introduction

There’s something a little daunting about writing the first entry — whether it be for a professional blog, or a private hard-cover journal. Although the nature of the web allows us to change and modify what we’ve written, even after it’s published, it still feels like a shaky step forward into a new representation of the self.

I was considering the life cycle of a website as I worked on the Housing Memory conference page this week. In the preparation for this (first ever!) graduate student conference at the U of T’s iSchool, this page served a number of functions: sharing key information and calling for submissions; marketing the event; allowing presenters, volunteers, and attendees to view the schedule; and, blogging to push information to interested parties.

Now, with the event in the past, it’s become more of an archive — a record of a two-day conference with panels and presentations. We’ve attempted to ‘capture’ as much as we could. On the site you can find photos of presenters, a podcast of the keynote address by Geoffrey Bowker, and soon, a link to the forthcoming issue of the Faculty of Information Quarterly journal including a portion of the proceedings.

As I tidied up the front page with thank yous, I reflected on this process of retiring a website. In the planning of the conference, Ania Dymarz (the other conference organizer) and I were incredibly grateful that grad student conference organizers from other schools had left retired webpages online! Since we were starting from scratch, it really helped to have a few templates to compare ourselves with: How did they organize their panels? How many keynotes did they have? Did they pay for lunch?

So, in the hopes that this blog will serve the function of providing me with a space to share my projects and insights, and engage with the community of information professionals, here goes!