Author Archives: katherinewallace

Internet Archive’s Youngest Volunteer– by b. George

baby-internAt two-and-a-half months, Zinnia Dupler takes the cake as the youngest volunteer to give us a hand here at the Internet Archive. Strapped to her mom, Lindsey, the duo is hard at work out here in our Richmond warehouse, as we sort about 100,000 LPs.  Ten minutes after taking this photo, I encountered a little musical gem on the other side of the warehouse – but we hid it from her crying eyes.

It was in a pile of records being boxed by slightly older interns working on the 48,000 seventy-eights we got from the Batavia Public Library in Illinois, part of the Barrie H.Thorp Collection.

Now this is the first time we’ve had a chance to have a look at this great collection, and so far, it’s quite a surprise. At least the first pallet hasburpin been box-after-box of hillbilly, country, and western swing records. Now I used to think I knew a bit about music. But after this, it’s back to school for me. Just so many artists I’ve never heard of or held a record by. You know, like the Burpin’ Baby warbler, Cactus Pryor and his Pricklypears!

In the ‘G’s alone there’s Curly Gribbs, Lonnie Glosson and the Georgians. Geeez! Did you know that Hank Snow had a recordin’ kid, Jimmy, and he cut “Rocky Mountain Boogie’ on 4 Star Records, or that Cass Daley, star of stage and screen, was the “Queen of Musical Mayhem?” Me neither.  The Davis Sisters, turns out, included a young Skeeter!  There was also a Black Gospel group named the Davis Sisters, also from the 40s, and we got some of those seventy-eights also.  Then there’s them Koen Kobblers, Bill Mooney and his Cactus Twisters, and Ozie Waters and the Colorado Hillbillies. No matter that they should be named the Colorado Mountaineers–they’re new to me.

B.-GeorgeB. George is the Music Curator for the Internet Archive. He is also the co-founder and Director of the ARChive of Contemporary Music in NYC.  ARC is a partner of the Internet Archive, where B. George and his staff help to curate the physical and digital music collections.

 

EXHIBITION OPENING- From Clay to the Cloud: The Internet Archive and Our Digital Legacy– January 23

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On View at the Laband Art Gallery
Loyola Marymount University
January 23 – March 20, 2016

Opening Reception: Saturday, January 23, 2-5pm
Talks by Brewster Kahle, Founder of Internet Archive
and Artist Nuala Creed

Ceramic Archivists being moved from their home at the Internet Archive's San Francisco headquarters

Nuala Creed’s Ceramic Archivists being packed for transport from their home at the SF headquarters of the Internet Archive to the Laband Gallery in LA.

Loyola Marymount University’s Laband Art Gallery and the William H. Hannon Library are collaborating on a new exhibit, From Clay to the Cloud:  The Internet Archive and our Digital Legacy, which runs January 23- March 20, 2016.

From Clay to The Cloud explores the human impetus to preserve our knowledge, our memory, and our cultural heritage. Twenty years ago, the Internet Archive took on the challenge of creating a digital repository—a 21st-century Library of Alexandria—where swaths of our lives from the Internet and other sources will be stored for generations to come. In order to be useful, this unfathomably vast collection of data (over 20 petabytes and growing) needs to be explored and activated by humans who seek to tell stories and make sense of it. The exhibition looks at past and present archival practices and asks what are we saving, how will others be able to access it, and what will our cultural legacy be for the future?

Artist, Nuala Creed, dismantles a sculpture of Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive.

Artist, Nuala Creed, dismantles a sculpture of Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive.

Ancient clay cuneiforms will be on view as well as artist Nuala Creed’s ceramic statues depicting the people who are building the Internet Archive–crucial reminders of the human involvement in this digital library. Hands-on displays will offer visitors the opportunity to dive into the vast “storerooms” of the Internet Archive.  A wall of monitors will convey both the unfathomable vastness of the archive and shine a spotlight on different specific aspects of the archive (pulling needles out of the haystack). A listening stationing made up of music from the Internet Archive’s collection can be perused in comfortable chairs. A gaming station will offer visitors the 3 opportunity to play a handful of video games archived on the Internet Archive. These games span the history and evolution of video gaming from Pong to PacMan to today. There will also be an 3-D Occulus Rift demonstration station

During the course of the exhibition, Laband and Hannon staff will be using a Table Top Scribe—the Internet Archive’s new state-of-the-art book scanner–in the gallery to digitally archive rare materials from the library’s special collections and Laband exhibition catalogues

Exhibition-Related Programs:  (all events are free)

Opening Reception & Talk: Nuala Creed & Brewster Kahle 
Saturday, January 23, 2-5pm  ◊ Artist’s Talk 2:00-3:00pm  ◊ Reception 3:00-5:00pm
Murphy Recital Hall and Laband Art Gallery
Internet Archive Founder Brewster Kahle and artist Nuala Creed offer insight into the archive and Creed’s unique artistic commission. The talk will be followed by a free reception. The talk is co-organized by the Laband Art Gallery and KaleidoLA: The Speaker Series of the Department of Art and Art History.

Ask An Archivist Panel
Wednesday. February 10, 5:30-7:00 pm
Von der Ahe Suite 322, William H. Hannon Library
Archivists representing diverse archives from across Southern California will discuss the relationship between researchers and archivists in the digital age.

DIY Archiving Workshop & Exhibition Tour
Saturday. February 13, 9:30am-12:30pm
Von der Ahe Suite 322, William H. Hannon Library
Learn how to best preserve your treasured documents, images, and objects, both print and digital. The workshop will be followed by a tour of the exhibition with curator Carolyn Peter.
Conversation: Gaming, Its Past and Its Future, Tracy Fullerton & Tom Klein
Tuesday, March 8, 7pm LMU Von der Ahe Building, Room 190
USC Game Designer/Professor Tracy Fullerton and LMU Animation Professor Tom Klein will discuss how traditions of analog and digital game design inform the creative process of current video game development. This program is co-organized with the School of Film and Television.
Talk: The Dark Side: Your Personal Archive, Data Collection, & Privacy
Date and Time TBD
TBD Location
Other types of archiving and data collection are occurring on a daily basis around our shopping, browsing, and physical location. Where is this information going and how do citizens protect their privacy in a digital age? This program is co-organized with the Department of Communication Studies.

Free Little Libraries
Dotted across LMU’s campus are Free Little Libraries where you can take a book and/or leave a book.
Stop by the Laband or the Hannon Library for a map and go on a treasure hunt to locate them all. For More Information For current program and exhibition information,
call 310-338-2880 or visit http://cfa.lmu.edu/laband.

Gallery Information
Hours: Wednesday through Sunday, noon to 4 p.m.; closed Mondays and Tuesdays.
Admission: Admission is free.
Parking is available on campus for a charge on the weekdays and for free on the weekends.

Aaron Swartz Day – Hackathon, Privacy-enabling conference and Reception

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In memory of Aaron Swartz, whose social, technical, and political insights still touch us daily, Lisa Rein, in partnership with the Internet Archive, will be hosting a weekend of events on Saturday, November 7 and Sunday, November 8. Friends, collaborators, and hackers can participate in a Hackathon, Privacy-enabling Mini Conference, and Aaron Swartz Day Reception.

Schedule of events held at the Internet Archive:

 Saturday, November 7 10am-6pm and Sunday, November 8 11am-5pm participate in the Hackathon, which will focus on SecureDrop, the whistleblower submission system originally created by Aaron just before he passed away. 

Journalists, librarians, researchers, students: Here’s your chance to spend two days learning about encryption and privacy-enabling software at the Privacy-enabling Mini Conference – make your laptop, phone, and other devices more secure by the end of the day.

Saturday, November 7

  • 10am, the folks from Keybase, who will be providing both a beginning and an advanced tutorials.
  • 1pm, Cooper Quintin, Staff Technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, will talk about the what, where, and how of Privacy Badger, EFF’s privacy-enhancing creepy-tracker-blocking browser extension.
  • 2pm, Micah Lee, of The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation, will be giving his “Encryption for Journalists” workshop, so that journalists, librarians, researchers, or anyone else needing to, can protect their sources from prying eyes.
  • 4pm, Brad Warren, a Let’s Encrypt Developer, will present Let’s Encrypt, a joint project between the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mozilla, Akami, Cisco, the University of Michigan, and open-source developers around the world. Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated Certificate Authority which anyone can use to quickly, easily, and securely set up HTTPS on their website in minutes.

Sunday, November 8

  • 11am, Alison Macrina, librarian and privacy activist and the director of the Library Freedom Project. Alison will teach basic concepts in information security, and cover tools like Tor Browser, NoScript, passphrase management, safer searching, encrypted texting and other mobile security strategies, and more.
  • 2pm, Zaki Manian from Restore the 4th will be presenting an introductory tutorial to using Tor Anonymity System on desktop and mobile computers. He will cover the Tor security model and practical application choices to make. 

Celebrate and remember Aaron, and the living hackers and whistleblowers that work hard to make the world a better place at the Aaron Swartz Day Celebration Reception on what would have been Aaron’s 29th birthday: November 7, 2015, from 6-10:00 pm.

  • Reception: 6pm-7:30pm Come mingle with the speakers and celebrate Aaron’s accomplishments.
  • Movies: 7:30-8:00pm – See scenes from “From DeadDrop to SecureDrop,” a documentary about the anonymous whistleblower submission platform that Aaron and Kevin Poulsen prototyped in 2013, and how it made its way to the Freedom of the Press Foundation, after Aaron’s death.
  • Speakers 8:00-10:00pm:
    Garrett Robinson (Lead Programmer, SecureDrop)
    Giovanni Damiola  (Open Library Project)
    Alison Macrina (Founder and Director, Library Freedom Project
    Brewster Kahle (Digital Librarian, Internet Archive)
    Cindy Cohn (Executive Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation)
    Roger Dingledine (Interim Executive Director, Tor Project)
    Micah Lee (Co-founder, Freedom of the Press Foundation and Technologist at “The Intercept”)
    Jacob Appelbaum (Security Expert seen in Citizen Four, Wikileaks volunteer) (Appearing remotely via Jitsi over Tor)
    John Perry Barlow (EFF and Freedom of the Press Foundation co-founder) and Special Guests.
    The whole thing is completely free of charge, and food and beverages are also provided, so please RSVP, so we know how much food we need.

RSVP TO THIS EVENT

For more information, contact:
Lisa Rein, Coordinator, Aaron Swartz Day
lisa@lisarein.com
http://www.aaronswartzday.org