The Swedish partner of the ARCHES project, the Swedish National Heritage Board (RAÄ) organised today a workshop on archaeological archives and archiving in Stockholm. The workshop gathered 25'ish participants from the heritage board, National Historical Museums, county administrations and museums and universities -- in the last group me and a colleague from Umeå.

 Open PhD student position in ARKDIS research project at the Department of ALM (Archival Science, Library and Information Science, Museology and Cultural Heritage Studies), Uppsala University. Application no later than 2013-04-30. UFV-PA 2013/800. Starting date August 1, 2013 at the earliest, latest on January 1, 2014.

 Digitisation of archaeological information and cultural heritage assets has been one of the cornerstones of the digital society debate. However, at the same time when nations have made considerable investments in the digitalisation of archaeological heritage, we know very little about its implications to the usability of archaeological information for different stakeholder groups from citizens to researchers, museum professionals, landowners and property developers.

My new book Information Services and Digital Literacy: In search of the boundaries of knowing is out, published by Chandos.

From blurb: "Despite new technologies, people do not always find information with ease. Do people still need help in finding the information they need, and if so, why? What can be made easier with new tools and techniques? 

This year's SIG USE research symposium at ASIS&T Annual Meeting 2012 in Baltimore raised a number of interesting questions on the methods and approaches of information behaviour (needs, use, practices etc.) research. One, is of course precisely that.

Erik Champion from Aarhus made a good point by stating that the three threats of archaeological information are storage, dirability and playability in his keynote at the 3rd U21 Digital Humanities Workshop in Lund earlier this week. The observation is well in line with the earlier suggestions that the best way to ensure the preservation of a particular data set is to see that it is being used.

The ninth ISIC conference, organised at Keio University in Tokyo, discussed a series of interesting information behaviour (use, practices and so on) related issues. Especially delighting was the high quality of the posters presented by doctoral students and the breadth and interestingness of their topics.

We invite all researchers and practitioners including senior and junior faculty members, researchers, Masters and PhD students and for instance, librarians, and information specialists, to submit research papers, position papers, panels and alternative events and posters to the workshop. All submissions should be in English. Submissions should be research or position papers not exceeding 3,000 words or extended abstracts describing panels, alternative events and posters of no longer than 1,500 words. All submissions will be peer-reviewed double blinded.

 I gave a talk on a systemic perspective to memory institutions and participated in the beginning of the week in the summer school of the MEMORNET doctoral programme in Tampere, Finland. Maryanne Dever from the University of Newcastle (Australia) gave a highly enticing keynote on the pleasures of paper, according to her own words, citing Karl Lagerfeld for the first time in an academic talk.

Klaus Graf of Archivalia, a well known and a highly active German archives blogger, wrote yesterday a piece on using Mediawiki and Semantic Mediawiki as an archives management system.