the hazing clearly echoes ‘tarring and feathering’ which had sometimes also been administered to Republican African Americans after the Civil War.
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In the second incidence (starting on p. 7), Forrest tells Flossie how the Tufts Glee Club — which at the time apparently did not include any African American students — had performed at a local lecture given by Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) and only a week after the hazing incidence. The preeminent African American educator, author, and orator spoke on the ‘Negro Question’ at the overflowing Opera House in Medford while the Glee Club was invited to sit in the front row and lead the singing.
The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs is now freely available online. This twice-yearly student publication was founded in 1975. It publishes articles, essays, and book reviews on legal, political, economic and diplomatic aspects of international affairs. Thanks to the new digital library interface you can now browse the the articles by issue.
Curious about 2001 predictions for the cost of oil in 2010? Take a look at Why Oil Will Cost $5 in 2010. How about the Legal Status of Women in Kenya in 1976? Is your research exploring The Taliban, Islam, and Women’s Rights in the Muslim World, then you may be interested in this 1998 commentary. There is nearly forty years of research and interesting historical analyses of international relations represented in this collection. What will you find?
On February 5, 2013 the Jumble posted a clip of the Beelzebubs from the early 1980s. This seemed like a good opportunity to highlight some of the ‘Bubs materials we hold in the DCA. For example, we have quite a few pictures, some of which are available on the Tufts Digital Library. Also, if you come in to our Reading Room on Level G of the Tisch Library, we have video and audio selections, including the Great Tuftonian Trainride from 1989.
Beelzebubs
And the ‘Bubs aren’t the only A Capella group represented in the DCA. We also have materials from the Jackson Jills.
Jackson Jills
