Graduate Student Posters

G01 - I'd Like to Return to Lebanon: The Angele Hobeiche Kmeid Ellis Collection

Samantha J. Aamot; North Carolina State University

The Angele Hobeiche Kmeid Ellis Collection sheds light on early immigration to the United States from the perspective of a Lebanese woman and her family. Angele Ellis, who emigrated to New York from Lebanon in 1926, collected and preserved hundreds of letters and photographs that tell a candid, vivid story of one family’s transnational journey to recreate their lives anew in the US while strengthening their ties to home from a distance.

 


 

G02 - Silent Corruption: Bit Rot and Its Impact on Digital Archives

Ashley J. Aberg; Simmons University

There is a general assumption that digitally stored data is infallible, and that once a thing is digitized it exists forever. What happens to files that are infrequently accessed and copied? Bit rot happens, the slow spontaneous loss of digital data over time. The only known way to combat this is through the use of self checking, self healing file systems. This poster outlines three potential mitigation options institutions may implement at differing price points.

 


 

G03 - Writing Finding Aids in Flint: A Capstone Project at the Sloan Museum Archives

Meredith Counts; University of Michigan

The Sloan Museum archives in Flint, Michigan holds about 600 linear feet of historical records. A mix of corporate, manuscript and news collections document life and industry in Genesee County. Using new museum guidelines for abbreviated finding aids, three small manuscript collections were processed and described before and during the COVID-19 shutdown. This hands-on project provided professional experience, increased institutional knowledge, and completed requirements for the Mastery in Librarianship and Archival Practice course at UMSI.

 


 

G04 - Community and Control in a Colonial Collection: Filipinos and Archival Protocols

Emma De Vera; University of Michigan School of Information

Many of the images in the Dean C. Worcester Photographic Collection at the U-M Museum of Anthropological Archaeology contain graphic and sensitive imagery. Between 1890 and 1913, Worcester captured the images while stationed in the Philippines. The museum seeks to open digital access while working with Filipino communities and confronting its colonial origins. By consulting community stakeholders, this project addresses gaps in literature on other indigenous and Asian groups, focusing on Filipinos in the archives.

 


 

G05 - Personal Archiving and Sharing Personal Memories with Families in a Chinese Context: Early Insights and Implications for Services

Ruohua Han; School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This poster presents some early insights from my Ph.D. dissertation that examines the connections between creating/managing personal archives and the sharing/withholding of personal memories in Chinese families. Based on a preliminary analysis of interviews with Chinese participants, I identified four main functions of personal archives in their memory sharing/withholding activities and three Chinese cultural “imprints” on some of their practices. Implications of these findings for personal archiving services are briefly discussed in the conclusion.

 


 

G06 - Preserving Open Learning Experiences: Digitally Archiving Teach-Outs

Julia Maxwell; University of Michigan School of Information

The University of Michigan’s Center for Academic Innovation produces Teach-Outs: short open learning experiences on salient social issues. As free global learning events, Teach-Outs have myriad uses beyond their live course instances. This poster details the archival workflow and digital considerations used to migrate these learning experiences from their live “run” on external learning platforms to permanence as Open Educational Resources at UM’s digital learning platform, Michigan Online.

 


 

G07 - Frida Kahlo: A Written Invitation

Emily Moore; University of Maryland

An artistic force and feminist icon, Frida Kahlo is one of the most recognizable artists in history. As home to a collection of her intimate family correspondence, the National Museum of Women in the Arts provides an archival entry point for diverse users, creating space for deeper understanding of the woman behind the image. Through linking opportunities and challenges in its management, the Kahlo collection serves as a focal point for archival outreach and advocacy.

 


 

G08 - Collaborating to Preserve Archives in the "Athens of the South": Fisk University, Lipscomb University, and Meharry Medical College

Elizabeth Rivera, DeLisa Minor-Harris, Vanessa R. Smith; Middle Tennessee State University

Nashville, Tennessee has the distinct claim of being “Athens of the South” because of its many universities within the city’s radius, and yet, levels of privilege preclude some of the smaller institutional archives from advancing in the field of practice and innovation. Fisk University, Lipscomb University, and Meharry Medical College formed a collaborative to intentionally support one another, to elevate their needs, so together they will move beyond basic archival needs of preservation and conservation.

 


 

G09 - Archiving Mexican Folkloric Costumes by Applying a Participatory Approach and a Post-Custodial Strategy

Joel A. Saldana Perez; The University of Arizona

Mexican folklórico is a dance form and tradition rooted in the cultural diversity of Mexico, but that also has a prominent presence in the United States. The dances, music, and costumes are all embedded with the historical and socio-cultural traditions of the communities from where they originate and therefore should be included in the archives (particularly costumes, which are underrepresented). To do this, I recommend the implementation of a participatory approach and a post-custodial strategy.

 


 

G10 - How User Feedback Can Help to Improve Current Finding Aids and Archival Description: An Examination of Three Participatory Archival Strategies

Rebecca Akiko Snyder; New York University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

This project examined three different participatory models of soliciting user feedback in an attempt to update currently existing finding aids and archival description. By examining the results of these models, this project attempted to answer the following questions: (1) how can user feedback help improve current finding aids/archival description; (2) what type of resource allocations must be made in order to improve finding aids; and (3) how else will the archive benefit from this collaboration?

 


 

G11 - Awakening Voices from Immigrants: Study of Asian CineVision Archive in 1970s-80s New York Chinatown

Klavier Wang; New York University

In the wake of the 1960s Immigration Reform Act and Civil Rights Movements, New York’s Chinatown saw the establishment of country’s first Chinese American community television – Chinese Cable Television (CCTV), which was founded under the umbrella of grass-root art group Asian CineVision (ACV). Here presents to you this audiovisual heritage – the historical value revealed from its visually rich materials that document multiple Asian American protests and the nostalgic daily life of New Yorkers.

 


 

G12 - The Future Relationship of Archives and Records: An Examination of the Big Data Wedge

Yubao Gao; Renmin University of China

Guizhou,a historically economically underdeveloped province which appeared as the first province in China that embarked on the big data journey is now the undoubted leader in pushing forward the development and usage of big data technologies.It now possesses large scale government online data platforms, nationally financed labs, and even the first Big Data Trading Center.This poster reports on how is the overall situation of records and archives in this BD advanced context.

 


 

G13 - Transcribe-athon 2020: Virtual Student Programs and the Impact of Crowdsourcing on the Archives

Elena Carroll Hinkle; Simmons University

This Summer, the Simmons University Student Chapter of the Society of American Archivists hosted a virtual "Transcribe-athon" for its students. The week-long program invited students to volunteer their time transcribing digitized texts through the Library of Congress' By the People crowdsourcing program – and participating in a friendly competition. The poster reflects upon the creation of virtual student programming and a discussion of how crowdsourcing work can impact our field even during a global pandemic.

 


 

G14 - Advocating for Archival Education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Allison Kilberg, Jessie Knoles, Randi Proescholdt, Taylor Henning, and Cassie Ward; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This poster highlights the University of Illinois SAA student chapter’s efforts in advocating for archival education in our MSLIS program. In addition to working with the administration to advocate for increased course options, we’ve shifted our programming to fill gaps in our education through specialized workshops and guest speakers. Our poster offers suggestions for other future archivists to make the most of their education by collaborating with their cohort, faculty, and archives professionals.

 


 

G15 - The University of Texas at Austin SAA Chapter: Meeting the Moment

Gabrielle A. Roth, Ayssa D Wynans; The University of Texas at Austin

Our poster highlights the ways the Society of American Archivists – University of Texas at Austin Student Chapter positively impacts our community at the university and beyond. To accomplish this, we present an overview of the projects undertaken by our chapter in the past year, especially as we rose to “Meet the Moment,” our theme for 2020. We address the ways in which our chapter has adapted to the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.

 


 

G16 - Impact of Data Curation Centralization: A Case Study

Allison Rae Bobyak Tyler; University of Michigan

Data repositories do more than store and preserve data sets for future use. Data curators turn data sets into findable, reusable products enabling replicability and new knowledge creation. In 2017, data curation at a large social science data repository was restructured. This poster presents initial findings of a mixed methods study investigating the impact of this restructuring, focusing on how the data curation work-flow changed and what curation activities curation staff see as most beneficial.

 


 

G17 - Paper Sons of the Chinese Exclusion Era

Jeanie Pai; Queens College, New York

PAPER SONS refer to Chinese immigrants who adopted an alias identity and family lineage in order to circumvent the Chinese Exclusion Act (CEA) of 1882. However, the presumption that all Chinese people were paper sons perpetuated racial discrimination, strict documentation, and social control of the community. Since the exact number of paper sons is unknown, descendants today strive to uncover the untold sacrifices of an invisible community that paved their way to, and across America.

 


 

G18 - Conversing with the Archive: Inviting Critical Discussion During Archives Instruction

Benjamin Shaw and C. Kimmi Ramnine

In an academic archive, archival instruction is not just an opportunity for students to interact with collections – it's also a chance to have critical conversations about structural power and the archive as institution. This poster outlines previous conversations about archival ethics with undergraduate students, and includes sample questions the authors have used to guide these discussions.

Annual Meeting referenced: 

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