 Welcome, everyone, to the International Archives Day panel that we're having here. It's hosted at San Jose State University School of Information. The title of our panel today is National Treasures, Preserving and Providing Access to Cultural Heritage. So a big thank you to SJSU School of Information for hosting the panel, and then also to the International Council on Archives for hosting International Archives Day. And as a quick reminder for social media if you'd like to post during this session on about this panel or about other events for International Archives Day, use hashtag IAD18 so that we can all catch up with each other and see what the conversation is. So in this panel discussion, we have researchers from the International Directory of National Archives or IDNA who are going to share insights from their research on archives around the world and the national treasures that those archives govern, preserve, and share. So I'm going to go ahead and introduce our panelists. I'm going to turn on my camera real quick to say hello. Hi there. So I'm Elise Donovan-Jones. I'm a recent graduate from the School of Information at San Jose State University. I got my MLIS as well as an advanced certificate in digital assets management. I'm also a virtual world librarian and the assistant director at the Community Virtual Library in Second Life. And before I graduated, I was a researcher for IDNA, the International Directory of National Archives, and I was also a researcher, a graduate research assistant for the InterParis Trust Project, which is another really great international project. And I'll introduce our other panelists. So first we have Tracy, Tracy Mitchell. She is from Los Angeles, California, and she has a bachelor's degree in history from UCLA. She's an MLIS student at SJSU's iSchool, and her focus is on archival practices. She hopes to apply her skills in an academic or special library setting. We also have Angie Conroe here with us. She has a bachelor's degree in anthropology from the University of Montana. And her interest is in genealogy and archival records, and that's something that inspired her to join the IDNA research team. And she is also currently an iSchool student at San Jose State University. And then our last panelist is Faiza Jahan-Shiri, and she is very passionate about saving world memories and preserving cultural heritage for future generations through providing universal access to worldwide national archives. So she also was one of the researchers for IDNA, and she also recently earned her MLIS from the School of Information. Okay, so I'm going to tell you a little bit about the International Directory of National Archives. That's where we got all of this information. We're all researchers for it. And so the directory, it's going to provide information about 195 countries who are recognized by the UN. And there's going to be three additional countries that we deemed worth including as separate countries because they have established national archives as well of their own. So that's Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Taiwan. Those are the three who they're not technically recognized by the United Nations as separate entities, but they have national archives. And so it's going to include history of the national archives of those countries, the 195 countries plus the additional three. With they'll have a brief history of the archives, some information about leadership and governance. So like who directs the archives, for example, how to contact and visit the archives and what types of materials are being held there. So that's just kind of a glimpse of the information that is reflected in the National Archives, the International Directory of National Archives publication. And it's going to be useful to archivists, historians, researchers, and institutions that are looking for information about National Archives and that might be interested in traveling to the archives. And it also will serve as a snapshot of the state of practices of National Archives today. We have images here of our editors for the IDNA, which Dr. Pat Franks who is also joining us today and Dr. Anthony Bernier, they're also SJSU faculty. And I have an image of the cover on this slide for the book. It's slated for publication mid-summer. It should be out before the Archives and Records Conference that the Society of American Archivists will be at, which is awesome. It'll be in August and D.C. is where that conference is. And also I just wanted to kind of mention that the images on this slide I got from our blog. So the IDNA project, idnaproject.org has a blog and let me go ahead and paste in. I'll go ahead and type it in for you. IDNAproject.org has a blog and we have a lot of the students that did research for it have written articles about their research. And so you can learn a lot more about it there as well. OK, so we'll go ahead and get started with the panel. We're going to start with these three main questions. We will ask each of our panelists the three questions and then they'll go ahead and they'll answer for us one at a time. And so the first person who will answer these questions is Angie. And I'm going to ask how does the National Archives that you researched for IDNA govern? How does it preserve memory and cultural heritage? And how does it provide access? So you can go ahead and answer for us, Angie. I'll go back to your slide. Thank you, Elise. The Danish National Archives operates under the Ministry of Culture in accordance with the National Archives Act number 1050. The archives fulfill five primary objectives. First, to ensure the preservation of records of historical value to the citizens and authorities. Second, to ensure the proper disposal of public records of no preservation value. Third, to make records available to citizens and authorities. Four, to guide citizens and authorities on how to use the records. And five, to carry out research and disseminate the knowledge of the research results. Preserving the collective memory of the Danes is fundamental to the mission and vision of the Danish National Archives. The National Archives supervise and mentor the state archives in order to ensure the proper storage of public data. And they oversee the transfer of files to the archives. This applies to government authorities, the Danish National Church, and can sometimes be applied to businesses or other organizations as well. The archives provide access in person through one of their four reading room locations. The physical archives consist of the state archives as well as four provincial archives with their main headquarters located in Copenhagen. The archives keep an electronic register of all visitors. Therefore, visitors must register to be given physical access. Upon arrival, visitors must also show photo ID and scan their Danish health insurance card. And for non-Danish visitors, a temporary guest card will be provided instead. In addition to physical access, the archives host a comprehensive digital infrastructure through their website. The National Archives online catalog called DAISY allows users to not only search the archives holdings, but also to pre-order documents for use in the reading rooms. All digital copies of records, which include parish records, census records, et cetera, are available through their archival online database. And they also host a Danish demographic database, which is helpful in searching for individuals or families across different sources. Great for genealogists. Online visitors can access these databases freely online without registering. However, if they want to order copies of records, such as ones that may have not been digitized yet, they would need to set up a user profile to do so. Thank you, Elise. Thanks, Angie, that's great. And I love that you mentioned genealogy and the types of records that are held because I know in some of the archives that I had studied, they explicitly stated that they did not hold those records. And so it's really interesting to see the way that different National Archives have different priorities and have different ways of preserving their nation's culture. So that's absolutely fascinating. So we'll go ahead and move on to Faiza. And Faiza, I'm gonna go ahead and ask you the same questions. How does the National Archives govern? How does it preserve memory and cultural heritage? And how does it provide access? You can go ahead, Faiza, when you're ready. Thank you, Elise. Hello, everyone. As you know, thanks to new advancement in digital technology, there is an increasing public awareness about cultural heritage preservation. And almost all world countries now pay special attention to their National Archives by means of implementing international standards for archives and records administration, joining international archives associations, collaborating with other countries' National Archives to provide universal access to archival materials and by sharing information about their national treasures to researchers and the general public. However, due to many factors such as access to technology, the economic or political factors, every National Archives organizational structure is different. Each of the countries I researched for the IDNA publication governs their archives uniquely different. Again, depending on the physical structure, access to technology, government policies, et cetera, they each have developed their own way to organize their archival records and preservation strategies or how they provide public access to the archives. For example, the organizational structure of the National Archives of Egypt with its amazing antiquity presents a far more complicated archive organization to govern compared to the United Arab Emirates Archives that is as modern and advanced as they come in this digital age. On the same level of complexity with Egypt, the Central Archives of Italy that occupies 110 kilometers of shelves over 20,000 square meters is governed systematically different throughout the total of 103 provincial archives that are located throughout Italy and then they're all linked to the Central Archives in Rome. But with all these differences, one common focus you can find among all National Archives is on their digitization projects and expanding their digitized holdings so that hundreds of rare manuscripts, maps, historic publications and documents be made available to global researchers. Thank you. Thank you, Faiza. Yes, that's wonderful. And I also, in my research, definitely the digitization that was a big deal and I noticed that there were a lot of places partnering with other countries to make sure that their items get digitized and so that it's absolutely fascinating. And we'll go ahead and move to Tracy who will answer the same questions and I'll go ahead and I'll reiterate them for everyone. So we have, how does the National Archives govern? How does the National Archives preserve memory and cultural heritage and how does it provide access? So go ahead, Tracy. Thank you, Elise. Today I'm talking about the Democratic Republic of Congo and their National Institute of Archives of Congo was established by a decree of judicial organization in 2015 and is a division of the Democratic Republic of Congo's Ministry of Culture and Arts. In its capacity as the technical and advisory body of archival activity, the repository organizes all documents and audio visual materials that are deemed to have historical, scientific, or cultural significance to the nation. The archive shares its facilities with the National Library in the capital city of Kinshasa and is responsible for the acquisition and conservation of materials, the drafting of preservation regulations and standards and the ongoing training and development of professional archivists. The archives themselves, the collection is classified chronologically. First, there are the archives of ancient realms and traditional empires, including the Kingdom of Congo, Luba and Cuba. Secondly, the archives of the independent state of Congo, which existed from 1885 to 1808. Thirdly, there are the archives of the institutions of the Belgian Congo from 1908 to 1960. Fourth is the 1960 archives of the Republican institutions. Then we have the archives of the Second Republic of Zaire. Sixth is the archives of the National Sovereign Conference, which occurred from 1991 to 1992. And finally, we have the archives of the institutions of the transition from 1990 to the present day. Even though the Democratic Republic of Congo is quite large, the archive is not classified by territory. And this is because three quarters of the collection, particularly items from the periods from 1885 to 1960 are just simple correspondence between the administrators of these territories. So it's not deemed necessary by the archive. In addition to preserving documents of value generated by governmental activities, the archive works with the government to promote good records management practices, encourage the adoption of standards throughout the government, and to provide for better protection of public and private archives. The archive also hosts public exhibits to increase awareness of Congo's history and the importance of retaining it. The archives works with other organizations to further define and set standards for the better preservation of the archive. For example, the Superior Council of Audiovisual Communication is the government body responsible for regulating media outlets in the country, such as newspapers, radio, and television. And the National Archive works together with that organization to promote the preservation of audio and visual media, which has proven to be a challenge since most media outlets there dispute the value of saving old newspapers or broadcasts. There's no official information regarding how to access records, but with the lack of a digital presence and the difficulties that I personally experienced with contacting the archive directly through email, this would indicate that the best means of access remains visiting the archive in person. I do wanna mention that the picture in the center there is of the directorous of the archive, Hermalinda Lanza, and she is there with David Leach, the secretary general of the ICA, excuse me, of the ICA, of which she's a longtime member. She's very active within the ICA, has been a proactive member of ICA's Africa program, and she's currently a member of the Forum for National Archivists. Thank you. Thanks, Tracy. I'm really glad that you mentioned the ICA, International Council on Archives, and that that was a helpful resource too. I know for quite a few of us in researching because a lot of places, even if they don't have a lot of information about their archives out there, many of them are active in ICA, and so I believe Tracy even joined ICA as part of her research for the International Directory of National Archives to be able to better communicate. So I'm really glad that you mentioned that because it was a great resource for us while we were doing our research for the IDNA. Okay, so we're gonna move on to the next portion of the panel where we have three topics that are a little bit more specific, that not only are they relevant to the theme of International Archives Day this year, but they also came up time and again while we were conducting research for IDNA. So the first topic is colonialism and post-colonialism, and I'm going to ask each of our researchers a more specific question about their countries and how colonialism has affected them. And so I'm going to start with Angie, and I'm gonna go ahead and move on to her slide. So Angie, you did a Denmark and the U.S. Virgin Islands was formerly the Danish West Indies. And so my question for you is how has colonialism affected archival management in the U.S. Virgin Islands? Thank you. Yes, so Denmark first successfully attempted to establish a colony in the West Indies in 1672. I'd like to note that at this point in time, Denmark's Royal Archive had already been in existence for 90 years. Even early on, diligent record keeping was practiced by colonial authorities both in the West Indies and in Denmark. The detailed records during this time period provide an invaluable resource for colonial life and slavery in the area. In 1997, the records of the Danish West Indies became part of the Memory of the World Register with UNESCO. As early as the mid-1800s, the Danes noted the challenge of preserving the documents of the colony. Shortly after the archives law of 1889, which established the Danish National Archives as the central archival authority, Denmark decided to begin transferring records from the islands back to Copenhagen despite opposition from local municipal offices. This was at least in part due to a lack of proper storage facilities and inclement weather, which was beginning to take its toll on the records. They began with entries created prior to 1848, so pre-emancipation. This transfer of records continued until 1902 with the second attempt to sell the islands to the United States. And the United States and Denmark did not end up striking a deal on the islands until 1916 during the midst of the First World War. And the islands officially exchanged hands in 1917. Although there was a clause in place regarding the transfer of archival records with the sale, the United States did not initially make the records a priority. In fact, the United States did not yet have a central archival authority in place, thus in 1919, after being petitioned by the Danish Historical Societies, Denmark sent an archivist to the Virgin Islands to negotiate bringing back some of the records to Denmark. The United States Navy, being the acting governing body in the Virgin Islands at the time, had more pressing issues, such as poor sanitation and public mortality to resolve and therefore allowed the Danish archivists to take whatever he felt necessary. It wasn't until after the National Archives and Records Administration was established in the 1930s that the United States sent their own archivists to examine the remaining records held in the Virgin Islands. The archivist also selected records to relocate to the National Archives in Washington, D.C. for safekeeping. Again, local municipal councils in the islands initially opposed the transfer of records, however they were persuaded otherwise. The United States continued to accession records from the Virgin Islands up until 1959, at which point, record keeping was then left to the local governments to manage. Both the Danish and American archivists had noted the poor condition of the archives on the islands, including lack of proper storage facilities, bug infestations and overall deterioration of the records. Thus, for nearly 100 years, between the mid-1800s and mid-1900s, both governments were concerned about the worsening condition of the records. So it's understandable that both archival authorities would want to properly store and preserve these documents. However, in doing so, the transfer of records to two different countries over the course of a century has essentially left the Virgin Islanders with little to no access to their own historical records. The arbitrary way in which the records were divided between the two countries also complicates matters. There's no clear timeframe or cutoff date for records kept by each country. And additionally, some collections are divided between the two governing bodies. As custodians of the records, both Denmark and the United States have a duty to make these documents available to the citizens of the islands in accordance with the treaty agreement, which acknowledges that the inhabitants have the right to obtain copies of the records. And coming up later, I'll be talking about what Denmark is currently doing to fulfill that obligation. Thank you. Thank you, Angie. So I'm gonna go ahead and move on to FISA, sorry. And FISA did a bit of work on quite a few countries, including Morocco. And so FISA, my question for you regarding colonialism is how does post-colonialism affect governance of records that were created during colonialism? Yeah, yes, Alice, thank you. Yeah, one of the national archives I researched for the IDNA Book Project was Morocco. The newly established National Archives of Morocco provides a great example of how the post-colonial Morocco is trying to build its national archives despite the effects of colonialism. For instance, it is interesting to know that even though the National Archives of Morocco was established in 2007, the formal operation began in 2011, the delay was due to the fact that only 40% of Moroccan national heritage documents stayed behind after French left Morocco in 1956. The National Archives of Morocco has been working on compiling all the records that belongs to this history, including records from the period of the French protectorate in Morocco that were taken by the French when they left in 1956. But this is no easy task since these precious documents which include military and diplomatic archives are scattered in various parts of France. Therefore, the archives of Morocco currently is primarily useful for historians studying the French protectorate. The archives though provide some guidance to researchers as to what sort of protectorate records remain in Morocco and which are housed in French archives. That's all I have on this subject. Thank you, Faiza. So I'm gonna go ahead and move on to Tracy who also has some interesting information about colonialization that she came across in her research and I actually, she did Africa and I did quite a few places in Africa also. And so it's very interesting the way that not only, I knew about a lot of the African information but the Virgin Islands also was very interesting. So Tracy, my question for you, you studied the Congo. So how has this, sorry, what effect has the repatriation of documents had on the national archives in the Congo? Well, an audit of the DRC's National Archive done by a scholar named Bob Billy Boteco in 2012 showed that the archive was in a really dire state at that time. While there were also internal factors at play, the history of the Belgian occupation of Congo and the subsequent repatriation of the bulk of the archival documents of that period are also a factor in the disorder experienced by the archive. In fact, that's why the building pictured in this slide is the Belgian National Archive in Belgium because this is where the majority of the existing documents regarding Congo's period of Belgian occupation reside. In 1885, King Leopold turned Congo into the world's only private colony and he declared himself proprietor. He was also responsible for regulating the management of the archives there through the office of the secretary general of the government. Upon his death in 1909, he declared that the state archives should be burned. It took eight days to destroy them all. This was an atypical choice for a ruler to make regarding the disposition of their legacy, but perhaps the fact that 10 million Congolese were murdered during his reign was a factor in his choice. In 1960, independence from Belgium was declared and Patrice Lumumba became the first prime minister of the New Democratic Republic. And up until that time, the administrative machinery of King Leopold II had done an efficient job of managing the archives. But with the change in leadership, Belgium launched a initiative dubbed Operation Archives and most all documents relating to the entire history of Belgian administration of affairs and Congo were moved to Belgium. This procedure had been developed earlier when Belgium left Indonesia and therefore because they were practiced, it was quite efficient. However, some documents were left behind and during the early years of the New Republic, responsibility was for maintaining these records shifted from one government agency to another. Of course, this meant that with each change, a different value was placed upon the items in the collection. The result is that over the years, many documents were destroyed. Sometimes it was done to erase the evidence of the horrific past that the DRC had experienced. Sometimes it was simply because the documents were deemed a dusty nuisance. After Prime Minister Lumumba was assassinated in 1999, the nation continued to go through many incarnations and during that period, government ministers who were caught up in the reshuffles often destroyed documents to hide indiscretions and competence or corruption. And even today, one of the obstacles facing Directorist Madam Lanza has been that the archive is associated with the preservation of government documents and therefore petty bureaucracy. It's difficult to convince the population which has dealt with so much turmoil for so many generations that the preservation of these records has a legitimate function. In turn, this has caused difficulties also in the recruiting and training of new archivists which has had a significant impact on the archive. Now, in many ways, we can contrast this with the DRC's sister nation across the river, the Republic of Congo, whose archive is literally across the river in Brazzaville. The French were not necessarily as fastidious about maintaining records during the period of occupation and left many documents behind when they exited the region. And these documents play a major role in their national archives today. While the government has also evolved over the years in the Republic of Congo, they've seen nothing like the chaos that has plagued the DRC. And on the whole, the Republic of Congo has more access to technology today, and the archive has been included in UNESCO proposals to fund research projects, which has been very helpful. Now, we all know that correlation is not causation, would be way overly simplistic to relate the state of a national archive to the state of a nation. However, the ICA's position on the matter of repatriation is that archives are the memory of nations and that the role that they play in helping a society forge its identity is crucial. At the very least, the disposition and repatriation of national archives is critical because the people with access to a record of the past, no matter how horrific it may be, have a better chance of making sense of that past. That's it. Thank you, Tracy, that was wonderful. We're gonna go ahead and move on to our next topic, which in a lot of ways ties into some of what we heard about, certainly in the Congo. Our next topic is disasters, not just natural disasters, but also man-made disasters. And so certainly war would fall under that. And also in our modern era, malware, any sort of hacking or other electronic issues certainly fall into disasters and disaster recovery. And that sort of thing. And so our, I have a question in this category for Faiza. And Faiza, can you talk about a few examples of national archives that were affected by natural and man-made disasters? Yes, of course. Thank you, Elise. A good example of how political factors can affect the very national archive, govern their records, would be the National Archives of Iran, which is in fact one of the seven oldest countries on earth. And it is home to the oldest tangible and intangible memories of human civilization. But unfortunately limiting government policies and international sanctions deprives the archives from the international publicity it deserves, prevents the archives from joining international associations and to participate in the ongoing international efforts to modernizing the government's preservation and access to national archives around the globe. Furthermore, the restricted governing policies deter international researchers to visit the archives. And to add more, what is extremely saddening to me is to see how the lack of proper governance of the archives over the past few decades has resulted in loss or illegal transfers of Iranian tangible and intangible national treasures. And I have three other examples from my research I can discuss here. The countries of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria also provide great examples. These national archives present an example of how political and economic conditions, war and natural and man-made disaster can affect the way these national archives govern, preserve and provide access to their public records. For example, the Iraq National Archives was burned to the ground in 2003 and the sectarian violence and war on ISIS has caused a huge setback in the reconstruction efforts. Despite these setbacks, the Iraq National Archives has been able to recover about 40% of rare copies of the Ottoman era documents, but war and instability in Iraq continues to be detrimental to this progress. And also Afghanistan, Afghanistan National Archives present another example of how war, political and economic factors can affect the way the Afghanistan National Archives govern and preserve and provide access to some of the oldest and most beautiful miniatures and manuscripts in that region of the world. Also Syrian National Archives holds a rare and unique collection of documents and manuscripts and photographic images from the Ottoman era. But the current conditions in Syria won't allow for the archives to provide any type of access to these records. So those are the examples I could provide. Thanks. Thank you, Faiza. Our next topic is technology and this is also our final topic and Angie and Tracy will be giving us some information about this for their countries. And so I'm going to ask Angie first. She discussed the Virgin Islands for us and how they were previously the Danish West Indies and so this is in that vein. How is Denmark using technology to reconcile its responsibility to provide access to records from the former Danish West Indies? Well, in 2017, this marked the 100th anniversary of the sale of the Danish West Indies to the United States. To commemorate the occasion, the Danish National Archives spent four years preparing to bring original records from the colony online. The Danish National Archives acknowledging that these records have been largely inaccessible except to those able to research in Denmark wanted everyone to have access to the records regardless of their physical location. The National Archives hold approximately 1300 linear meters of material on the colony which about two thirds of that originated on the islands. More than 99% of the collection has been digitized which amounts to approximately five million digital images. The remainder of the collection is unfortunately in too poor of condition to be scanned. More than 150 volunteers around the globe have participated in transcribing and tagging these records to help make them easier to search both in Danish and in English. And more than 130,000 entries have been transcribed so far. The records officially became available on March 1st of 2017 through the project's website www.virgin-island-history.org. The site is complete with several detailed search guides which are also conveniently available in English to assist the researchers. In addition to searching the collection, the website provides a comprehensive history of the islands helping to contextualize the stories behind the records. Back to you Elise. Thank you Angie. I'm really glad you mentioned that the records are available in both English and in Danish. I think that's really, really is helpful for researchers as well. My next question and this is also the last question that I will be asking is for Tracy. So this is actually kind of a two-parter. First, I would like to know how has the state of technology affected archives in the Congo? And then what is the future outlook for technological advancement in the region? So how is it currently and what's the outlook? Well, unlike the National Center for Archives and Documentation in the Republic of Congo which has a website and its catalog listing is available online, the DRC's National Archive currently has no online finding aids or search engines available. There's no website, there's no social media presence and no digitized documents. This makes sense when one considers that the DRC has a human development index of 0.239 ranking at 171 out of 172 rated countries. The human development index was actually developed by the UN. It's a summary measure of average achievement and key dimensions of human development such as lifespan, access to education, standard of living. So needless to say, there's not a whole lot of technology available in the region. Very few people there use or have access to the internet. In fact, fewer than 10% of local businesses have websites at all to promote their services or goods. Mobile phones are available and their use is growing across the country and in fact it's one of the most widely used means of digital communication there. But because of these technological challenges, research institutes, universities and industries such as the archive are actually isolated from one another and therefore there's a lack of cooperation among these sectors. However, there is some rudimentary technology. People in urban areas do have televisions but radio is the main news source, particularly in rural areas, although not all parts of the country even have access to a radio signal. The reason for the popularity of radio is that there are over 400 local languages spoken within the nation, within the country. So local radios are able to communicate with people through their local language, provide local news and in fact have been involved significantly in this construction of peace among different tribes and things like that through special local programming. And that's why the archive does so much local outreach to try to unify the country in terms of getting behind the archive. As for the future, UNESCO is focusing on development in the region of improved access to digital radio technology while that seems like a pretty basic priority for them to have. The expectation is that by improving the access to digital radio technology, that'll serve as a gateway to the development of further and more sophisticated technology in the future. Currently, there are also plans to install a national optical cable system. This would improve telecommunications significantly. There's also a major telecom company in the region, Gillott, which had just announced that it'll be using Cisco to upgrade the POP system. This is definitely going to lead to improved communications between the different sectors of research and science and industry. And it will also simplify the ability to transmit digital documents. So the hope is that all of these improvements that are being projected will have a significantly positive impact on the archive of the DRC sooner rather than later. Thank you. Thank you, Tracy. And I'm really glad that you mentioned UNESCO, Faiza mentioned UNESCO earlier as well. And that's another organization similar to the ICA that was really helpful in my research. They've done a lot to help countries who aren't able to do a lot for themselves right now, both in digitization and just in preserving items. And so that was another great starting point for me when I was having trouble finding information about a country was to check out UNESCO's website because sometimes they would have big collections or they would be working with an institution in the country. So that was really helpful to mention that. And I'm gonna go ahead and we can move on to our question and answer portion. A huge thank you to everyone who came to participate. And I do have an image here again of the cover for the International Directory of National Archives, which will be out again, it should be before August of this year. If you want to learn more about the IDNA project, you can go to idnaproject.org. We have, I mentioned before, we have a blog there that a lot of the different researchers have put information up on some of the different stuff that they found they've uncovered while researching archives. I know I have one or two blog posts up there myself on information that I had found. And you can also contact Pat Franks, who again is here today, if you have additional questions about this panel or any questions that you ask but weren't answered today or that you just didn't get a chance to ask or perhaps if you're listening to the recording. So I'm gonna go ahead and stop for a moment and our participants, I believe you have the ability to take the mic. You can also go ahead and paste a question into chat. And same with the panelists, if you have any questions for each other, please feel free to chime in. While we're waiting, I actually have a question for Dr. Franks, if you want, you can either take the mic but you can also type into chat. I know that you as an editor have a really interesting perspective on the International Directory of Archives. And the different topics that we talked about here today. And I was just kind of curious if a lot of what we talked about today was reflected in what you have read of the International Directory of National Archives, if you saw similar patterns while you were reading. Again, it could just be a yes or no answer but I would love your insight on that. You know, I was listening to the presentations. I was wishing that we had each person who actually did research do a mini review of their own country. I found what was being presented today fascinating and different from what we're going to have in the directory. Much of it is similar, of course, but one of the things that I've noticed is that the state of the National Archives in each of these countries changes constantly that what we will reflect with our work here is the state of the National Archives at the time that the work was reviewed. We updated some right through this spring and I had a note from the publisher yesterday that they had sent the document off to printing, which means it will be out in mid-July for sure. And but at that time, what's going through my mind is that, oh, I wish that I could ask each one of you to do a presentation similar to what we had today. For example, the information about the communications, the state of communication technology in the DRC that Tracy shared was fascinating and that would not be something that we would include in the book. We were looking at technology status but we were not looking at the peripherals at the other communication facilities that might be available that are going to bring anything to those countries. So a lot of what was presented today was new to me as well and really fascinating. Oh, that's wonderful. Yes, I agree. That would be really fun to do a kind of write-up similar to what we did today on the different countries. And I do agree also on ICTs, those information communication technologies. I know in some of my research for InterParis Trust, the different project from this one, I had found Tracy had mentioned cell phones being a big deal in a lot of the third world countries, a lot of places in Africa. And I definitely saw that come up. And I see Faiza has raised her hand. Go ahead, Faiza. Yes, thank you. I don't know if probably Dr. Franks would be able to answer this or not at this time. My question is about the digital version of the IDNA book. Will that be something that we could look forward or know it's still too early? I don't have any word on that. I know that they had in the past put it out more as a PDF version similar to something you would read on your computer or on your e-reader, for example, but I don't have any specific information yet. So I'll share that with everybody through our email group when I get more information. Wonderful. And I'll bet that's something too that would probably, especially if we knew that it was coming out and actually for publication, I'll bet that would be on the website too. That's a good reason to... Exactly. Yeah, I think that you can follow it with RSS feed. I believe our blog especially. So if anybody wants to keep up, get updated that way, that's a really, really great way to stay up to date. I will, I'm gonna go ahead. I'd like to wait just for another minute to see if anyone else raises their hand or has any questions. Oh, I see Angela just typed one. Angela Osborn asks, do you have any online resources to suggest for those new to archival work? That's a great question. I actually do have a couple that I'm gonna, I'll paste in that, Faiza actually had recommended for, specifically for National Archives work and related to cultural heritage. So I'm gonna paste that in. But I will let, I don't know if anyone, any of our other panelists have one or two resources that they found really, really helpful for research. I'm guessing, is it for research or are you thinking Angela for actually working in an archives and conducting the work? For looking into other archives or for like hosting collections and things like that? Actually working in archives, okay. Yeah, that's something for the IDNA project, there might not be as much that we have because a lot of it involved us researching the organizational websites and things like that rather than going into actually learning the different resources. I've definitely taken some archival classes and I would highly recommend, I'm not sure if you're in the United States, SAA, the Society of American Archivists would be a big one, but there are other organizations like that and I'm gonna pull up those, some of the links that I have because that might be helpful. And Dr. Franks has a lot of records management certifications and is actually the head of the iSchools MARA program. So Pat, you might have, you might know a link off the top of your head for some of the bigger archives organizations that maybe I can't remember off the top of my head. In the United States, I was just going to say the same thing you did, the Society of American Archives, do you belong to that? What they have is a terrific website and they provide training online as well as around the country and they have a glossary of terms, but they also have publications and their publications are very good. So take a look at the Society of American Archives. If you work in government, I also belong to Nagara. It's for government archivists and records managers and through Nagara, we have a lot of training for a, you'll see for a local government certificate which is not something you may need, but as part of that, there's training again online. The webinars are fantastic as well as training in different regions of the country that you might go to. So regional conferences more than anything, but it is Nagara. I was also thinking about the courses that Elise mentioned. We have our syllabi online. I don't have the link to that right now here, but if you take a look at some of the courses that have to do with preservations, digital curation, you'll see reading lists on the syllabi and the syllabi for every one of those courses is available online for each semester that we teach. There we go. Okay, Elise is so much faster with these links than I. Thank you. Go through the, yes, through the website and look for the syllabi and if you have a problem with that, you see my email there. You could just send me a note and I'll send you the direct link to those too. Oh, that's, okay. The second one is for the records conference this summer and it's going to be an excellent one because what you have there is a combination of several groups. So Nagara and SAA will both be there and I believe members of the Council of State Archives will be there as well. And it's in Washington, D.C. So it's sure to involves at least one reception at the National Archives. I know they usually do that. So it's a terrific conference to attend. Oh, you're welcome. Thanks, Pat. And I just got a reminder from Faiza to make sure that I posted the links that she had provided because I will go ahead and do that before we leave. Oh, thank you, Angie. Angie went ahead and posted the course syllabus links. So these two links that I just did, one is for UNESCO and actually, Faiza, since we have a couple minutes, if you'd like, you can go ahead and kind of introduce exactly what those links are if you're up for it, the two that I just posted into the chat. Oh, I have, I did not really go into details about these efforts by UNESCO and the IFLA, but that's okay because you can click on the links and read all about the stuff that we all talked about today. Thank you. And you heard about UNESCO, who funds special projects in archives. IFLA, IFLA is a library association as well. So mainly library information and archives information, that's a fantastic international organization and our school always has representatives at those conferences, annual conferences as well. Thanks, Pat and thanks, Faiza. So let's see, I'm looking through to make sure that there aren't any other hands raised. If there are any questions after noon and we have to end the session, we can still stay on for a few minutes to answer your question. But as Pat mentioned, you can always send her an email and please do feel free to visit ideadaproject.org. There are lots of great blog posts there of just kind of fun stuff that we found in our research. And then also it'll be a good way to get a kind of an overview of the project and of the people who researched on it, who contributed to it. And one of the things I wanted to point out is that there are blog posts of interviews of four of the national archivists. We had two representatives go to Mexico to a meeting of the ICAA in November and they interviewed four national archivists, I think from Australia, the UK, the UAE and Canada. So those are very interesting interviews to read as well.