2002 Women Archivists Roundtable Minutes, Birmingham, Ala.

Meeting Minutes

Saturday, August 24, 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM

I. Governance

Holly Geist of the Wyoming State Archives and Mary Linn Wernet of Northwestern State University of Louisiana volunteered to be the new co-chairs of the committee. Amy Cooper will step down as chair and act as an advisor.

Debbie Richards will step down from the Steering Committee but retain her position as Web Liaison. Joan Denman and Karen Walton volunteered to take two vacated places on the Steering Committee. Emily Novak will be an alternate.

Elaine Engst, the Council Representative introduced herself and urged WAR members to email or call her with any questions or concerns. Her email address is ee11@cornell.edu.

II. Current Business

Kathi Neal from the Program Committee spoke to encourage WAR to sponsor session proposals for the 2003 Annual Meeting. She suggested that proposals have a greater chance of being accepted if they are complete, with firm commitments from the speakers, and have a section or roundtable endorsement.

WAR website has been added to the UNESCO portal. You can look it up athttp://www.unesco.org/webworld/portal_archives/

A bibliography of material about women in the archival profession has been added to the web site. Please send any contributions to the bibliography to the co-chairs.

Nancy Taylor reported on the Navigator program which matches new members of SAA with more experienced conference attendees. This year the program made 20 matches. She encourages everyone to volunteer to be a Navigator and to spread the word about the program.

Debbie Richards reported on the web site. The WAR web site will soon move to the SAA server. Debbie is looking for women archivists in action to illustrate the web site. 

III. WAR Survey Results

Amy Cooper presented the results of the WAR survey. Please see the survey summary sheet for results or the complete results when they are posted on the web site. Having compiled the results, Amy believes that the survey questions were constructed in such a way that no firm conclusions should be drawn from the responses. Despite this, members agreed that there is enough evidence to advocate for an SAA women's issues committee; to influence the formation of a new SAA salary survey and to nominate worthy women as SAA Fellows.

The group made the following suggestions regarding future WAR activities:

• Publish the results of the survey
• Use the survey as a basis for a meeting session proposal on women in the profession
• Redo the survey using more sound research methodology -- get the help of an academic social scientist or propose it as a student project.

Minutes recorded by Julia Hendry, Visiting Special Collections Librarian, University of Illinois at Chicago.

Approved by the Co-Chairs, 8/27/02