SAA's Committee on Research, Data, and Assessment (CORDA) is thrilled to announce that SAA has entered into a memorandum of agreement with the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to establish the "SAA Dataverse"!
Launching later this year, the SAA Dataverse will support active data reuse and reevaluation on behalf of the entire archival community and will welcome data deposits from our designated communities.
In celebration of "Love...
We hope you have had a good start into the new year. The Technical Subcommittee on Encoded Archival Standards (TS-EAS) would like to kick-off 2021 with an update on some of our recent as well as upcoming activities.
Encoded Archival Context - Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families (EAC-CPF)Since early 2019, TS-EAS has been working on a major revision of the EAC-CPF standard. This revision -- EAC-CPF 2.0 -- addresses bug reports and feature requests from the implementer community -- and also...
The Oral History Center at UC-Berkeley is offering online versions of their educational programs for 2021. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, the planning committee decided to make the events virtual.
The 2021 Introduction to Oral History Workshop will be held virtually via Zoom over two days on Friday, March 5, from 12–3 p.m. and Saturday, March, 6 from 9 a.m.–1.p.m. Pacific Time. Applications for this workshop are open and will be accepted through February 16, 2021. Space is limited so...
The new issue of information, observations, and things to ponder can be found in pdf form here
Secure Your Stuff
Section Research Volunteer, Jeff Lundgren, asks if you have done a “systems review” in starting the new year off right. He explains some reasons why this part of every-day security awareness is so important. This is followed by a few more tips on securing your stuff, continued from the November 2020 text in our First Encounter
Quiz
What do you know about...
Where do you see yourself professionally in 2021? Appointed to a relatively new technical subcommittee, perhaps? Working to improve and influence the role of encoded archival standards — including EAD and EAC-CPF — throughout the world? If so, now is the time to volunteer!
The Technical Subcommittee on Encoded Archival Standards (TS-EAS) is seeking volunteers to join our group.
Next year, the committee will be focused on the following major areas of work:
Finalizing a major revision of...
In case you missed the October 16th forum "Welcome Back to the Archives," the recording is now live on YouTube! Listen to our discussion about how pandemic-related closures have affected us all, and how we have handled returning to the workplace.
Click here for the YouTube link.
If you have questions or discussion points regarding the intersection of these standards with collections management, please post to our listserv! Plese follow the link below to learn more about the Technical Subcommittee on Encoded Archival Standard.
“It's Not as Bad as You Think – Navigating Privacy and Confidentiality Issues in Archival Collections”
Tuesday, December 8th at 1pm ET/10am PT
Please join us for a lively conversation with Heather Briston, JD, MSI - Head of Curators and Collections, and UCLA University Archivist. Come with your questions and get ready to learn about how you can address thorny privacy and confidentiality issues at your archive. This conversation will go over:
How to spot whether you're looking at a legal issue...
SAA’s Records Management Section sponsors a peer-reviewed case study series that seeks to support the practical as well as the theoretical and scholarly aspects of the records and information management (RIM) profession.
Suggested case study length is 2,500 to 5,000 words. Elements of the case study include:
introduction
background/prior relevant work/institutional context
challenge addressed
strategies and resources employed
analysis of successes and setbacks
future plans
Illustrations,...
Something important to you missing from this newsletter? Send a submission my way and let me know what you would like to see.
Please submit newsletter items about archives and human rights (writ broadly) to hilary.h.barlow@gmail.com. These can be recent publications, upcoming events or exhibitions, opportunities and scholarships, or something else entirely as long as it connects to archives and human rights. For the December newsletter, please send your submission by December 21, 2020.
Have...
Canada convened a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) between 2008 and 2015, resulting in a national apology to Indigenous peoples and calls for systemic reforms, including education. The TRC sparked a national conversation bringing awareness, resources, and training opportunities to educators in Manitoba. While no such national efforts have taken place in the United States, educational reforms have been initiated at the state and municipal levels. Specific initiatives (exhibits...
The LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory and The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archive invite you to celebrate the launch of The ArQuives’ Trans Collections Guide on December 3rd, 2020 – 4-6 pm EST. A roundtable discussion on the trans holdings of The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archive, and the histories and futures of trans archival practices. Moderated by Elspeth Brown: Professor of History, University of Toronto; Director, LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory; Co-President of the Board...
The NAS facility is key to many different communities. The official page for the facility specifically highlights information they hold about Chinese immigrants and indigenous affairs, along with land records, court records, and genealogical resources. This includes tribal and treaty records of indigenous people living in the Pacific Northwest, and original case files for Chinese immigrants in the 19th century. Volunteers have been trying to index the Chinese immigrant files and create an “...
As an act of organizational accountability and in response to Treaties Recognition Week, the Librarians' and Archivists' Association of the University of Waterloo wishes to express its support for the organizers behind 1492 Land Back Lane.
The members of LAAUW live and work on the Haldimand Tract, land promised to the Six Nations in 1784 for allying with the British during the American Revolution. It includes six miles on each side of the Grand River. The relationship with the Haldimand Tract...
The Biden administration faces two simultaneous challenges on the records preservation front: fixing a broken Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) system, and closing the loopholes to the Presidential Records Act (PRA) so they can’t be abused again.
Both of these challenges can be met, but it will take a combination of Day One and sustained action on the part of both the Biden administration and Congress to do so. (Some of the following recommendations, along with many others, are discussed in...
Isha Khan, President and CEO of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR), today released a framework plan to create a safe, respectful and healthy workplace. The document has been posted on the CMHR website.
“Creating lasting change requires a deep commitment to challenging our systems and the way we work,” said Khan, who began her role as CMHR leader on August 17. “We are approaching this thoughtfully and have been working hard to gather input from employees and the community. Our approach...
It is early June, and there are beautiful things happening, inspiring things happening. There are also imperfect, perhaps severely limited gestures being made by people whom I trust genuinely do care. There are ups (the surge of attention to abolition, the statues of refined predators toppled into the rivers) and there are downs (the deadly violence of police “wellness” activities from which the public attention to uprising provides no apparent reprieve) and it’s disorienting.
I am called upon...
The Society of American Archivists Museum Archives Section welcomes your comments on a draft of revised Museum Archives Guidelines. These guidelines have been created by the Section to assist all types of museums in the development and administration of archival programs.
You can view the draft Guidelines here and submit feedback by accessing this survey: https://forms.gle/xNp3Ad9QRYwHokX97
Please note that you can sign off on the Guidelines as written using the radio buttons in the first...
Museum Archivists, the latest issue of the newsletter is available, the summer 2020 issue!
The Museum Archives Section's Standards and Best Practices Working Group held its annual symposium at the SAA Annual Meeting in Austin on August 3rd, 2019. The symposium formalized the “Updates from the Floor” portion of the Section meeting and focused on projects currently underway or recently completed in museum archives. The symposium provided a forum for sharing pilots, in-progress projects, and recently completed projects, initiatives, and activities at our repositories with our colleagues...
We have gathered small pieces, that would otherwise be posted on our blog, together in a single, short, PDF document. It includes definitions of terms and quotations, Items that were requested in the past by non-members of the Security Section.
Please enjoy it and let us know what you think.
Protect to Preserve: Information, Observations, and Things to Ponder
Contents:
Secure Your Stuff Section Research Volunteer, Jeff Lundgren, asks “how do we secure our stuff when it comes to “cyber”, and...
The Technical Subcommittee for Encoded Archival Standards (TS-EAS) is responsible for the ongoing maintenance of EAD and EAC-CPF as well as the development of future companion standards, such as Encoded Archival Context for Functions. We are seeking self-nominations from the international community to join TS-EAS. Anyone outside of the United States who has experience working with or implementing archival encoding standards is encouraged to apply as an international member.Next year, the...
Something important to you missing from this newsletter? Send a submission my way and let me know what you would like to see.
Please submit newsletter items about archives and human rights (writ broadly) to hilary.h.barlow@gmail.com. These can be recent publications, upcoming events or exhibitions, opportunities and scholarships, or something else entirely as long as it connects to archives and human rights. For the October newsletter, please send your submission by November 23, 2020.
Happy...
Anderson-Rajkumar’s story was the last oral history interview I conducted. It was recorded through Skype in April 2020 at the beginning of a pandemic.
As Rev. Evangeline spoke, I was reminded about the central purpose behind this oral history collection. I started with the belief that communities cannot heal from historic, intergenerational trauma without knowing their history. I hoped to catalyze collective healing and liberation through story. I also wanted to emphasize that caste doesn’t...
In April 2020, a group of Palestinian NGOs from Shufat refugee camp joined in a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court. The petition demanded that the Israeli Ministry of Health open COVID-19 testing centres for Palestinian communities in East Jerusalem, including those living in the densely-populated Shufat camp. Media coverage largely discussed the petition’s ultimate success in the context of Israel’s pandemic policies for Palestinians. Yet the latter’s decision to contest the government in...
