Transcript of meeting between Christi Janus (SL Archvists Group) and Henry Lowood (L2) regarding mutual interests in archiving SL, 30 April 2007.

Christi Janus: hi

Christi Janus: welcome to our archives land... new one

Henry Lowood: thanks

Christi Janus: you may sit down...

Christi Janus: or just jump all the time ;)

Christi Janus: yes, that is a way of sitting too ;)

Henry Lowood: ah, i was flying over on our island

Henry Lowood: so i dropped through the trees here

Christi Janus: ah cool

Henry Lowood: that was fun

Christi Janus: got it lol

Christi Janus: yes...

Christi Janus: you do not do that often in rl, i guess lol

Henry Lowood: heh, let's not get into that ..

Christi Janus: ok, we won't

Christi Janus: lol

Christi Janus: well, i am not sure how we first got to know about each other...

Christi Janus: bad memory...

Christi Janus: but i do know you had an interesting project on your hands

Henry Lowood: you mentioned someone with last name lightfood

Henry Lowood: as the original contact

Christi Janus: susan?

Henry Lowood: there now i can see you

Henry Lowood: yes

Christi Janus: ah ok, could be right

Christi Janus: ok...

Christi Janus: for an archivist i do have a bad memory, you know

Henry Lowood: well, you rely on finding aids

Christi Janus: yup, and on my colleagues ;)

Henry Lowood: it's more important to know how to find things than to have it all in your head

Christi Janus: well, we are trying to find about about archive related initiatives in sl...

Christi Janus: (yes, true)

Henry Lowood: ok

Christi Janus: we=archivists group

Christi Janus: so, i thought then and still now it would be a good idea to just meet...

Christi Janus: and then we know about each other what we do and stuff like that

Henry Lowood: tell me about the group

Christi Janus: ok

Christi Janus: it has been founded a few months ago

Christi Janus: 1,5 i think

Christi Janus: i wanted to have a group so we could meet easily, and we can be found by search

Christi Janus: there were many librarians groups, none archivists groups

Henry Lowood: right

Christi Janus: we have met several times now and are allmost done on creating a mission statement

Christi Janus: further more we have some plans/objectives that come from that ms

Christi Janus: but we are still a small group...

Christi Janus: ...with big plans... lol

Henry Lowood: yes

Christi Janus: you can not change the world in one day

Christi Janus: not will we try

Henry Lowood: are you all working archivists?

Christi Janus: nope, we aren't all

Christi Janus: some of us are just interested in archives

Christi Janus: others are archivist by education, but do not work as an archivist

Christi Janus: some do work as an archivist, like me

Christi Janus: and several others

Henry Lowood: yes, that's common here, too

Christi Janus: i keep a list

Henry Lowood: i mean having the education, but working in some other capacity

Christi Janus: yes, well, that is how i started to as a teacher (educated), but after a while, work at archives

Henry Lowood: where are you working as an archivist?

Christi Janus: in the netherlands, at a state archives

Christi Janus: i head a team that does all customer services

Henry Lowood: ah, i see

Christi Janus: about 15 persons team

Henry Lowood: that's rather large

Christi Janus: yes...

Christi Janus: in the netherlands we are lucky, for we have a strong developed archival network througout the country

Henry Lowood: do you work mostly on digital archives in your job?

Henry Lowood: or paper?

Christi Janus: i work with paper, for digital archives are not yet in our repositories...

Henry Lowood: that's usually the case here, too

Christi Janus: but i use ict for outreach, reference and stuff

Christi Janus: that is, being at the frontoffice i deal with customers...

Henry Lowood: what we call "public service"

Christi Janus: when i was working at the backoffice, i would have had contacts witth the people creating digital archives already

Christi Janus: yes, public service

Henry Lowood: aha

Henry Lowood: well, i can tell you a little about what we are doing

Christi Janus: ok

Henry Lowood: first, we have a project in SL that we call an "animated archive"

Henry Lowood: it is a project built around the traditional archives at Stanford of the artist Lynn Hershman

Henry Lowood: but we decided to experiment with new ways of presenting, accessing, using, experiencing archival collections

Henry Lowood: so we built the L2 Project -- Life to the Second Power

Henry Lowood: that's our active project

Henry Lowood: but we have something new about archiving the archives

Henry Lowood: in that we are working on the problem of preserving what we created in Second Life

Henry Lowood: We will pursue this as part of a new project funded by the US Library of Congress

Henry Lowood: the program is called "Preserving Creative America" so it fits SL

Henry Lowood: in the sense that SL was created in the US

Christi Janus: i see

Christi Janus: interesting

Henry Lowood: The project is combined with some work on preserving digital games

Henry Lowood: So it has three parts

Henry Lowood: The first is preservation of early digital games. You may have heard of the "digital game canon"

Christi Janus: yes

Henry Lowood: you can look it up on the web, but it's the basis for the first part of the project

Henry Lowood: the second part is about preservation of interactive fiction and electronic literature

Henry Lowood: and the third part is about preservation of virtual worlds like SL

Henry Lowood: Of course we can't do this alone

Henry Lowood: the partners are Univ. Maryland, Univ. Illinois and Rochester Inst. of Technology, so four institutions in all

Henry Lowood: That's about it

Christi Janus: welll...

Christi Janus: that is quite a project you all have there ;)

Henry Lowood: hehe

Christi Janus: and a professional approach too

Christi Janus: i have come to sl for about some months now, just exploring...

Christi Janus: hoping to catch up on what all of us are doing...

Henry Lowood: same here as far as exploring

Christi Janus: which is hard enough already lol

Henry Lowood: right

Henry Lowood: I'm more of a gamer actually

Christi Janus: in our group, we have discussed several things you mentioned

Henry Lowood: but we are finding this to be a great project space

Christi Janus: yes, it is

Christi Janus: like the preservation of sl objects...

Christi Janus: like notecards that are no longer for active use...

Christi Janus: or exhibitions that can be changed, but have to be preserved

Christi Janus: but we are not yet doing it, just thinking about it, discussing what could be done

Christi Janus: for example

Henry Lowood: yes

Henry Lowood: there are a few levels that interest us

Henry Lowood: the code, the objects, but also events that take place in the world, as well as documentation that is outside the world

Henry Lowood: such as developer files or material on the 2d web

Henry Lowood: there is a great deal of metadata and event capture regarding SL that is located outside SL

Henry Lowood: it's an interesting problem how this will be linked together

Christi Janus: yes, it is...

Christi Janus: if you mention archives, do you mean archives as an archivist would use the word, or would you be using the word as the general public would refer to as archives?

Henry Lowood: No, as an archivist would, but a little more than that -- also including the interests that a historian would have

Henry Lowood: plus our other lead at Stanford is a well-known archaeologist, Michael Shanks

Henry Lowood: and he brings another dimension in his thinking about the loss of documentation

Christi Janus: yes, i can imagine he does

Christi Janus: well, i think it would be great if we could have contact with each other...

Henry Lowood: indeed

Christi Janus: take a look at what we are doing, learn and all that

Henry Lowood: By the way, this week on Thursday, May 3, we are having a RL meeting at Stanford

Henry Lowood: it's called Archive 3.0, which is our way of talking about the future of archives in such spaces as this

Christi Janus: 3.D

Henry Lowood: we might be able to podcast it or at least parts of it, so keep an eye or ear out for that

Henry Lowood: yes

Henry Lowood: a funny thing is that the other day

Christi Janus: yes, please let me know about it

Henry Lowood: i was writing to someone at Stanford and referred to the 3d web

Henry Lowood: and he interpreted this as the third web, which I thought was very interesting. So web 3d = web3 = third web

Christi Janus: lol

Henry Lowood: likewise archive 3.0 is what we can expect in the world of the 3d/3-d web

Christi Janus: i see web 3.d as the combination of web 2.0 and virtual worlds like sl

Henry Lowood: yes, that's the way we see it

Christi Janus: ok, just numbers ;)

Christi Janus: which i am worse at

Henry Lowood: and dimensions ...

Christi Janus: yes, those too

Christi Janus: well, interesting project!

Christi Janus: i think i have to think for myselfas to how i can keep up with all these things happening ;)

Christi Janus: maybe focus on some parts, like reference (being my rl work)

Henry Lowood: i think access is a big part of this

Christi Janus: would you mind if i posted a chat log of this meeting to our google group for archivists?

Henry Lowood: haha, i was going to ask you the same ... but for our project page (Life to the Second Power).

Henry Lowood: so let's do BOTH

Christi Janus: ok lol

Henry Lowood: do you know Henrik Bennetsen aka Lys Ware

Henry Lowood: he is our project manager

Christi Janus: nope

Christi Janus: ok, interesting

Christi Janus: maybe we could meet once

Henry Lowood: just wondering, since he has been very active in SL

Christi Janus: well, there are only a million or so people to meet, i guess lol

Christi Janus: another thing...

Henry Lowood: it's the same in California, people always ask if I know someone -- only 40 million people!

Christi Janus: i could sent you or another person in your team an invitation to join our archives group...

Henry Lowood: I would be happy to join

Christi Janus: so you get notices and can read our google group

Christi Janus: ok, please hold on...

Henry Lowood: how about inviting Lys Ware

Christi Janus: both you and him?

Henry Lowood: sure, that's fine

Christi Janus: ok, done

Henry Lowood: i'm in

Christi Janus: you may need to contact him so he knows what the invitation is about

Henry Lowood: he will

Christi Janus: cool, you are an archivist nnow ;)

Henry Lowood: woot

Christi Janus: yes... what fun would that be in rl he lol

Christi Janus: ok, i have to run off for seeing someone else - sorry for that

Henry Lowood: i recommend that you have a look at our pages on Life to the Second Power and Archive 3.0 -- easy to find with google

Henry Lowood: ok, cya. nice talking to you

Christi Janus: ok, i will look at them for sure

Christi Janus: nice talking to you too

Henry Lowood: now i'll try to tp back without hitting my head on the trees

Christi Janus: who knows what we can come up with

Henry Lowood: right

Christi Janus: lol

Christi Janus: should work ;)

Henry Lowood: bye

Christi Janus: bye bye