As I mentioned yesterday, I spent a bit of time hand-wrapping color
codes on file folders yesterday. Why? Well, I've been asked to speak to
my 4th grade daughter's class about what I do. I want to give them some
things to take away, so I have made up a file folder for each child,
properly color and bar-coded. In that folder will be a mini Paige Box
(thanks to our Paige sales rep), a "Did You Know?" list of facts about
records management (how long their school records are kept, how many
records boxes are in a mile, how many sheets of paper fit in a box,
etc.) I've wandered over to http://www.archivebuilders.com (thanks PaK)
for some other records facts and trivia that I'll put in the file
folder. As much as I would have liked to burn them some CDs (or found
cheap thumb drives) with all this stuff on it, I think this population
tends towards Macs or technology that is a little behind the curve, so
I didn't want any of the kids to be upset that they couldn't do
anything with what I gave them.

I'm bringing in a records box and I'm going to see if anyone wants to
try to put it together.

I'm going to print to transparency a few of my records horror story
pictures to show them what I have to deal with and some of the ways
that records are maintained around the world. I'd love to do a
Powerpoint, but the school is exclusively Mac... ::rolleyes:: That, and
the only laptop projector is chained down somewhere else in the
building.

My geek bag will be with me, and I'll show them all the tools that I
use every day (laptop, Blackberry, camera, thumb drives, etc.).

I'll likely see if I can dig up some really old floppies to compare
with CDs and DVDs to talk about electronic storage. (How many documents
fit on the various kinds of storage, longevity and so forth.)

I'm going to talk about working in an archives and how archives are
important for history -- and how I got to handle a Lincoln document, a
Walter Payton jersey (we were putting a game worn jersey in the State
Capitol cornerstone), and how I found a county record book once where
someone had cut out all of the Lincoln documents -- and thus why
protecting history is important.

So I'm looking for some other ideas. Mainly, anything that anyone else
has done that kids (these are 9 and 10 year olds) have found to be cool
and interesting about our work. I've got about 45 minutes (and those of
you who know me know that I have great difficulty in giving
presentations in less than increments of an hour and 15 minutes).

Patrick Cunningham, CRM
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"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

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