Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting

For those interested, I wrote up a blog post on "What I Did in Atlanta: The SAA Meeting as a Newly Elected Council Member" for my own site: https://barkivistoncouncil.wordpress.com/2016/08/07/what-i-did-in-atlanta-the-saa-annual-meeting-as-a-newly-elected-council-member/.

SAA Council

I'm officially going to be starting my three-year term as an elected member of the Council of the Society of American Archivists in August BUT the organization brought the newly-elected folks out to headquarters in Chicago earlier this month for orientation and observation of the May Council meeting. These trips are funded by SAA itself, so, aside from my time away from work, there is no burden on UNCG.

One thing that SAA hears frequently - particularly from newer members - is that members wish they knew more about the inner workings of the organization. SAA itself is pretty transparent when it comes to releasing agendas, minutes, budget reports, etc. But it's also a large organization, with membership and leadership spread across lots of different types of archives all across the country.

In an effort to provide yet another venue to provide information about organizational action and to help newer members learn more about how the organization operates, I started a blog to give insight into the work I'm doing as a new Council member. If anyone is interested in how a large professional organization's main governance body works, you can follow along here: https://barkivistoncouncil.wordpress.com/. Our next Council meetings will take place at the SAA Annual Meeting in early August -- one at the start of the meeting and one at the close.

Society of American Archivists annual meeting

From August 18-23, I was in Cleveland for the Society of American Archivists annual meeting. The week was packed with SAA committee meetings, section meetings, and sessions.

On Wednesday morning, SAA's Committee on Public Awareness (COPA) met to discuss our work plan for FY16 as well as our promotional events that were tied to the 2015 meeting (everything from branding to a StoryCorps booth to a promotional video that was played during the first plenary session). Because of this meeting, I missed the first half of a day-long pre-conference on Teaching with Primary Sources that I helped organize at the Cleveland Public Library. But, after lunch, I was able to join the pre-conference, where I sat in on sessions focused on integration of special collections into non-humanities curricula and ways to balance one-shot classes/presentations vs. in-depth instruction and teaching. I was particularly interested in a number of universities that have integrated critical primary source document analysis into their basic freshman writing course.

Outside of the Cleveland Public Library

On Thursday morning, the conference itself began. The plenary session debuted our video and featured speakers discussing the importance of storytelling in advocacy and awareness efforts. Effective storytelling was actually a theme that ran throughout the conference and tied into the work of COPA and outgoing SAA president Kathleen Roe to encourage archivists to tell stories of how "archives change lives." Many speakers throughout the conference noted the importance of telling the right story in the right way to the right audience -- something that is drilled into your mind when you're doing any kind of public relations work. And we also stressed that these aren't just stories that you find in the archives themselves, but stories of how the archives and the work of the archivist made an impact on someone's life in a critical way.

View from the park across the street from the convention center

On Thursday afternoon, I participated in the Reference, Access, and Outreach Section meeting. I'm an elected member of the RAO steering committee, and my responsibility throughout the section meeting was to use the RAO Twitter account to take the topics of conversation at our meeting (which was done in a kind of "world cafe" style) to SAA members who were unable to attend the conference.

Friday morning was a second plenary session where outgoing president Kathleen Roe once again emphasized the importance of stories, and incoming president Dennis Meissner unveiled that his presidential focus will be on building standards for assessment that will give us hard, reliable statistics to back up our stories. We also heard from one of the members of SAA Council about Council's new initiative on cultural competence for archives and archivists. This tied into another theme that ran through many of the sessions I attended -- archivists may have professional expertise in recordkeeping but they must recognize that the members of the communities they are documenting are the experts in their communities. More and more, this is manifesting as a post-custodial model of archives, where the archivist is simply educating community members on how to better manage the records of their community (as opposed to acquiring the records and bringing them into the holdings of the archival institution). While my primary responsibility focuses on university records (which are legally required to be transferred to our holdings), I'm hoping I can take the post-custodial model to some of our community groups and educate on recordkeeping (particularly digital record keeping) without an eye towards acquisition.

Statue behind the convention center

Friday was also the day for my session -- "No More Silence in the Library: Documenting Fans and Fandom in Special Collections and Archives." We had seven speakers crammed into an hour time slot, but we heard about the value of fan mail in the Louisville Underground Music Archive, outreach activities (including concerts in the library basement) at the DC Public Library's DC Punk Archive, a sci-fi zine digitization and cataloging project at the University of Iowa, a class project at UW-Stout where students create graphic novels based on historical campus events researched in University Archives, and a game (with cute badges and an armadillo guide) that the University of Texas is using to crowdsource cataloging of their local zines. It was a well attended session -- over 120 attendees and standing room only -- and was the 3rd most tweeted about session of the whole conference.

Outside of the sessions and committee meetings, I was able to explore Cleveland. Our all-attendee reception on Thursday night was at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I was also able to visit the Western Historical Society (where they have a fabulous collection of early American cars and planes) and the Cleveland Museum of Art (which is one of the best art museums I've visited in the US). The most exciting, however, was a trip to visit the Christmas Story House and Museum -- yes, Ralphie's house.

A Christmas Story house

Society of American Archivist Conference 2014

The 2014 joint meeting of the Society of American Archivists (SAA), the Council of State Archivists (COSA), and the National Association of Government ARchives and Records Administrators (NAGARA) focused on the theme of "Ensuring Access" to records and archives.  Over 2000 records managers and archivists gathered in Washington, D.C. to discuss different aspects of providing access to our collections.

Over the three day conference, I participated in numerous sessions.  Here are some highlights:

The State of Access: A Conversation with Miriam Nisbet and David Cuillier
This plenary session provided a look at the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from the perspective of a journalist (David Cuillier) and a governmental records administrator (Miriam Nisbet).  Both agreed that the access to information, especially records created by the government, is vital for the public.  However, they disagreed on the extent to which FOIA needed to change.  Mr. Cuillier would like to see a new policy based on some European models which allow greater access to information, while Ms. Nisbet believes FOIA has been meeting the public's need for information.  An interesting debate.

Teaching With Primary Sources:
Featured five presenters who use primary sources to engage students of all ages in and outside of the archival setting.  Kim Fortney, from National History Day, Inc., discussed teaching the teachers who will be working with middle and high-school students to create History Day projects.  Even the idea of what a primary source really is can be intimidating in to instructors.  One activity she employs involves having a workshop where participants bring three items with them from home; a document, a photo, and an artifact.  All items are collected and placed on a central table.  Participants are asked to choose three items that are not their own and discussion begins, participants must observe and reflect on the item as a primary source.  A great way to tangibly demonstrate the idea of primary sources!

Related But Separated:
This session was of particular interest to me because I also have collections which are related to other materials and collections within SCUA and have been separated for various reasons.  Hearing others experiences with similar situations gave me some new ideas as well as affirmed decisions I have already made in arranging and describing my collections.  Important take-aways: understanding what you are trying to reunite (objects, surrogates, metadata) and understanding (as much as is possible) how and why materials where dispersed will help guide our decisions for bringing materials together again.

On Friday evening, the conference sponsored a reception in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress.  A beautiful space to gather with other archivists!

Library of Congress reading room

Society of American Archivists annual meeting in DC

For most of the week of August 11th, I attended the Society of American Archivists annual meeting in Washington, DC. We had a record-high attendance at SAA of over 2500 archivists from academic, government, corporate, museum, and other types of archives. I was able to attend some great sessions and fun events, including a Wednesday evening trip to Ben's Chili Bowl for a lecture on African American history in Washington, DC.

On Thursday, I hosted a discussion session with incoming SAA president Kathleen Roe and SAA Executive Director Nancy Beaumont. Titled "SAA Now and in the Future: A Town Hall Conversation with SAA Leadership," this session allowed members to ask questions about SAA's newly-adopted strategic priorities, recent (and upcoming) changes to the annual meeting, and development of new committees and task forces.

One of the new committees discussed was the Committee on Public Awareness, which I was appointed to earlier this summer. COPA also established an informational table at the annual meeting to begin building member awareness of our activities and ask for feedback on answering the question "what does an archivist do?" We were also mentioned at the Saturday afternoon business section, where President Kathleen Roe challenged all present to experience "a year of living dangerously" and advocate vocally about the power of archives and the importance of archival work.

The meeting of the Reference, Access, and Outreach Section was another conference highlight. This was my first meeting after being elected to the RAO steering committee for FY15. Instead of a traditional meeting, we held an "Idea Swap," where people participated in three 15-minute, moderated small-group discussions on a number of pre-selected topics. I was able to join discussions on outreach to faculty, providing access to born-digital records, and using social media for marketing and outreach.

Other sessions I attended included one focused on developing online tutorials for records management training (featuring a couple of speakers from our State Library and the State Archives), one focused on the use of primary sources in the sciences, one on the value of collecting and using science fiction archival collections, and one on partnering with allied professions/organizations to advocate and build awareness for archives. I was also able to meet up with friends and former professors at the annual Texas Roundup (the UT alumni event held during each annual meeting).

On a related note, I encourage all tenure-track or tenured faculty to check out the Scholars' Travel Fund, available through the Office of Research and Economic Development. The fund supports faculty who are presenting, serving as chairpersons, or participating as panelists at scholarly meetings in the US.

Beth Ann and her 2013 SAA annual meeting in New Orleans

August means that sweating archivists from academia, government, historical societies, museums, and non-profits come together for the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists. I lived in New Orleans from 1999-2001 while attending the University of New Orleans for an MFA, and had not been back there since. I was eager to see the city again while at the same time really dreading the humidity.  Thanks to the freakishly cool weather patterns, it was humane enough to venture outside the conference hotel to meet up with my old friends po'boys, beignets and cafes au lait, muffalettas, raw oysters, and seafood gumbo.

When I wasn't eating, I spent a lot of time networking with other archivists who work with women's collections, military collections and oral history collections.  I am very motivated to bridge these different worlds and work to break out of the silos archivists of specialized collections can find themselves in.


Tuesday August 13:

After throwing my suitcase into my hotel room, I took a taxi uptown to attend the pre-conference Women’s Archives/Women’s Collections:  What does the Future Hold at the Newcomb College Institute at Tulane University. Newcomb college was the women's college for Tulane, and I really enjoyed looking at the archival exhibits at Newcomb.  I had the opportunity to network with a lot of great women and swap some business cards!

 
Here's what I learned:
The Impact of Technology on Women’s Archives and Collections— Born-Digital, Digital Humanities, Digital Initiatives, and Social Media
Presenter: Leslie Fields (Archives and Special Collections, Mount Holyoke College)

Documenting Diverse Communities
Presenters: Danelle Moon (Special Collections, San Jose State University; Kelly Wooten (Sallie Bingham Center, Duke University); Courtney Dean, Stacy Wood, and Angel Diaz (together discussing the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archive at UCLA); Natalia Fernández (Oregon State University Libraries)

Women’s Collections Roundtable Dinner: A Celebration of our History 
Presenters: Elizabeth Novara (University of Maryland), Alexandra Krensky (History
Associates), Lucinda Manning (Independent Archivist), Fernanda Perrone (Rutgers University), Tanya Zanish-Belcher (Wake Forest University)



Wednesday August 14:
Wednesday was "military day". I went on a repository tour to meet the curators and was shown behind the scenes at the WWII museum (http://www.ddaymuseum.org/).  If you look closely at the url, you will notice a telling clue about the museum's history. Originally, begun as the D-Day museum, Congress re-designated it to be about all U.S. involvement in WWII instead of just 6/6/1944.  The museum's holdings include a lot of REALLY LARGE OBJECTS such as planes, boats, jeeps and tanks. The curators told me that they collect everything except live ordnance and human remains, and that they also cannot fit any more Nazi flags into the collections.  I spoke to the curators about the WVHP and business cards were exchanged.

I also took a short tour about a PT boat restoration (http://www.nationalww2museum.org/see-hear/collections/artifacts/pt-305.html).
Later that day was the Military Archives Roundtable (MART) meeting. This is a new roundtable just getting off of the ground and I am part of the small social media and newsletter committees.

To continue the networking after the meeting, I joined the other MARTs at Mulate's, a cajun restaurant. More business card swapping.

Thursday August 15:
Thursday was "Oral History Day" as well as taking in a few instructional sessions. I attended the Oral history section networking brown-bag lunch and then oral history section meeting. Networking and card swapping ensued.

Sessions:
Hurricane Katrina: Disaster Recovery and Documentation in Archival Collections. Hurricane Katrina serves as a prism for examining a variety of archival issues. Subjects discussed included disaster recovery inside an affected repository; development of a large-scale digital collection preserving firsthand accounts, images, blogs, and podcasts; and management of constituent case files in congressional papers.

Lights, Camera, Archives! Working with the Media and Moviemakers
This session features archivists who have worked with documentary filmmakers, worked with television or movie productions, or made a media appearance. Each presenter briefly describes her or his repository’s holdings, the project/issue that is relevant to this topic, and one lesson learned.   (This was a very useful session for me as I have worked with filmmakers using the WVHP  as well as having been interviewed for television.)

And then was the Exhibition Hall opening/Happy Hour where I asked my new friend Ivan the Danish collector of books and ephemera on human sexuality to post for a photo with me. I'll network (a.k.a. schmooze) with anyone.

Friday August 16:
The first order of the day was locating the Ignatius G. Reilly statue on Canal Street (See the classic novel A Confederacy of Dunces).                                                                                          

After that victory was the session Advancing the Ask: Proactive Acquisitions for the Modern Age
The panelists share actual experiences from archivists who work to proactively identify, appraise, and acquire archival materials. They explain strategies and successes in reaching out to donors who are not necessarily cognizant of their role as record creators or of the value of their records to an archives. How can archivists educate donors and use new techniques and tools to gather evidence of  significant events and changes in their communities?

The rest of the day was "Women's Collections Day #2". I met with other members of  the Women’s Collections roundtable and worked to develop a session idea for women’s collections of traditionally male fields. More business cards.

Friday night was the all-attendee reception at Boeing building at WWII museum.

 
The night (and conference) was capped off by experiencing Dr. "Gris Gris" John at Tipitinas!

Saturday August 17:
The last (EARLY morning) session before catching the plane home was Thinking Beyond the Box: How Military Archivists are Meeting 21st Century Challenges.
James Ginther of the Marine Corps University examines innovative approaches to documenting military operations when traditional records retirement methods fail. Anthony Crawford from Kansas State University focuses on the relevance of military archives addressing the multidisciplinary research value of military collections. Joel Westphal from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management addresses the issues of processing the massive amounts of digital records from the war in Iraq using innovative management and processing techniques on an archives of national importance.

My hope is to use my contacts, both new and old, to promote the WVHP within all of the various archival communities it represents.


 

My SAA Annual Meeting Recap

While it’s fresh on my mind, I wanted to share with you my recap of events and activities at the 2013 Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting, which took place August 11-17 in New Orleans. This was my 10th annual meeting (nine as a professional and one as a graduate student), and this one ranked as among the best. While I spent most of my time in meetings or presenting a paper or awards, I still felt that I came away with a greater sense of where the profession is going and innovative ways in which colleagues across the country are helping it get there

I flew out to New Orleans on Tuesday, and hit the ground running on Wednesday at 8am with a meeting of the Annual Meeting Task Force (AMTF). For the past two years, I’ve served on this appointed group that examined our current annual meeting structure and made recommendations for improvements and changes that might better meet member needs, address issues of social responsibility, and incorporate new technologies. In addition to our meeting on Wednesday, we hosted a “World Café” style brown bag forum on Thursday in which we solicited member feedback on our recommendations. Many of those recommendations have already been implemented, with the 2013 Program Committee actively soliciting sessions outside of the “three papers and a moderator” format, the introduction of an annual meeting mobile app that eliminates the need for an on-site paper program, and the SAA Council deciding to hold the 2015 annual meeting in a less expensive, “second tier” city (Cleveland).

River view from the Hilton Riverfront

In addition to AMTF, my appointment as the senior co-chair of the SAA Awards Committee kept me busy for a large portion of the annual meeting. We held a committee meeting on Wednesday afternoon to discuss logistics for the awards presentations as well as issues (such as vague language in the award description or questions of eligibility for certain awards) encountered during the 2013 awards season. With 70+ committee members and 20 awards (plus the selection of new SAA Fellows), we had a lot of awarding to do! Awards were presented at three different times during the annual meeting. At Plenary I on Thursday morning, four new SAA Fellows were introduced and the Council Exemplary Service Award and the Jameson Archival Advocacy Award were presented. On Friday morning, I opened the 8am Plenary II with the presentation of scholarships, travel awards, and writing awards to nine MLIS students from around the U.S. and Canada. And finally, at the Friday afternoon Awards Ceremony, we presented the remaining awards that honored excellence in publications, description, outreach, etc.

I was also elected to a second term on the steering committee of the Issues and Advocacy Roundtable. SAA doesn’t have the government affairs and advocacy framework that other groups like ALA has, so the I&A Roundtable serves as a site to discuss those issues and create opportunities for learning ways to reach out to funders, administrators, and politicians in order to advocate for certain issues, for individual archival repositories, or for the profession at large. At our meeting on Wednesday afternoon, we talked about the ways in which the Roundtable can collaborate with SAA’s Government Affairs Working Group on developing a set of issue briefs that can serve as official SAA position pieces and talking points on key issues.

Late Friday morning, I presented a paper as part of a session titled “Shout it from the Mountaintop: Changing Perceptions about Archival Advocacy.” My paper entitled “Get Your House in Order: Advocating for the Profession by Advocating for Your Archives” focused on the need for archivists to align their conversations with their institution’s mission. I discussed the need for archivists to go beyond a focus on their “specialness,” and instead focus on clearly articulating, assessing, and demonstrating how the work of the archives fits in with the larger whole of their parent organization (a library, corporation, government department, etc.). In doing so, they can build an army of advocates – non-archivist colleagues who can speak to how the archives impacts their work (and how it can potentially impact the work of others in the institution).

Two other meetings – both broken into really well run small group discussions – proved particularly fruitful in helping me think through my work here. One was at the Reference and Outreach Section’s meeting, where I took part in conversations on assessment of instruction in special collections and on engaging undergraduates through archival instruction. The other was at the College and University Archives Section meeting, where we had great talks about collaborating with IT staff and building a network for tenure support and professional mentoring.

Reception at the National WWII Museum

The other big events that I took part in were related to my participation in the 2013 cohort of the Archives Leadership Institute. While ALI isn’t operated by or associated with SAA, they used the annual meeting as an opportunity to bring us all together to discuss our practicum projects, review some key take-awards from our time in Iowa, and allow us to talk about potential collaborative projects that might bridge institutional lines. We had a dinner for all of the ALI alumni (we’re the sixth cohort) on Saturday night, and a Practices Workshop at Tulane University on Sunday morning. Lots of great ideas were discussed, and I’ve already got plans for an SAA 2014 annual meeting session proposal, a possible collaborative grant focused on professional issues, and a number of possibilities for research collaboration.

Audubon Aquarium fish

Both at the SAA and ALI events, we also talked up Archival Practice, our new open-access, peer reviewed journal that is being hosted by UNCG using OJS. I held an informal meeting with many of the members of our wonderful Editorial Board. We handed out 500 postcards to promote the journal, and talked about in all of the roundtable meetings we attended. Folks are really excited about this new publishing opportunity, and we’re looking forward to going live with our first issue – hopefully in January 2014!

So, it was a busy week. I even had to talk a friend from Emory into bringing me beignets, since I didn’t have time to go out to Café du Monde. But there was still time for a little bit of fun – including touring around the National World War II Museum at the All Attendee Reception on Friday night and a trip to see the otters, penguins, and other critters at the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas on Saturday afternoon. All in all, a great trip where I met loads of wonderful new people and learned lots of awesome new things.

Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting

By Michelle Belden, Technical Services Archivist

From August 23 to 31 I was in San Francisco for the annual conference of the Society of American Archivists, entitled "Archives 2008: Archival R/Evolution & Identities." The conference was hosted at the Hilton in downtown San Francisco, but I stayed with friends in the Noe Valley/Mission area -- next time, I'm staying at the hotel and forgoing reliance on public transportation to get me to the best sessions in time to grab a seat. Several sessions were SRO, with crowds bubbling out of smaller conference rooms five archivists deep.

I landed at SFO Saturday night and was up bright and early Sunday for a one-day workshop entitled "Applying DACS to Single Item Manuscript Cataloging," taught by two experienced archivists from Yale. DACS - Describing Archives, a Content Standard -- is the current bible of archival cataloging, and this workshop was very useful in its methodical examination of applicable rules and the regular use of in-class exercises to drive home important points. I will definitely use the knowledge gained (and the handy booklet handout) when cataloging our single item collections here in SCUA.

Monday and Tuesday brought a two-day workshop, "Copyright: The Archivist and the Law," taught by William Maher (not the politically incorrect one, the one who is University Archivist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, former president of SAA and author of several articles I was required to read for graduate school.) Maher furthered the flashback to grad school by requiring a pile of pre-workshop reading as well as periodic quizzes during the days and a group project over Monday night; however, I learned an incredible amount, and the reference materials he distributed should prove invaluable in the future.

The third workshop I attended, "Preserving your Audio and Video Assets," lasted only a half-day, and was taught by the CEO of a professional preservation company rather than a practicing archivist. Though it did not provide the emotional satisfaction of spending time with accomplished role models in the archival field , the presentation did include a detailed checklist for A/V triage accompanied by helpful photographs for identifying different A/V formats and the common problems associated with each.

The latter part of the week was spent in sessions, the best of which was Jill Katte's presentation of her paper "Why Can’t I Click on This? Levels of Description, Variable Access, and User Experience" as part of the session entitled Finding Aids 2.0: Meeting Users Where They Are by Rethinking Finding Aid Presentation. Jill is the Digital Collections Program Coordinator at Duke, and I knew her slightly from my time interning there -- she fixed the file folder structure for an extensive EAD conversion process that had been torturing me for weeks, so I already knew she was awesome, and her paper confirmed this. I covet Duke's new XSLT stylesheet, which allows for a Windows Explorer-type drop-down menu for navigating finding aids (this would be especially appropriate for the new Hansen Performing Arts Collection finding aid, with its 19000 individually-coded lines.)

Another highlight of the week was John Dean's opening plenary, a celebration of the work archivists do to keep government honest and accountable, and an indictment of the current administration's devotion to governmental opacity.

The closing address, given by outgoing SAA president Mark Greene (of More Product, Less Process fame to those of us in the archival groove of things), was nearly overshadowed by the hilariously roast-like introduction by his amigo Dennis Meissner. Greene's delivery was not nearly as entertaining, but the meat of his talk, The Power of Archives: Archivists’ Values and Value in the Post-Modern Age was as significant and inspiring as one would expect from one of the biggest names in archives today. An excerpt from his introduction:

...Of course we must do good work, but we have to actively seek resources and recognition, and that is done by exercising the tools of professional power—at whatever hierarchical level one happens to reside... This is, of course, part of an overall goal of replacing the image of the lab-coated, dust-coated, withdrawn and quiet archivist preciousizing over “old stuff” in dead storage with an image (and self-image) of a confident, articulate, savvy professional.

According to Greene, archival power must stem from archival values, and we as a profession should codify those values much as our colleagues in ALA have done. He proposed 10 core values for for discussion amongst us all: Professionalism; Collectivity; Activism; Selection; Preservation; Democracy; Service; Diversity; Use and Access; and History. I encourage any archivists who missed the speech to read the full text online (link above).

Of course, an important benefit of attending professional conferences is the opportunity to network. I was able to catch up with former classmates from library school -- including one who has been working on implementing the Archivists Toolkit for the past year and will be serving as a resource for me as I begin implementation this semester; and a former mentor from my grad school days who always provides valuable perspective on career development within the archival profession.