We recently welcomed two new team members at Archive-It HQ in San Francisco in our quest to better serve our growing community of partner organizations archiving the web. We appreciate the support of the Archive-It community and our alliance with Reed Tech as we continue to grow the service. Thanks for taking a moment to learn a bit more about our new team members!
Hunter Stern has completed project based work for Archive-It since 2008, and we were lucky enough to have have him join the team full time to assist with technical support for our partners, as well develop improved QA systems for the web application. He is already making a splash!
1. Before working at Archive-It, what project are you most proud of?
At macys.com, the team I worked with migrated the credit accounts of a large retailer that had been acquired by Macys into our e-commerce site in only a few weeks. The migration was completed on time and without any impact on live processing.
2. What did you first think when you saw the terra cotta librarians upstairs?
I was amazed by how many there were and was impressed by their uniqueness. Terra cotta is not just for warriors.
3. What kinds of content would you choose to preserve from the web?
I would like to preserve online literary journals like Identity Theory and smokebox. The life-span of some of these journals is short despite the quality of what they publish.
4. What is your favorite thing about working at the Internet Archive (so far)?
I enjoy learning about how the different parts of the Archive work together, from the Wayback Machine to the crawlers to the partner interfaces that allow our users to easily define and access content.
5. What is the most exciting aspect of working in web archives? The most challenging?
It’s exciting to see how our applications are being developed to more effectively capture dynamic content that previously might not have been easy to preserve. The integration of browser functionality into our crawling architecture that includes full-featured JavaScript processing is definitely a great development. The most challenging aspect of work at Internet Archive is debugging JavaScript plugins that sometimes don’t render correctly during playback. But as our crawling architecture becomes more advanced these sorts of issues will become more rare.
Carissa Kuo is our fabulous new Finance Administrative Assistance, assisting us with day to day financial tasks and other behind the scenes work to keep partners happy!
1. Before working at Archive-It, what project are you most proud of?
Before working at Archive-It, I worked at a dental office doing administrative work, but on the weekends we would go out into the field. The dentist started a mobile dental clinic to provide free and low cost dental care for people and communities that couldn’t afford it. Volunteering and community service has always been a passion of mine, so it felt good to be a part of something like this.
2. What did you first think when you saw the terra cotta librarians upstairs?
To be honest, I was a little bit freaked out. I didn’t know what I was expecting to see when I walked in that room, but definitely not hundreds of statues lined up!
3. What kinds of content would you choose to preserve from the web?
Currently, there is a culture of self publishing. There are so many people who write blogs or publish their own music and put them up on YouTube. Preserving these would be valuable because they are indicative of today’s culture.
4. What is your favorite thing about working at the Internet Archive (so far)?
I have really enjoyed learning about Internet Archive as a whole. It is so great to see how this organization affects so many people in such a positive way.
5. You have been helping Archive-It and the Internet Archive with a lot of our daily financial and accounting tasks, for you, what is the most challenging and rewarding part about working with finances?
I love that I am constantly challenged to learn new skills and tasks. I feel like I have definitely learned a lot in the financial department, but also have so much more to learn. I think the most challenging thing for me is not necessarily the financial side of the organization, but learning and understanding what each team in the Internet Archive does and how it all fits together. This challenge also applies to the other organizations and foundations outside of the Internet Archive that the finance team helps to manage.
