Society of American Archivists College and University Archives Section
Minutes, August 25, 2011, Chicago, IL
Tamar Chute, Section Chair, welcomed everyone to the meeting.
The minutes from the 2010 meeting were approved as published in the Academic Archivist, Winter 2011.
Chair report – Tamar reported that she had written a letter commenting on recent FERPA revisions and sent it to Helen Tibbo, chair of SAA. The letter asked for clarification of the term” eligible student” found in 34 CFR 99.3. The revision and update of Section by-laws was approved by Council as submitted. She thanked out-going members of the Steering Committee including Chris Prom and Jay Gaidmore. She announced that Michelle Sweetser would be replacing Christopher Laico as newsletter editor and thanked Chris for his service as editor.
Reports and Announcements
- Tom Frusciano, section liaison to SAA Council made several announcements. He reported that it had been an interesting year in Council. A new Task Force on Annual Meetings was being created and that a message requesting volunteers to serve would be sent out to the membership. A glossary working group has been identified to update the SAA glossary that had been published by Richard Pierce-Moses. He commented briefly on the difficulties with organizing this year’s meeting because of the striking hotel workers and thanked people in attendance. He also urged members to attend the awards ceremony.
- Chris Prom reported on behalf of the Nominating Committee. He thanked the other members of the committee Larry Landis and Jay Gaidmore. New Steering Committee members were announced including Daniel Hartwig, Kate Donovan Jarvis, Katie Nash and Pat Webber. It was also announced that Alison Stankrauff was elected Vice-chair/Chair-elect. He raised concern that there was a very low voter turnout, only 133 voted out of nearly 1400 members.
- Chris Laico, newsletter editor was unable to attend this year’s meeting so Tamar read his report as follows:
Dear Colleagues:
Since our last meeting in Washington, D.C., through your unstinting support, the College and University Archives Section (Section) produced two issues of The Academic Archivist totaling 24 pages.
Please send you submissions to the attention of our new editor: Michelle Sweetser. As a simple guide, please limit your newsletter submissions to such institutional announcements as professional conferences, programs, projects or section related business.
I wish you all a successful meeting and thank you again for your enthusiastic support of The Academic Archivist. It has been an honor to serve the Section and its talented membership.
- Gordon Daines reported as chair of the Technical Subcommittee on Describing Archives: A Content Standard (TS-DACS). They are working towards providing access to DACS in an online format providing a companion with standards, etc. One item being discussed is the distinction between records and papers. He urged members to watch the Technical Subcommittee for developments and to contact committee members with comments.
- SAA Standards Committee liaison, Tom Sommer, provided the URL for the new SAA standards portal http://www2.archivists.org/standards . The committee has invited SAA members to contribute to the site and to send comments.
- Alex Lorch informed the group that NHPRC has developed a new grant program Documenting Democracy: Access to Historical Records. Information is available on their web site. He also invited members to visit the NHPRC booth in the exhibit hall.
- Christie Peterson provided information about an online survey that will be distributed in the next few months investigating the state of US archival practice since the adoption of More Product Less Process (MPLP). All types of institutions are invited to respond but there should only be one response per institution.
- The SAA 2012 Program Committee was represented by Mark Shelstad. There is an Oct. 3rd deadline for proposals. The theme for the 2012 conference is Beyond Borders. They are planning to continue the lightning round session and want to remind people that they can only submit one proposal per person.
- Jackie Dooley provided handouts from OCLC Research. “Introducing a new ArchiveGrid discover interface” has a free version available and they are requesting input. “Mobilizing Unique Materials” features rapid capture and large scale digitization projects. “The OCLC Research Library Partnership” invites us to become involved.
- David McCartney informed the membership that MAC would be presenting a Fall Symposium as in years past. The title is “Mysteries of Magnetic Tape Revealed” and will be held in Sioux City, Iowa, Oct. 20-21. See the web site for more information.
- Bill Maher announced that the next ICA SUV meeting will be held in July 2013 in Barbados. A request for paper proposals will be sent as the conference approaches.
- Lee Stout requested on behalf of the Archival History Roundtable that they are looking for southern archives to join in a session proposals on the history of land grant universities.
- Kerry Daniels invited the members to the 2011 Best Practices Exchange conference “Distilling Digital Collections” to be held in Lexington, Kentucky, Oct. 20-22.
The remainder of the meeting was spent listening to presentations on records preservation.
OpenCasa: Building Partnerships for an Electronic Records Repository
Jackie Esposito, University Archivist and Michelle Belden, Access Archivist, at Penn State University discussed the development of the Curation Architecture Prototype Services (CAPS) model at Penn State. They reviewed the project timeline, key roles and partnerships involved in developing the architecture, use cases, stakeholders input, agile development methodology, user requirements, dashboard interface, and public interface for curated collections. OpenCasa is an architectural model that supports DPubS, ETDs, ContentDM, Olive Digital Newspapers, and the University's Electronic Business records Lion's Lair. The architecture is based on integrating a suite of microservices as needed for each use application.
Laying the Tracks for Electronic Records at an Undergraduate Liberal Arts College
Jennifer Gunter King, Head of Archives And Special Collections at Mount Holyoke College spoke on how with NHPRC funding, Mount Holyoke College established basic workflows and procedures for archiving electronic records from four campus offices. The project utilizes tools that include Duke University’s Data Accessioner, the Archivists Toolkit, a digital preservation system, and Dspace.
A lively question and answer session followed the presentations.
Respectfully submitted by Becky Schulte, Vice-chair/Chair-elect
