Körperwelten

My mom wanted to see the exposition Körperwelten (Body Worlds in English). At first I wasn't especially thrilled to go. I thought it was another artsy fartsy exhibit with dead people's bodies. But, since I did like the idea of doing something with my mom, off we went. In retrospect I'm actually glad she proposed it. The exhibit was surprisingly tasteful and expertly done. In reality it's not an art venue, but rather an educational exposition. The object is more about giving a lesson in anatomy 101. You start with a bare skeleton, and gradually the bodies get more fleshed out, as the next part is being explained. A visit should be made compulsory for med students, but also for high school pupils. The whole is very scientific, yet respectful. And I must admit I got schooled today in a pleasant manner.

New studies

It has taken blood, sweat & tears to get it done, but I am finally enrolled at the Free University of Brussels (VUB). As of today I am officially on my way to become a knowledge manager. The course is called Master after master in Business Information and Services Management (BI&SM). Sounds impressive, huh. I have done all my studies at the VUB (Master in Contemporary History and Master in Archival Science), so I am well aware of the inherent chaotic functioning of the institution. In general, this has always worked to my advantage. Now (since the Bologna changes) it was a bit less funny. The internal mail lost my application papers. As a result I had to apply for a late registration. Which took forever. The most annoying part was the lack of information. It took more than a month before getting any word on what was going on (including numerous e-mail reminders and the help of the head of my faculty). But, that's all water under the bridge now. I am registered. Now I can concentrate on the stress for the upcoming exams and writing a clear definition of what my master thesis will be about.

On a side note, The BI&SM used to be called Master in Business Information Management (BIM). They added the "Services" only recently. The professors still talk about the bim-people though when they want to differentiate between us and the students of another master with who we share some classes. This always reminds me of a track by C-Mon & Kypski (although it has absolutely nothing to do with it):

Creating a European History Textbook Repository

The CITER project “Creating a European History Textbook Repository” is an eContentplus project funded by the European Commission. "The objective of this project is the creation of a digital European history textbook base by integration of already existing material with the publishers in the respective countries. The integration is achieved by introducing language independent metadata schemata based on space (locations), time (dates), and thematic categories.The specific metadata corpuses defined in this project will be a European thematic ontology for history concepts [and] a multilingual location corpus." "Overall, this project aims at increasing the use of electronic textbooks in a modern classroom scenario. The re-use of content will be increased by using language independent browsing in combination with quality machine translation providing access to foreign language content. Specifically designed educational evaluation scenarios will be used to access the usability in a classroom context, i.e., obtaining a multiperspective view of history but also as a research means for new textbooks." The project will be co-ordinated by the Research Academic Computer Technology Institute, located in Greece.

By adding multilingual metadata through ontologies, CITER will try to integrate history textbook resources with the aim of compiling a European text base and providing language-independent access. Teachers across Europe will have access to the history textbook content based on spatial, temporal and thematic metadata through a web-portal. The repository will provide support to the study of cross-cutting themes in history "by a multiperspective and a comparative approach to the discovery and interpretation of historical facts."

In this way it can become the basis for historical information for students. It will contain the facts and analysis of European history as it is widely accepted by scholars. Besides being an interactive tool that may make the experience of learning more interesting, it will also provide different angles to certain events. The Treaty of Versailles, for instance, did not have the same repercussions for France as for Germany. Both points of view can be presented within the repository.

Adding a multilingual historical metadata can prove to be a problem. Simply translating words is sometimes not enough. Certain events have a different wording in different languages sometimes. E.g. the uprising of the creoles and slaves against the Spanish in Cuba during the second half of the nineteenth century, where the Americans were involved in as well, is called the Spanish (-Cuban) -American War by the US. In Cuba it's named the War of Independance. Once these kinds of obstacles have been tackled, I think it might become a very interesting tool to work with.

Some history links

For the First World War, or the Great War if you prefer, the English National Archives has created an online exhibition called The First World War, sources for history. It's divided into different parts: an overview, 'Britain and the war', 'the military conflict', 'service records', and 'aftermath'. There is also a timeline, particular 'spotlights on history', and maps. Another exhibit tries to teach kids something about crime and punishment in history through an interactive site with case studies to solve.

An interesting read is the blog WW1: Experiences of an English Soldier. The story of Harry Lamin is being retold by his grandson in the form of the letters that he had send home. As stated on the blog "the letters will be posted exactly 90 years after they were written. William Lamin has another blog where he publishes the "official war diary of the 9th Battalion of York & Lancaster Regiment." For more detailed info on WWI you can check out FirstWorldWar.com.

The National Archives and Records Administration (USA) has an interesting collection of the Second World War. The NARA has put the images from the donated "Hitler Album" documenting looted art online here. A more general overview of the records they possess, can be found here.

Finally, the British Library has put up an online gallery called Turning the Pages, in which you can leaf through books in their collection that have exquisite miniatures.

Funny sex ed for teens: The Midwest Teen Sex Show

With the Midwest Teen Sex Show, Nikol, Britney and Guy are trying to "create a space for frank discussion of all things related to teen sexuality." By using humor and sarcasm they are talking to teens about sexuality. Nikol describes herself as a "former expert practitioner of teen promiscuity", she "lives out her days as a Midwestern mother of three. Her interests range from music, movies, trash television, and naked rodeo clowns with handlebar mustaches to cooking, reading and naked rodeo clowns with handlebar mustaches." They're are not trying to replace traditional sex education at school or to promote teen sex. "The Midwest Teen Sex Show is here to provide sex information in a clear and entertaining way. We won’t pretend to be experts, but hopefully a few of our own embarrassing experiences and insights will keep you out of trouble."

I'm sure that people with a broomstick up their ass will take offense, but at least they're giving a more positive message than those crazy abstinence preachers (like Purity Balls, Silver Ring Thing and True Love Waits) and other sexually repressed hypocrites (like Larry Craig, Ted Haggard and Newt Gingrich).

Here is the first episode: Female Masturbation

Sign of the times

In the post Tempting!! on the Digital Archivist blog, Christian Van de Ven talks about the new flyer of the Archiefschool, the institute for archival education and research in the Netherlands, with its new enticing promo talk. It asks you if "you want to find out how things were in the past? How did your city used to look? What was the first movie on YouTube? The archivist preserves all information that is worth of it, so that everyone may view and use it." You will learn to "adjust your services to the customer. For the municipal government you'll write a research report, for school kids you'll make an exciting game." They are even offering classes on Web 2.0.

How ... well, modern. The days of the stuffy old nerd in a flashers' coat covered in dust are gone. In today's society managing "old paper" is only part of the job. An archivist isn't just a Keeper of Ancient Written Knowledge anymore, but also a knowledge and information manager. In the Belgian Master after Master in Archival Studies the profile of the archivist is described as a guardian of historical and cultural heritage, as well as a key figure in any modern administration as a document manager and consultant in the field of document and records management, taxonomies, work- and documentflow, automisation, etc.

The archival profession has entered the digital age for some time now. In the field of digital archiving a lot of research has already been done (e.g. Monash university's Records Continuum Research Group, the European Union's DLM-Forum, the InterPARES Project, the Dutch Digital Longevity project, the published ISO archiving standards like the OAIS-model, PDF/A and ISO 15489, the Archives of Antwerp's eDAVID project, and many more). Several technical solutions for the problem of the volatile digital record have been researched. Archives are now in the process of working out the feasibility of these solutions. However, until recently I got the feeling that people in general, and a lot of archivists outside of the academic world in particular, weren't ready to enter the digital era yet.[*] Slowly this is changing, but a lot of work still needs to be done to convince everybody that archivists need to move with the times. Not only in the field of preservation and dissemination of records, but also in the way archives (and libraries as well) present themselves to the public. A few librarians (and some archivists) are experimenting with different methods. Early september I went to Informatie 2007, a congress on ICT for information professionals, organized every two years by the VVBAD (the Flemish Organisation of Librarians, Archivists and Documentalists). There were several presentations about (ongoing) research and projects regarding digital repositories, digitalization, social software and the like. This is just an example at the level of a small European country, but the point that I'm making is that there are enough ideas and pioneers in the field willing to make a difference. The main thing now is to convince the rest of the world of what we're doing.

[*] I'm not saying that "traditional" record-keeping should be forgotten. The "old papers" still need to be taken care of. What's more, for the time being, the paperless office doesn't exist yet, so hybrid systems will remain in place.