2000 Women Archivists Roundtable Minutes, Denver

Meeting was convened at 8 AM, Saturday September 2, 2000 by Co-Chairs Lee Eltzroth (Georgia State University) and Cristina Favretto (Duke University).

There were no minutes from the 1999 meeting to approve.

Welcome & Introductions

 The Co-chairs, Lee Eltzroth and Cristina Favretto introduced themselves and called for meeting attendees to give brief introductions. A list gathering names of attendees was passed. Sheryl Vogt (University of GA) also encouraged us to sponsor and/or submit a proposal for SAA 2001.

Program Committee 

A member of the Program Committee for the 2001 conference solicited papers. The theme for next year's conference is "2001 -- A Global Archival Odyssey." Deadline for the submission of proposals is October 6, 2000. Members should be sure to follow the guidelines on the forms. Forms are available in the back of the bulletin as well as online at the SAA website. 

Introduction of Roundtable 

At the 1998 Orlando Meeting, a mission statement was created for the WPAIR, and set up a structure for 2 co-chairs and 5-7 members to act as the steering committee.

Steering Committee

The steering committee is working on a survey, which was discussed at length later in the meeting. Katherine Fleming (College of Charleston) will continue on the steering committee; new members of the committee will be taken after a discussion of the survey.

Co-Chair

Amy Cooper (University of South Dakota) was nominated as co-chair, replacing Cristina Favretto, who stepped down. A consensus was taken and Amy Cooper was named co-chair.

Standards Liaison

A member from each round table is asked to be a part of a committee to review Archival standards. A discussion focused around whether this roundtable needed to have such a liaison, and it was determined that we should. Sherill Redmon (Sophia Smith Collection -- Smith) volunteered to act in this capacity.

Duke Workshop/Seminar

Cristina Favretto announced a two-day event to be held in March of 2002 at Duke University. This meeting will focus on Women's collections and allow archivists from Women's Collections to get together and share information on collections, concerns about issues and etc. Cristina is looking for volunteers to work with her in pulling this session together. Discussion revealed that March was probably the best month, and a Friday/Saturday was probably the best combination of days. Suggestions were made for breakaway groups, discussions, readings by writers (Lee Smith), and a focus on practice rather than theory. The ideal attendance would be 50 people or so.

Women's Caucus

There was a discussion of the possibility of reviving this group. WPAIR used to be the Committee on the Status of Women. Women's Caucus was an ad-hoc group, not an official SAA group. If revived, the WC might meet for lunch in a local restaurant. It was proposed that the WPAIR and the Women's Collections Round Table sponsor a lunch gathering. This received unanimous approval. Steering committee should plan now or next year for a WAR Lunch gathering.

Navigator Program
WPAIR and the Women's Caucus were co-sponsors of the navigator program. We are asking for volunteers for the navigator program.

Survey Draft

A discussion of the survey draft brought up a number of suggestions for changes to the survey. The goal of the survey is to highlight the issues that are critical to women archivists by conducting a statistical analysis of the issues. The comments on content were noted by Lee Eltzroth. Lee will make appropriate changes to the document and then work with the steering committee to create a final product. The hope is to have the survey out to members by next summer, before the next conference.

Survey Distribution

Many ideas were brought out suggesting methods of distribution for the survey and the appropriate recipients. the COSW put together the by-laws for WPAIR, and these have some indication of the "why" of the survey. Laurie Baty may still have these on disk, and Lee Eltzroth will contact her and find out if these are available for distribution to the membership. Some historical research of a previous Women's Caucus survey must be made, perhaps via the SAA Archives in Madison or by checking with Frank Cook. Suggestions for distribution of the new survey included conducting the survey via the internet (inetsurvey.com), making it an insert in Archival Outlook, distributing it via the chairs of the various round tables, asking our Council Liaison to talk to SAA about putting it on the website, asking SAA to fund mailing it to SAA members only (which would require that we present this idea to the council in January and get it on the agenda by December 1).

The problems still to be discussed by the steering committee include: who to send the survey to (to only women SAA members; to all SAA members; to the Archives List, which might include non-SAA members?); the clarity of the purpose of the survey (including the make up of questions and what we are seeking to do with the information); and the survey as a comparison to the earlier Women's Caucus survey and to the SAA Salary Survey.

The survey will be revised and sent to the Steering Committee for further discussion. We might consider having someone outside the profession look at the survey for its validity. Debbie Richards (Schlesinger Library) and Valerie Browne (Women and Leadership Archives, Loyola University Chicago) both volunteered to pursue this.

Steering Committee Volunteers

After the discussion of the survey, people were asked to volunteer for membership on the Steering Committee. Along with co-chairs Lee Eltzroth and Amy Cooper, the Steering Committee will consist of the following members:

Teresa Marquez (Center for Southwest Research), Debbie Richards, Katrina Harkness (Florida State Archives), Nancy Taylor (Presbyterian Historical Society), Toni Jeske (University of Texas at San Antonio) and Katherine Fleming. A consensus vote approved all steering committee members.

Suggested speaker

The membership suggested that when we were in Washington, we should find someone from the EEOC or other organization to address the meeting.

Suggested Name Change

The membership, in the discussion of the survey as well as at the end of the meeting, voiced a desire to change the name of the round table. It was suggested to change the name from the Women's Professional Archival Issues Roundtable (WPAIR) to the Women Archivists' Roundtable (WAR). A consensus vote approved the new name of the roundtable. We need to find the proper way to change the name of the roundtable within SAA.

Adjourned at 9:30 a.m.

As a note, after the meeting was officially over, Debbie Richards volunteered to handle our website. When we get the website up and running, we can post minutes there.

Respectfully Submitted,

Amy Cooper
Women Archivists' Roundtable Co-Chair
Archivist/Special Collections Librarian
I.D. Weeks Library
The University of South Dakota
414 E. Clark ST.
Vermillion, SD 57069
Phone: 605-677-8867
Email: alcooper@usd.edu

9/6/00