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Beth Kaplan, Council Liaison to the Business Archives Section, 2011-2014
As your liaison to SAA Council, one of my jobs is to make sure Section members are aware of the activities of the SAA Council and alerted to opportunities to comment, respond, or otherwise participate in shaping the direction of the association.
This spring, I want to highlight three initiatives -- the Strategic Plan for 2013-2018, the Report of the Annual Meeting Task Force, and the forthcoming report of the Communications Task Force -- that will have a significant impact on SAA’s future as an organization, as well as that of its component groups and individual members. There have been and will continue to be opportunities for Section and individual comment and participation. Please take those opportunities! It’s YOUR SAA, and priorities should reflect YOUR interests.
In May, after many months of meetings, drafting, conference calls, email debates, and compilation of member comments, the Council approved a framework for a new strategic plan which will guide the association’s decisions, priorities, and distribution of resources for the next five years. The underlying elements of the plan include newly crafted Vision and Mission statements, a statement on Core Organizational Values, and a set of Goals and Strategies. The language approved by the Council is available for your review here (PDF). Please take a minute to review these and plan to attend a forum on the new strategic plan at the Annual Meeting on Thursday, Aug 15, 2013, 12:00 PM-1:30 PM, and stay tuned for ways to participate if you are unable to attend the meeting.
After two years of intensive work, the Annual Meeting Task Force released its report to Council in May 2013. The report covers a lot of ground, and its proposals range from the incremental to the bold. Throughout its tenure, the Task Force worked hard to gather member comments in a variety of forms, and these have been incorporated into the report. A forum at the Annual Meeting will allow for more discussion and feedback. Please take a look at the report (PDF) and plan to attend the forum if you can, on Thursday August 15, 2013 12:00 PM-1:30 PM.
Finally, I want to draw your attention to the SAA Communications Task Force, of which I am a member. The Task Force was commissioned almost a year ago to investigate a variety of questions about how weill SAA’s communications channels (think Archival Outlook, the SAA website, the Twitter feed, the Newsfeed, In the Loop, and so forth) meet the needs of members, and develop a series of recommendations based on our findings. The group conducted a survey and presented two blog posts to solicit comments on a set of Preliminary Recommendations (posted on the microsite).
For more context on the report, see my guest post on President Jackie Dooley’s unofficial SAA blog, Off the Record.
Our final report is due to Council in August 2013.
Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me directly with questions or comments about any of these initiatives or about SAA issues in general. That’s what I’m here for! Many thanks to the BAS Newsletter editors for inviting me to provide this update.
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