Meeting Minutes: August 3, 2006, Washington, DC

Co-chairs: Kate Colligan, Univ. of Pittsburgh and Ellen Swain, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

SAA Annual Conference, Washington, D.C.; August 3, 2006, 4:30-6:00

Attendees:

Kate Colligan, Univ. of Pittsburgh

Ellen Swain, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Jennifer King, Mount Holyoke

Arlene Schmuland, Univ. of Alaska Anchorage (program committee liaison)

Heather C.D. Davis, Univ. of Washington

Paula Aloisio, Schlesinger Library

Fernanda Perrone, Rutgers Univ.

Susan Woodland, Hadassah

Danelle Moon, San Jose State

Anke Voss, Urbana Free Library, IL

Sarah Keen, Cornell Univ.

Jennie Benford, Carnegie Mellon Univ.

Amy Rudersdorf, North Carolina State Univ.

Jan Blodgett, Davidson College

Sarah Quigley, Univ. of Texas at Austin

Ellen Brown, Baylor Univ.

Tomaro Taylor, Univ. of South Florida Libraries

Tanya Zanish-Belcher, Iowa State Univ.

Rebecca Johnson Melvin, Univ. of Deleware

Lisa Mangiafico, Soroptimist International of Americas

Wanda Finney, Wilson College

Alexandra Gressitt, Thomas Balch Library

Susan R. Watson, American Red Cross

Rosemary Cundiff, Utah State Archives

Renee Braden, National Geographic Society

Heidi Marshall, Columbia College Chicago

Peggy Glowacki, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago

Jodi Berkowitz, Duke Univ.

Kelly Wooten, Duke Univ.

Christie Lutz, Princeton Univ.

Susan Earle, Schlesinger Library

Curtis Lyons, Virginia Commonwealth Univ.

Andrea Sheehan, QVC

Kathy Jacob, Schlesinger Library

Janice Ruth, Library of Congress

Doris Malkmus, Pennsylvania State Univ.

Program:

After a short presentation by the Program Committee liaison, Kate Colligan introduced the meeting program speaker, A'Lelia Bundles, who spoke on Research Adventures from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance. A'Lelia Bundles, author of On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker, currently is immersed in the 1920s and wakes up each morning to an office full of letters, newspaper clippings, audiotapes, books, photographs and memorabilia as she reconstructs the life of her great-grandmother for her new biography, JoyGoddess: The Fabulous A'Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance. For A'Lelia Bundles, there is nothing quite like the rush of opening a Hollinger box and discovering a juicy historical tidbit or inhaling the faint smell of mildew in the pages of an old journal as she learns about four generations of the women in her family. She looks forward to sharing research adventures that have taken her from Howard's Moorland-Spingarn Collection and Yale's Beinecke Collection to the Library of Congress and and the living rooms of several octogenarians and nonagenarians.

After the fascinating presentation, Colligan announced that Anke Voss and Doris Malkmus are the new WCRT co-chairs and Amy Rudersdorf is the web liaison. Colligan and Swain thanked them for their willingness to take over the leadership of the group. The meeting was adjourned at 6pm.