Council Seeks Comment on Proposed Changes in Member Affinity Groups

The proposed changes to member affinity groups aim to simplify the Sprunked structure while enhancing member engagement. Feedback from the community is crucial for refining these recommendations before implementation.

I share the concerns of many commenters regarding the value of these changes and their possible unintended negative effects. In particular, what might be lost if non-members are excluded from the affinity group listservs? As we as a profession, and an organization, are trying to become more engaged with the rest of society, and to diversify our ranks, this move seems like a step backwards, and it risks, as others have mentioned, limiting participation from donors groups, affiliated professional or community organizations, the international community, and so on. (I would also like to see current breakdowns of group composition as to members/nonmembers, as Bill Landis and others have mentioned.)

Simple numbers don’t seem like an effective way to measure group “worthiness.” I would rather see some other way to determine this; for example, activity or the “productivity” that Frank Boles invokes. Moreover, the removal on the limit of affinity groups one can join does not make for more engagement. There are only so many things one can realistically follow, much less participate in. If I’m joining a group mainly to do them a favor to keep their numbers up, how meaningful is that?

Suggestions made in previous comments to look at other ways to solve the meeting space and Council liaison problems -- and these are problems; I sympathize there! --  strike a chord with me as well, as do some of the proposed solutions. Having groups petition for meeting space; sharing meeting space or even collaborating, at least in part, during meetings; not to mention more efficient, effective use of Council liaisons are all reasonable ideas to look at fleshing out into alternative solutions.

I appreciate much of the intent of the proposal, but in its current form, it is not something I would like to see put into practice. 

I think the proposed changes make sense in seeking a more flexible community structure, given previous observations about and criticisms of roundtables and sections in the past (confusion, overlap, lack of activity). This will provide some clarity around how the groups work, which would allow people to join and participate in AGs with greater ease. 

First, I think it's acceptable to try this experiment, knowing that in the future another iteration of Council may revise it. Since the current system is a bit of an albatross, trying out a revised structure makes sense.

Second, I hope SAA would encourage and provide ways for the AGs and VCGs to overlap and provide means of discussion and knowledge-sharing with non-SAA members, including our international colleagues, without the AG having to duplicate content. at a minimum, keeping AG listservs open to nonmembers enriches all archivists' work. I appreciate the desire to demonstrate SAA's value, but for some, an SAA membership will remain out of reach no matter how attractive we make it.

I also agree that activity and engagement with its members are an important aspect of AGs. An annual report would not be overly burdensome and would provide transparency into the work of each AG, which in turn might pique peoples' interest in a group and increase its membership. 

I was pulled into 2 remarkable communities in the first few years after joining SAA as I began to attend the conference every year. Without the Women's Collection Roundtable and the Visual Materials Secrion I would have been lost in the hugeness of SAA. Now SAA is much, much larger and confusing, and it is more important than ever to have a group of real live colleagues with similar interests to reconnect with every year. The virtual connection during the year is  good, but it doesn't replace a physical meeting.

it is important to me that there not be a size limitation on a group in order to have this physical meeting. Especially for members who feel their SAA connection mostly via these groups, and who belong to groups with fewer members.

As SAA continues to grow it becomes increasingly difficult to navigate; the conference changes from year to year with experiments in session formats and different venues. Something needs to remain constant and manageably small. Please don't eliminate in person meetings of sections/Roundtablesi/affinity groups. (The name isn't important to me, but the underlying concept is).

I am concerned about removing the distinction between Sections and Roundtables. The roundtables are valuable as more informal, smaller groups, which are less intimidating for new members. Joining a Roundtable is an easy way to get involved when you are new to the profession. They are also importing networking tools that bring together archivists from across the country with similar interests. Sections are much larger, more formal, and less targeted to particular interests.

This proposal would mean a huge disconnect for me.  I’ve been an archivist for over 30 years and now am working part time and cannot afford SAA membership.  Because I work as an archivist in an non-traditional setting, my employer is not supportive of membership fees or conference attendance.  I have to maintain my archival connections on my own time and via my own unsupported initiatives. 

If passed, this new proposal would knock me out of Affinity Group participation.  And it seems like my Roundtable (Architectural Records Roundtable) might not even make Affinity Group status.  If relegated to a Virtual Community Group, with no support from SAA, that means further fragmentation for our specialty field.  Yet the ARR members are taking the lead in developing preservation standards for records in complicated digital formats (CAD/BIM) - something the architectural profession or construction industry is not even looking at.

I hate to sound so negative, but this small-minded, closed-door thinking makes me not want to be an SAA member even if I could get the funding. The only one putting the chill on my passion for architectural records is the very agency that you would expect to encourage folks to care more about historical records.  What a shame.

This proposal seems like a slippery slope for membership benefits and niche community voices. SAA's mission statement does not indicate that certain topics deserve greater investment of time and resources, but rather that it is an organization to support the diverse archival community. The opportunity to meet in person, once a year, is a critical service that roundtables rely upon to have important conversations. 

A shift this large deserves a vote by the membership. 

Like so many of the others who've already posted, I find these suggested changes concerning on a number of different levels, especially since I'm part of a number of groups that would be negatively impacted by these changes.

It seems to me that it might be better to keep things as they are now (or, fine, call all the sections and RTs affinity groups), but remove that promise of meeting space and council liaison, since those seem to be the expenses SAA is trying to reduce by these proposed changes.  Groups could petition for meeting space as needed and maybe a new committee for affinity groups could bridge the gap to council.  Members of that new committee could be assigned as liaisons to the individual affinity groups and there could be one super liaison between the committe and council.  That person could be a member of council appointed to the position, who would serve as an ex officio member of the committee.  Alternatively, someone from the commitee could be an ex officio, non-voting member of council.

I am extremely concerned about the proposed exclusion of non-members in the affinity groups. The EAD community, for example, is a multinational community where much of the work is done by non-members to advance a global professional effort. If the SAA intends to make itself irrelevant as a global player in defining international archival standards, excluding those non-U.S. participants simply because they are not SAA members is a good first step. This portion of the proposal is short-sighted, has terrible unintended consequences, and would serve to curtail critical and essential dialogue between the SAA and its aligned professional colleagues within and beyond the United States border. I strongly oppose this portion of the proposed changes to the member affinity groups.

I would like to add my voice to what the majority of the comments seem to be saying:

1. This proposal needs to be voted on by the SAA membership.

2. The 4% minimum for number of members for an Affinity Group will hamper existing and new groups that could never reach that number.

The larger sections and roundtables don't really lend themselves well to networking or addressing problems their members might be encountering, for the same reason SAA as a whole cannot.  It becomes a matter of the top few controlling the discussion for the many. 

Has anyone given thought to a tiered level of Affinity Group membership?  Allowing larger groups to break into subgroups at their will and still having only the larger group liasion with Council? 

3. Meeting space at Annual Conferences: this is one of the few times people can actually meet face to face.  Either allow multiple groups to share large ballroom space, allow multiple half days for Affinity Group meetings, or cut the time of the meetings down, so more groups can rotate through the same space.

4. Non-members should be allowed to join Affinity Groups.  Perhaps a nominal fee could be charged, somehting like a non-voting member type of category.  It allows them to join Affinity Groups but not vote on membership issues.  Could Affinity Groups on their own charge a nominal fee to non-members?

5. Virtual Affitiniy Groups: I think the support offered for these is great but it should be offered to all Affinity Groups.  Virtual groups can work well for smaller "branches" of larger Affinity Groups, perhaps.

Just my two cents!

I didn't realize that in the current proposal non-members would not be able to join the listservs of affinity groups. I disagree with this provision for reasons that have been presented below.

Being able to join as many groups as possible is great, but I am concerned about how this will effect listserv members who are not SAA members. There are a number of roundtables that have considerable non-SAA membership, their participation is often greatly appreciated on both sides. It's also a way for non-members to decide if membership is worth the cost. 

I am concerned that the new system will alienate a lot of current users. The open nature of the lists is a big attraction for me. 

I have been a member of SAA for somewhere around 17 years, less the lapses when my employer's payment procedures did not keep up with due dates.  I have attended a few days of one meeting in that time.  The most useful membership benefits for me have been the website, the listserv, the discounted prices at the bookstore, and the Section and Round Table listservs.  I am also a member of ACA. 

This debate seems to me to be mainly an economic one that fails to recognize some points of reality.  Virtual Community Groups with no representation to council and no space at annual meetings are just Google Groups or Facebook pages with another name. 

Most importantly, this is not the kind of thing that makes SAA seem to me to be headed toward irrelevancy.  My interest is not in what happens to affinity groups, but in what happens to a professional association that falils to advocate in any tangible way for the profession it represents.  The only new project started in recent years has been the Digital Archives Specialist Certificate Program.  To be perfectly blunt - SAA does not provide a very good return on the dues paid to it.  In the United States, there is only one degree program, and that is an online one, specifically for archives.  It is all very well to post recommendations for a graduate program in archives on the website, but how long can a profession be considered as such when its members come from diverse educational backgrounds and their ranks are frequently joined by amateurs who assume the title based on a few workshops?

I will retire in a few years and as a civil servant I have not been subject to the pressures of academia and tenure or the deadlines of the corporate world, so feel free to discount my opinion.  I think though that we are missing the forest while counting the trees.

Hello, 

1. I agree with previous comments, that this proposed change to affinity groups should/needs to be voted on by members, being a major change.

2. I personally am against this change:

• with a required membership of 4% of all SAA Members, new groups will be very difficult to set up (think of the future versions of the Archivists & Archives of Color Roundtable, the Architecture Roundtable, Lesbian and Gay Archives Roundtable etc). I doubt that any of them either initially had and/or ever achieved such a large membership.
  
• international round tables have members of the RT who are not SAA members, and this might also be true for other RT. These members are essential to the work of the groups and that kind of membership carries weight in the countries of the respective RT members
• a virtual community is no solution to needed personal interaction, to the lack of space to meet e.g. for 30 people, etc. All of us who have been involved in organizing and running organizations and committees know that virtual meeting spaces do not work (or barely).
  

Even if unintended, these changes will have political consequences.

3. SAA should accept the current reality of our section/RT structure and figure out how to solve the issue involved.

• If the sole reason for this change is a financial one, i.e. that meetings rooms are expensive, then SAA can encourage joint meetings, raise the conference fee by for instance $5 (e.g. 1,800 participants = $9,000) which might be enough to fund the meeting rooms.

Regards.

Responding to Lucy's speculations, as someone who was on Council recently but did not participate in drafting the current proposal under comment I'll toss in my $0.02 about why I think something is necessary along these lines. In my 3 years on Council we approved 4 new RTs (there hasn't been a new Section in a decade or so, I think since Electronic Records in the 1990s). The last member affinity group that I recall disappearing of its own accord was the MicroMARC RT (there may've been others, but it doesn't happen very often). Increasing numbers of RTs (because as Lucy points out, they're the easy groups to propose in terms of #s needed), with the current guarantee of face-to-face meeting space at the annual meeting and a liaison relationship to Council, is frankly unsustainable in an organization of our size, so I think kudos to Council for proposing something and getting this conversation started.

Lucy's post suggests that these proposed changes will somehow stifle new groups, but I don't see that at all. The new Virtual Community Groups plan seems to me to give archivists (not just members) the opportunity to come together around many facets of what we do, but without face-to-face meeting space and a Council liaison, and without necessarily having to formalize a governance structure and a program of action (i.e., doing something constructive and productive, and reporting to Council and the membership annually about it). There is absolutely nothing wrong, in my mind, with raising the bar a bit for doling out meeting space and liaisons. We have several moribund (in the "lacking vigor and vitality" sense) current groups that do little to nothing for their members except hold elections and a meeting at the annual meeting each year, but we don't have an easy process to end them without making Council do it, which is an insane thing to ask our elected governing body to spend its time on IMHO. We need to raise the standard for these groups and encourage them to engage in the types of advocacy and education activities that SAA members seem to want more of from their professional organization.

I don't think this proposal is perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I do completely agree that the status quo is unsustainable and that Council would be irresponsible to let it continue. So let's be creative about improving the transition plan for existing Sections and RTs, and not just assume that they all need to continue in existence. I'd encourage Lucy and others who don't like some or all of the current proposal to suggest alternatives that 1) give SAA members a more flexible way to come together to get important (to them) things discussed and done, 2) don't rely solely on substance-less "body count" metrics, 3) are nimble enough to change over time as our profession inevitably changes, 4) doesn't create a need to support an open-ended number of formal group meetings at the already ridiculously over-scheduled annual meeting, and 5) doesn't give members of Council a set of liaison responsibilities that they can't--as unpaid, elected volunteers--reasonably fulfill. I'll be eager to see some counter-proposals in this discussion.

To mitigate the issue of non-members not being allowed to participate in affinity groups, I see nothing in the proposal that would prevent the creation of vitual community groups that are affiliated with affinity groups. So, for example, SNAP has an affinity group for members, and then just shares its information with its associated virtual community group to support the needs of non-members. Would this be against the rules? I would see this as a easy mitigation strategy for a group like SNAP and others which want to contnue to reach out to and serve non-members. 

And I agree with the comments posted above (or below) about adding measurements of activity to the "body count" factor. 

I don't see how this setup is to the advantage of the legacy sections?  Roundtables were comparatively easy to establish and run.  Sections required a much more robust structure.  For this there was, at a time, a bit of independence in affliate non-SAA membership, operations outside of the annual meeting, guaranteed space at the meeting for business and education, and proposing educational sections for the annual meeting.  Where has the bit about guaranteed or heavily weighted approval of section proposals gone to anyway?  I would expect laying the legacy sections low in this way may not go over too well.  Could you be creating the next AMIA or NAGARA?

I agree with Frank Boles's great suggestion that Council consider productivity-based metrics in addition to body counts as a means of assessing whether newly monikered Affinity Groups should continue in existence. I don't know that this has to be in place right from the start, but Council should have a plan to introduce some productivity measures into the assessment of whether Affinity Groups should continue within the first year or two after Affinity Groups are officially introduced, be completely transparent about that plan, and involve some current Section/RT leadership in determining what some useful productivity-based metrics might be.

I'd also like to see all Affinity Groups, since they'll continue to hold annual elections, have on their ballots a check box asking Affinity Group members to reaffirm annually that they're satisfied with the Affinity Group each year. Groups that drop below some specified % of their membership reaffirming that group's continued existence could have a year or two for their leadershp and members to explore if/how that Affinity Group could continue in existence and better meet the needs of its members. Having this member reaffirmation in place, in addition to some productivity metrics, would help all SAA members because it would help to make more transparent what SAA members expect from their affinity groups on an on-going basis.

Finally, I have no idea how many current Roundtables have significant numbers of SAA non-members participating. Have those figures ever been produced, or do we have a sense of whether or not this would be an issue in no longer allowing SAA non-members to participate in Roundtables after they become Affinity Groups? Presumably, if there are such Roundtables, they could spin off an affiliated Virtual Community Group through which they could still engage with SAA non-members if that's considered important within the context of that Roundtable-turned-Affinity-Group?

All in all, especially if Council and current Section/RT leadership can rise to the occasion of exploring some productivity-based metrics for assessing Affinity Group performance from the perspective of those groups' members, I think this will be a beneficial and much-needed change for the membership of SAA.

Hmm. My initial response to this is that it doesn't change much-- it replaces the current Section-Roundtable stratification with the Affinity Group/Virtual Community Group (both of which are mouthfuls!) stratification, with the change that the "New Roundtables" don't have rights to Annual Meeting space. But I'll bite-- here is a (partial) list of specific comments on this:

• To the extent that Sections/Roundtables are being merged into one entity, it's a good move. There were a lot of arbitrary differences between the two affinity groups and simplifying the structure is going to make it easier for people to get involved in leadership.
• I appreciate that the primary goal of this is to cut down on moribund/inactive affinity groups. I think that's a reasonable goal! By giving members the ability to choose from only *active* groups you increase the probability that they find groups they can actually get involved in, which helps them feel more connected to SAA as a whole. That said:
• The 4% threshold seems arbitrary. Moreover, I have serious doubts that it will have any appreciable winnowing effect, especially since this proposal would remove the limit on number of affinity groups members can join. If members *can* join any number of affinity groups, why wouldn't they? Particularly if there's no commitment required on their part.
• On the other side of that-- raw numbers don't seem like the best way to gauge a group's activity. For example, RMRT has over 1100 members officially listed as members of the group, but I would estimate MAYBE a fifth of that number are actively involved. (As it happens the RT's steering committee puts in a lot of effort to provide value to its members-- but on the raw threshold criteria, it wouldn't have to.) Conversely, a group like LACCHA might be extremely active, but its numbers might be naturally capped by its nature as a minority interest group, which would mean that it would fall below the 4% threshold and lose its right to meeting space. I think in a profession that already has problems with diversity, discouraging minority participation in SAA like this is a dangerous thing to do.
• I think a better measure of Affinity Group activity would be between-meeting activities: What is their social media presence like? How many seminars have they facilitated? Do they have a blog or newsletter, and is it updated frequently? Basically, showing value-add for the group's members. This wouldn't be hard to monitor because groups should be including this kind of information in their annual report anyway. I do realize that this requires Council/SAA staff to make subjective evaluations vs. the cold hard numbers of the threshold model-- but I think decommissioning or downgrading affinity groups is something that SHOULD be done consciously. It shows that SAA is serious about cutting out chaff.
• Why are non-member participants being excluded from the affinity groups? This seems like it will have major repercussions on the viability of a number of existing sections/roundtables, particularly SNAP and the "cross-professional" groups (RMRT, PLASC, Museum Archives, etc.). These groups benefit from having external perspectives added to their conversations, and excluding non-members from said conversations will make them more insular and subject to echo-chamber thinking. I realize that all of these groups can take their lists elsewhere if they need to continue conversations with non-members-- but why should they have to? (Moreover, I suspect that there are more than a few affinity groups without the technical expertise to set up fora elsewhere-- so if SAA went down this road I would hope they would provide advice for doing this.)
• Eliminating Council Liaisons for VCGs seems short-sighted-- in many cases the council reports (and maaaaybe the plenary) are members' main connection to the goings-on of SAA leadership, and taking that away removes a key avenue for VCG members to communicate with Council. (Yes, members can email council members directly if needed-- but it's psychologically easier to do, I think, if those people are in specific roles to answer questions and receive feedback.) RMRT's Council Liaison(s) helped me a lot with questions of SAA policy and procedure during my time as chair of that roundtable, and I think depriving future group coordinators of that direct connection is unwise.
• Would VCGs be subject to the same branding requirements on external sites as affinity groups are currently? If so, I think the final policy should be a lot clearer on what VCGs get from affiliation with SAA in addition to their responsibilities to represent themselves as under the SAA umbrella. Otherwise, I think you run the risk of VCG leaders saying "this isn't worth it" and either deaffiliating or not putting the work in to fully follow the policy, which further feeds the disconnect between VCG members and SAA the organization.

Overall, I respect what this proposal is trying to do (encourage more activity from affinity groups, weed out the inactive ones, give members more flexibility to join affinity groups of interest), but as it is I think the mechanism to do so paints with too broad a brush. I would be more than a little dismayed if these changes went into effect without significant changes to more accurately assess Affinity Group activity and delineate the rights and responsibilities of both AG and VCG members and leadership.