July 25th

Well, I scrapped the feedster Iraq news feed since I couldn't figure out how to change the text/background colors and replaced it with a feed to David's blog which he's going to maintain while he's in Iraq. I'm all about first-hand accounts anyway....especially when its my husband's. Hey, and I can see the text clearly....so bonus. I spent some time setting up my UA portal and carefully selected the elements I wanted and rearranged them on my page....and pretty much haven't used it since. You can't manipulate your messages the same way you can in Webmail (delete, move them to other folders) and I just didn't like how it displayed. The only other advantage was having my Blackboard on the same page but the element only shows a Blackboard icon which I have to click to go to the login page, which I guess is more convenient than typing in "classes.uaf.edu" but barely so. I guess I just don't like the interface....so it's back to visiting separate sites for me.

I found a list of blogs related specifically to Archivists and their work and found an interesting one by Richard Cox, who's a professor at the University of Pittsburgh and publishes a lot in the Archives world. Anyway, he's highlighting "scholarly and popular literature analyzing the nature of archives or contributing to our understanding of archives in society". And the first book I looked at was the new one by Anne Fadiman, whom I love, but then there were other titles such as "Found: The Best Lost, Tossed, and Forgotten Items From Around the World", "Documents: Artifacts of Modern Knowledge", "Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder", and the ever popular "Archives, Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory". :) Seriously though, I think this is a blog I would read when I get a chance....that way at least I can read about books that I don't have time to read.

And as far as general learning activities, I just discovered that the big towering black thing in Van Gogh's painting "Starry Night" is supposed to be a group of cypress trees. I just got a puzzle of the painting and realized I've never really noticed the huge black thing in the center of the painting....I guess I was just always distracted by the vibrant sky. They don't really look like trees to me but I guess that's why it's called Impressionist art. Impressionism doesn't lend itself well to puzzles.