2015 LAR Minutes

Labor Archives Roundtable 

 Annual Business Meeting Minutes

Wednesday, August 21, 2015

Minutes by Catherine Powell & Conor Casey

Present: Catherine Powell, Meghan Courtney, Conor Casey, Jen Eidsen, Jim Quigel, Kate Donovan, Patrizia Sione, Barb Morley, Elizabeth Dunham, Ben Blake, Vic Fleischer, Paul Neirink, Kristen Chinery, Erik Nordberg, Izumi Hirano, Zachary Brodt, Gavin Strassel, Jim Cassedy

Facilitation: Catherine Powell

Council Update by Tim Pyatt.

Report and Q&A re proposed changes to affinity group and dues increase.

Introduction of New Co-Chair Meghan Courtney

Report back LAWCHA Conference by Jen Eidsen and Catherine Powell.

Projects

Report back on Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon.

Meghan Courtney (Reuther Library) and Jen Eidsen (University of Maryland) conducted Wikipedia Edit-A-Thons re labor history on May 1, 2015 to link by to collections in their repositories. For University of Maryland, Wikimedia DC came and conducted a
“how-to-edit” workshop.

 LaborOnline column and LAWCHA relationship update

Conor Casey reported that nine articles from various LAR contributors have been published in the column. He encouraged other LAR members to participate in the coming year.

Labor Archives Directory

Conor Casey put out a call for updates, reformatted the directory to an online web version, verified URL links, and contacted potential new repositories to add to the directory. In the coming year he will contact each institution directly for updates and put a call out to LAWCHA for additional repositories.

 Ideas/brainstorming

Kristen Chinery suggested a collective History Pin project re labor. Ideas floated included a civil rights theme to build off of the LAR-sponsored SAA 2014 panel on civil rights collections or a labor landmarks map. Kristen and Meghan will spearhead.