In the year 2125 . . .

Read by School Archvist, Mark Wilkerson HERE.

All three of the items pictured above belong in the Little Sanctuary, and they have come to live there in the past century. ?These represent what I've been referring to as the "100 year horizon", an ethic that will preserve these and other items, and perhaps the building itself, for the next 100+ years. ?

I was reminded of this ideal last evening in a conversation with a St. Albans parent who is also an NCS alumna. ?Concerning the Little Sanctuary building, it has lived for 123 years so far, being built in its original configuration in a four month span, February to May 1902. ?It was a much smaller and simpler structure then -- the first memorial plaque wasn't installed until 1917. ?The systems and methods being used to renovate the Little Sanctuary are state of the art today and have to accomodate or remedy all of the idiosyncrasies of a nearly century and a quarter's existence as well as plan for the 100 year horizon. ?NCS is set to celebrate its quasquicentennial (125th anniversary) this year, having been founded in 1900, so the alumna's comments struck a resonant chord. ?

In much of the Archives work I document, I use PDF format nearly every day. ?I am building an archive within the Archives that tracks this work via saved, OCR-ed, and text searchable indexed PDFs. ?The PDF format has only been around since 1993, and so much of the global archival document load is saved in PDF format that it is an industry standard that is "maintained by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO). PDFs continue to be the go-to file type to present and exchange documents reliably — independent of software, hardware or operating system." ?Source Adobe -- I think that's a good, century-forward-thinking bet. ?

So I guess I'd like to believe that all this work I'm doing will somehow be of use to the St. Albans School Archivist in 2125, particularly through our work now, when the 100 year horizon has extended, yet again, the life span of the Little Sanctuary. ?And though it will probably be showing its then two century plus age, I trust it will still be part of what Headmaster Jason Robinson described at last evening's Parent Dinner as "the covenant at the heart of the School."