PDP video available (mostly)

The Past's Digital Presence LogoI’ve been pretty remiss in my website-maintenance duties for Yale’s Past’s Digital Presence conference website.

However! Thanks to our intrepid cinematographer/video editor (A.K.A. my boyfriend Andy), you can watch video of a lot of the talks by clicking on the title of the talk you’re interested in. And Jana Remy, our distinguished and talented online media chair, has turned a number of talks into downloadable audio podcasts.

Andy and I are pretty pleased with ourselves for our decision to host the conference’s video at the Internet Archive. As I see it, this has a number of benefits: the I.A., unlike YouTube, has an explicit commitment to sustainability, open access, and archival integrity. Plus, people can freely download these videos, and they’re even available as HTML5. Here are all the videos over at the Internet Archive.

Our undeserved prominence has inspired me to get on Andy’s case to get the rest of the video up. And I’ll work on making the site a better archive, rather than a conference-registration site.

A quick work update

Chips and beef jerky
Road food during our trip from New Haven to Atlanta

Boy, May just about killed me! There was the small matter of writing the last chapter of my dissertation, not to mention revising an article, grading stacks of finals and papers, finding a new place to live — and, of course, moving 1,000 miles from New Haven to Atlanta. I was fascinated by the exotic variety of weird stress-related symptoms I developed: so very many rashes!

Anyway! We did it, and here we are in Decatur, Georgia, mostly unpacked and doing great. I started my job in Emory’s library on June 15, and I’m loving it. I was delighted to find my initial impressions of Emory confirmed — particularly the part about having awesome coworkers.

One thing I’d missed while in school was exercising a variety of different skills, and I’m finding this one of the most enjoyable parts of my job. I do a lot of research, just like always, but also a lot of planning, talking, and strategizing. And, crucially, I know when my workday is over.

I have to confess to some initial concern that in moving from an academic role to a (sort of) staff role, I’d experience some drop in others’ respect or willingness to take me seriously. So far, though, I’ve been way too busy to worry about that at all. And the faculty members I’ve met at Emory have been absolutely terrific, more than willing to listen to my ideas.

So, basically, I’m congratulating myself on ending up here, and feeling optimistic about what my coworkers and I can accomplish at Emory. If only that dissertation didn’t need revising …