Archives
I’ve been collecting things for years: books, photos, maps, posters, buttons… not a full-blown hoarder, but I kind of get where that comes from. Lately I’ve been purging my collections, and that’s partly possible thanks to archivists like the Prelinger Library, or Lincoln Cushing and his curating of Michael Rossman’s “All of Us or None of Us” poster collection, or David Rumsey’s astonishing collection of old maps which he has sync’ed up with contemporary satellite shots to allow users to spend vast numbers of hours playing with geographical awareness. I have other faves too, like the San Francisco History Room’s digital photo collection, which recently gained a fun map interface from Oldsf.org, but my own archiving work mostly focuses on the ever-expanding Shaping San Francisco collection which is housed at FoundSF.org. We also have a growing archive of audio files from our last eighteen years of Public Talks, and an interesting archive of video interviews under our Ecology Emerges project, as well as a growing collection of oral histories. My blog at nowtopians.com is an archive of sorts too, covering my journeys around the world as well as a place where I critically engage with the books I’ve been reading, and sometimes current events!
If you come over for a visit, I’ll show you my books, and maybe some photos, too!