On The Train (ICA Congress day 3), July 24, 2008

I did not expect much on the third day as I could see where the rest of the community going with their issues on technology. So for the third day I decided to listen on the soft part. Two Ozzies, One New Zealander and one Papua New Guinean convincingly talked about the need for archives community to forged strategic alliances with other compliance or what they term as Accountability Authorities like risk manager and auditors to ensure good record keeping in general. Of course in our case we have been doing this and we need to identify other opportunities to leverage. In fact we could use our allies to help us to convince our management. We have a tough journey ahead of us as firstly our digital contents are huge and some of them not organize following certain standard. To build in certain standard workflow and process would be a nightmare. At least the international community had come out with certain framework and guidelines on how we can do this. Nevertheless it would be a long journey.

The reason I sat through two Chinese presentations after the break was to learn and find ideas on how to ‘sell’ our archives products. The first one with the title Memory of the Globally Important Agroforestry Tradition: Archiving the Jinping Manuscripts as Indigenous Documentary Heritage in China the presenter shared with us their experience on how they actually research for the said manuscripts and work with the Mao/Hmong and other indigenous people of China. To these people those manuscripts are the most valuable documents detail their rights for certain lands and territory and some of them dated back to Ming Dynasty. The study on these manuscripts indicated a very advance sophisticated land management system. They would never part with their manuscripts at any cost. The researchers know that it would not possible for them to preserve the documents without heir help. Of course the best way for the researchers was to work closely with them and proposed, one, establishing a village museum and two, capturing the manuscripts in digital form. To me the value of all these things is beyond historical, it is about human development. If you know rural China here we are talking about some of the most beautiful mountain villages, some even historical. Listening to them talking about their experience I was even more convinced that the job or archivist, librarian and information and knowledge manager is both noble and interesting.

The second presentation was behind the backdrop of the recent earthquake in Sichuan province. Apart from human life the earthquake devastated some of their archived records. The sad and heroic stories were told with enough salvos to indicate even in devastation they remain objective and strong. Again telling us the importance of good record keeping and the inevitable used of technology. Ironically the next session that I wanted to attend went missing from the schedule.

The only snag for me was that my ‘expensive’ phone hangs on me the whole day and made my life a bit miserable.

On The Train (ICA Congress Day 2), July 23, 2008

It is common for major conference or congress today to provide Wifi services for their participants. The ICA Congress is no difference and I was actually tracking who would be blogging about the congress. The first one I found is written by someone from the Secretariat. The second one was a blog by Molly Kleinman who actually going to present a paper on Creative Commons in the context of archiving.

The other two that I found were actually a commentary of the Minister of Unity, Culture, Arts and Haritage’s opening speech. The Voice of Malaysia wrote ‘

“The ministry has been retrieving these documents but this is an international issue,” he (The Minister) said after opening the 16th International Council on Archives (ICA) Congress here.

It is understood that most of the documents are in Britain and Spain and were taken out of the country prior to Malaysia achieving independence.

Shafie (the Minister) said the documents would help prevent future losses of territory due to a lack of records.

“The recent case involving Batu Puteh (Pedra Branca) was a lesson to all, even though documentation was not the sole factor that caused the island to slip from our hands,” he said.

He said the congress would provide professional networking among archivists and experts to make it easier for Malaysia to bring back long-lost documents.

“Previously, we also sought co-operation from international bodies like the United Kingdom Department of Archives, as in the case of Sipadan and Ligitan.”

In 2002, the International Court of Justice ruled that the islands off the coast of Sabah belonged to Malaysia.

The congress, which is held for the first time in Southeast Asia, has drawn 1,200 archivists and professionals from 138 countries to discuss the challenges confronting the profession and to set a trend for the new millennium.”

Anything I Can Say blog under the title of Non-Muslim should not fear Umno Pas reported that in his Open Ceremony address the Minster said,

“… history researchers and archivists should adapt modern digital technology in their work to help them in preserving important documents. Such documents will not only be useful for posterity and help impart knowledge to future generations, but the artefacts can help us in resolving conflicts with other countries. It's important for us to have proper places for the safe-keeping of our documents,"

The Minister also said. ‘

"The right to information is an important element in any modern democracy. There is also an increasing need to bring the goals and vision of the archiving community to bear on issues such as transparency and good governance."

The second day of the Congress went on with more papers presented concurrently so much so some of us had to make a hard sacrifice. I joked among my colleagues if it were to be too difficult for me I’ll opted for the Dancing session which was in the programme to promote our culture to the spouse of the foreign participants. I stayed on the technology trends trail until before lunch I had enough of technology and switch to Competency and Skill required for modern archivist. But I was a bit disappointed as I did not get to hear or learn something new, closer to what we had planned for our own archives.

On The Train (ICA Congress), July 22, 2008

After the recent WCIT 2008 the ICA Congress is the second biggest international congress that I attended this year. If the first day was an indication, it is going to be another success for Malaysia. The reason I am attending the congress is to equip me with the latest knowledge in Archiving. We have a very challenging task transforming our archive and I need all the lessons that I could possibly get at a speed. In the morning was the opening ceremony by the minister and the first concurrent session was at 1430. It was a smart arrangement by the organizer where after the ceremony we had a good long quality time visiting the exhibition.

After lunch I attended the Archiving Websites session, which was really an eye opener for me. The preamble was the proliferation of the Internet and the realization that the production of digital content had out number the capacity for storage. Also mentioned were the concept Digital Shadows and Digital Footprint that we created traversing the Internet. The notion that it could be either scary or interesting. If you want to archive your websites or any other websites you have to be focus and be aware of the legal issues surrounding it. It was suggested by the panel the best method to do it is by way of mirroring. I was introduced to Offline Explorer Pro 5.0.