Moving The Paper Mountain

By Steve Harrington

The Global Archives, the joint repository of the ICA and two related organisations, held a research assembly in September to look at two urgent questions – finishing the archival work and making it accessible. The event involved about 100 people – 11 at the ICA GreenRise facility in Chicago (formerly known as Kemper) and the rest online. A third had active ICA connections such as being on an ICA board, ICA staff or leadership; another third were trainers, facilitators or had other ToP links and the rest were “alumni” who identified themselves with the ICA and its sister organisations, the Ecumenical Institute or the Order Ecumenical. There were about an equal number of men and women but most were from the northern hemisphere compared to the south, according to Jim Wiegel, who helped orchestrate the effort.

The three groups represent the initial “customers” or “potential users” of the Archives, says Wiegel. The networks of ICAs, ToP practitioners and alumni and all of their colleagues, partnerships and connections will be the “first circle” of service, he said.

The assembly was divided into six groups. Their focus: how to move the paper mountain of historical records and how to open up knowledge access and transfer wisdom.


Completing the archival work The first issue involves 1,100 filing cabinet drawers of data. The current pace of archival work is not sustainable, given the age of most of the volunteers involved. We looked at several options for the long term preservation of the archival holdings, their conversion from paper to digital files and potential partnership relationships – all with an eye on how to speed up the work and financial feasibility.

The assembly asked a company called Iron Mountain: “Should we build the database – as we have been doing – or should we use “brute force” and scan the entire contents of these drawers?” The company’s response was “Don’t stop now. Continue building the database – you are doing it right!” So Paul Noah got out his markers and drew this image of the challenge of how to move the mountain:


3 Publish Start-up Collections Online

2 Put critical materials in an Online Database

1 Find a new home for Unprocessed Materials

Start-up Collections: Some of these, like the Imaginal Education Collection, have now been published and are available on the collections portal (double click the text link).

Online Database: A prototype database of nearly 20,000 records will be available by subscription via web browser in November. The FileMaker database will look something like this on your computer screen.


If you become a subscriber, you can:

• Log-on
• Find documents via key-word search
• Contribute your own files to the ICA Global Archives.

For example, Paul in Chicago could use a key-word such as “Imaginal Education” in the Global Archives Database to locate the relevant drawer and find, digitize and share a specific “Imaginal Education” document And someone like Bill Grow who lives far from Chicago can use the same “Imaginal Education” Key-Word search for “Imaginal Education” to search for and find Paul’s work. Bill can also add a NEW record for a box of “Swamp Gravy” to the Global Archives Database – highlight specific unique “Imaginal Education” documents that need to be added to the Global Archives Database.

Unprocessed Materials: A major sorting is due within a few months. Only files deemed important will be kept. In Chicago, this means moving them from the basement to the 6th floor. This labour intensive work requires colleagues who can judge the importance of the files they are screening.

The selected files – and only these – will be scanned. This will require large-scale “scanathons”. Some may be done by document management companies and some in collaboration with area universities providing interns as part of their advanced library science degree programmes.


Transferring the Wisdom

The assembly also looked at the issue of making all of ICA’s research accessible to the public.

If you look at any of the eras of ICA work as shown in Paul Noah’s chart at the top of the next page, you will find hundreds of innovations in civic engagement, educational methods and wisdom traditions.

Most of them began with some kind of wild-eyed dreaming “out-loud” in research working groups called “PSUs” (Problem Solving Units). Some dreams became designs, and were developed and deployed as institutions, for example the 5th City Pre-School, Training Inc or the ToP Network. If you made a visual model of research practices it might look like this innovation spiral:

Dreaming – seems to be the answer to the question: “Just what do you think you are you doing!”

Designing
– often involves art sketches & model building like the TM76 art that Paul and Beret made.

Developing
– involves complicated details like building curriculum events or program budgets.


Deployment -- usually means taking it out “on the road” improving it and sometimes expanding it – or “going to scale”.

The assembly decided to begin dreaming “out loud” and broadcast two research group questions on YouTube. One question was “How do you put Social Process Triangle theory and models to work in the real world?”


Jack Gilles produced a live on-air broadcast on the subject. Several people presented their ideas on this. Nelson Stover presented a new Social Process Triangle focused on Emerging Ecology.

Jack will be publishing a new research brief in November – see announcements on this at the Google Community site called ICA Research Access. It is located at this link: http://bit.ly/icaresearchaccess

The second research group question was “What imaginal education skills are transferrable in a projectbased learning environment?”


Svitlana Salmatova from ICA-Ukraine partnered with ICA-GAP to record and present interviews with Seva Gandhi and James Addington on transferring Imaginal Education Skills from the Accelerate 77

Project Based Learning work.
There were three discussion groups – in Sydney led by Robyn Hutchinson, in London led by Martin Gilbraith and in Chicago led by Jim Wiegel.

Steve will publish a research brief in November. You can see the announcement at the Google Community site called ICA Research Access at this link: http://bit.ly/icaresearchaccess

Please visit this link and give your feedback for future research events.

 

Steve Harrington lives in Costa Rica and Minnesota. He is retired
but grand-daughters Indira and Heidi, both under three, keep
him busy.





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