#admin tasks

Did some admin things today. Primarily updated my website. My blog has a December update, which is frankly a miracle based on how badly I let that slide this year.

I also added a GenAI Statement on my website homepage, and in my FAQ, promising that no GenAI would ever, to my knowledge, be used in my writing, or in my covers or character art (hence the 'to my knowledge' part. I can vet artists, but no one's perfect and GenAI is getting better and better, sadly)

I want, and definitely aim to, restart up my monthly newsletter in the New Year, so I wanted to try and get on top of refreshing everything now, before I finish 'work' for the year on the 19th.

I've still got to go through my emails and delete anything I don't want or need, and then archive the stuff I do need to keep in the 2025 folder, but that's probably going to be a job for after Christmas to account for anything that comes in end-of-year.

Continued from part 2

Reference, collaboration, outreach, and administrative tasks

Thompson writes about the ways to connect people with records, whether through reference activities (helping people use the records), collaboration, outreach, and administrative tasks. She is undoubtedly right that "taking care of archives can be a surprisingly busy occupation." Now, we actually do have an example of collaboration and outreach.

Reprinted from my Wading Through the Cultural Stacks WordPress blog. Originally published on Feb. 27, 2021.

In the comic Leif & Thorn, Broiny, the archivist, gives information to the President about people named "Thorn":

In later comics, she gives information on Thorn and describes his achievements. She acts as a presidential adviser. In any case, she is helping people with outreach and collaboration. What about reference and administrative tasks? I believe that Nathan's grandfather in Stretch Armstrong would be engaging in reference, as he points to Ricardo and Nathan to the newspapers he has organized, where they can look for information. The newspaper archives seem like his personal hobby.

What about administrative tasks? Well, I haven't seen an archivist engage in that in any of the media I've seen as of yet. Despite the stereotypes in Attack of the Clones, as I've talked about time and time again, especially confusing libraries for archives, Madame Nu is shown helping Obi-Wan with his inquiry before her infamous line, which is talked about later in this post. We do see her, in the animation, trying to serve as a mentor to Ahsoka Tano and help her with her studies. So, that's a positive.

Additionally, in Hilda, the librarian definitely engages in reference and outreach by helping Hilda in various episodes. She isn't an archivist, but she is very close to it because she runs the special collections room in the town library. Perhaps Arizal will engage in some administrative tasks if the Recorded by Arizal series moves into a full season, but I kinda doubt it, because that would be seen as "too boring" for animation.

UK finance teams spending almost a day a week on admin tasks

British finance departments are spending nearly one day a week on general admin tasks, putting a major drain on time and resource, according to new research from Concur. The survey also reveals that 65 per cent of respondents think there is a disconnect between where they spend their time and what they should be focussing on. The post UK finance teams spending almost a day a week on admin tasks appeared first on Small Business.