Jeannette A. Bastian, Candidate for Council

Professional Experience: Professor and Director of the Archives Management Program, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College. Simmons College, 1999–present. Director of Libraries and Archives for the United States Virgin Islands, 1987–1998. Public Libraries and Archives Work, U.S. Virgin Islands, 1979–1987.

Education: PhD, University of Pittsburgh. M.Phil, University of the West Indies. MLS, Shippensburg University. BA, New York University.

Professional Activities:  Society of American Archivists: SAA Working Group on Cultural Property, Chair, 2010–present. Reviews Editor, American Archivist, 2004–2010. SAA Conference Program Committee, 2004. Committee on Education and Professional Development, 2000–2003. Archives History Roundtable, Chair, 2001–2002. New England Archivists: Local Arrangements Committee, Chair, 2003. Archives of the City of Boston: Commission Member, 2008–present.

Publications: Community Archives, The Shaping of Memory, 2009 (Edited with Ben Alexander). Archival Internships: A Guide for Faculty, Supervisors, and Students, 2008 (with Donna Webber). Owning Memory, How A Caribbean Community Lost Its Archives and Found Its History, 2003. “‘Play Mas,’ Carnival in the Archives and the Archives in Carnival,” Archival Science, 2009. “Flowers for Homestead: A Case Study in Archives and Collective Memory,” American Archivist, 2009.

Awards: Fred Alexander Fellowship, University of Western Australia, 2008. Margaret Cross Norton Award, Midwest Archives Conference, 2007.

Question posed by the Nominating Committee: SAA has developed three strategic initiatives: technology, diversity, and public awareness/advocacy. If elected to Council, how will you work with SAA groups and members to move these forward?

As an archival educator, I tend to immediately see archival issues through an education lens, but I also consider these issues within the wider context of the archival profession. While education, both at the master’s level and through continuing professional development offers many opportunities to connect archivists and future archivists with SAA’s three strategic initiatives, SAA’s committees, roundtables, working groups and membership also offer opportunities. Here are a few of my suggestions for making connections:

Diversity: Recruiting students from diverse backgrounds into graduate archival education programs can contribute significantly to building a diverse archives profession. To accomplish this, graduate education programs need SAA support. Working in cooperation with the Committee on Education, the Roundtable on Archives and Archivists of Color, the Latin American and Caribbean Cultural Heritage Archives Roundtable, and the Diversity Committee, SAA can assist graduate programs in a number of valuable ways that include revising the Guidelines for a Graduate Program in Archival Studies to include diversity oriented learning modules; working with graduate schools to encourage and develop culturally sensitive curriculum; actively promoting archives as a career  to diverse undergraduates (for example, in History Departments in Historically Black Universities); creatively partnering with graduate programs in offering more financial assistance both for conference attendance and tuition  to diversity applicants (for example, through matching  arrangements); and emphasizing the importance of mentoring along with recruitment and providing formal and informal mentoring opportunities.

Technology: While archivists need to be on the cutting edge of technology, there is no one technology path that all archivists follow. SAA’s Roundtables offer creative opportunities for pursuing a variety of technology initiatives by providing venues for considering required competencies in specific areas, exploring technology needs at different performance levels, and promoting best practices. Focusing roundtables on considering the technology requirements in their particular areas in a unified way and then bringing these together on a website, for example, would help archivists better understand what they need to know going forward. Providing continuing education workshops that address these various technology needs would offer effective and useful follow-through to the roundtables efforts. 

Public awareness/advocacy: Advocacy/ethics and public awareness both underpin and motivate archival actions and are central to the full development of an archives profession. While education programs at all levels should offer opportunities to explore, assess, and learn about advocacy/ethics and public awareness, SAA itself must continually review, discuss, and revise its Code of Ethics in public forums. By addressing current social and political topics in an ethical manner and by speaking out and advocating on behalf of archives and records issues, SAA raises its own profile as a responsible and concerned professional association. I support the involvement of SAA in national issues associated with records such as ethics, access, and accountability.