About the Program

Found on the banks of the Mississippi River near the Gulf of Mexico, New Orleans is one of America’s most culturally rich, diverse, and resilient cities. “NOLA” is synonymous with good food, good music, and some of the earliest roots of our nation’s story. Naturally it’s a place where Archives are central to the recovery and preservation of this city’s epic history! So when Julia Marks Young, 2011-2012 president of the Council of State Archivists (CoSA), and SAA President Jackie Dooley asked us to serve as co-chairs for the Joint Annual Meeting, there was only one answer: Yes, of course! This gives us a special way to reconnect with the beloved city SAA last visited just days before the Katrina disaster.

Theme Free!

Recent SAA Annual Meetings have featured themes such as “ARCHIVES 360˚” for the 75th Anniversary (Chicago, 2011) and “Beyond Borders” (San Diego, 2012), but Jackie suggested that 2013 be themefree— and thus free-ranging and all-inclusive in its aspirations! So the Program Committee sought proposals covering all aspects of archives practice and appealing to a broad range of archivists from both CoSA and SAA. Our 11-member committee met in Chicago over the Veterans Day weekend to review and discuss 137 session proposals and 22 poster proposals for the 2013 program. It was an exciting weekend as we dug deeply into the interesting and innovative ideas proposed by archivists from around the country and the world. Selecting proposals is rewarding and fun because we have the chance to meet and work closely with new colleagues and open fresh windows to our profession. It’s also very challenging to weigh the merits of proposals and make the hard choices, understanding that not every proposal can become a session.

ARCHIVES 2013 features 70 sessions and a variety of special events covering such technical topics as digital preservation, electronic records, open-source tools, web access, digitization, and descriptive standards, as well as skill building in areas such as advocacy, fundraising, ethics, management, and leadership. Building on innovations of the 2012 Program Committee and inspired by some of the preliminary ideas submitted by members to the SAA Annual Meeting Task Force, we have added more lightning talks and scheduled more 60-minute tracks, and we are experimenting with a model for providing virtual sessions. (In 2013, this will mean that one complete track will be audio-recorded and made available [with slides] after the conference.)

Robin Chandler (University of California, Santa Cruz) and Nancy Lenoil (California State Archives), 2013 Program Committee Co-Chairs

2013 Program Committee

When we launched this year’s Program Committee there were three chairs guiding the development of the 2013 Annual Meeting. Sadly, our dear friend, “tri-chair,” and colleague Laura Tatum passed away in the fall. Laura was a superb archivist who specialized in architectural records and broke new ground engaging architects in arrangement and description of their archival collections. She brought her wit and enthusiasm to the planning stages of the program and her joyous presence to our first face-to-face committee meeting in San Diego. Thank you, Laura, for all your gifts and the time we were able to spend together.