Did you pilot a creative, remote project during COVID-19?
As a part of the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists, the Reference, Access, & Outreach (RAO) section will host its 8th annual Marketplace of Ideas. The Marketplace of Ideas takes place in conjunction with the annual RAO business meeting, and offers participants a chance to learn more about creative instruction, outreach, and reference programs piloted by colleagues. This year, COVID-19 brought unexpected...
Dear DSGS Members,
The Diverse Sexuality and Gender Section is seeking nominations for section co-chair with a two-year commitment spanning 2020 to 2022. Please consider nominating yourself or a colleague. We value our community and encourage candidates from diverse backgrounds, institutions, professional settings, and experiences. The only requirement for candidacy is current membership in DSGS.
The incoming co-chair will work with DSGS' 2019-2021 co-chair, Alana Varner, to organize...
Please send any nominations by Saturday, June 13th! Self-nominations are encouraged!
Are you seeking an opportunity to expand your network and get further involved in the oral history community? If so, consider running for an open position on the Steering Committee.
Benefits of providing your time and expertise to the Steering Committee include:
Networking with engaged colleagues.
Cultivating leadership skills in a real-world setting.
Driving trends in the field.
Gaining service...
The P&C Steering Committee is pleased to announce that the inaugural recipient of the 2020 Privacy and Confidentiality Award is Itza Carbajal!
Itza is the Latin American Metadata Librarian at the University of Texas at Austin. Her project delves into the significance of empathetics donor relations and the impacton privacy within a collection. To read about her exciting project, visit the P&C Section blog. Congratulations to Itza!
by Cristina Vignone, Education Chair, Business Archives Section
In order to further explore the topic of business archives and exhibitions, the BAS held an industry-wide call on the topic on April 27, 2020.
Over 70 members of the section gathered virtually for presentations by five BAS members—Elizabeth McGorty, Archivist & Records Manager at the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation; Cristina Vignone, Associate Archivist & Manager of Research Services at Tiffany & Co.; Neil...
by Greg McCoy, Immediate Past Chair
As stated at the 2019 Annual Section Meeting, the section’s Standing Rules are in need of updating to reflect the changes in the roles and responsibilities of Section officers, to reflect changes in SAA guidelines, and other small changes. None of these fundamentally alter or change the Section’s overall mission or objectives, and the majority of changes are in the sections related to Officers, Committees, and Elections. Changes are viewable in the documents...
The Human Rights Archives section is seeking candidates to run for the following positions to serve as part of the steering committee starting in August 2020. Over the years the HRA has developed and matured. If elected to serve, your participation will be crucial to setting the goals and mission of the section.
The commitment for this section is as follows (attending the Annual Meeting is not required):-Monthly steering committee call lasting 1 hour -Commitment to section projects with...
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 May newsletter, please send you submission by May 25, 2020.
Librarians and Archivists with Palestine invites you to join our international reading campaign, One Book, Many Communities, to be held in May and June 2020. Our One Book title for 2020 is The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem.
Set in modern-day Jaffa and the greater Tel Aviv area, the story follows Alaa, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, and his friend Ariel, a Jewish Israeli. After Alaa disappears, Ariel finds Alaa’s journals. Alaa’s memory of his late grandmother, a survivor of the Nakba...
The COVID-19 public health crisis is having an unprecedented impact on the American work force, including the federal government and its FOIA and MDR offices.
Some agencies are making submitting FOIA requests more difficult, even going so far as to shutter their Records Management offices, while others are making it easier to submit requests electronically. The disparate approaches across the federal government are causing confusion for many FOIA requesters.
Read more here.
A Passover haggadah produced from memory while in hiding from the Nazis, a matzah cover retrieved after the Holocaust, and an image of matzah baking in the Lodz ghetto.
These are just some of the many artifacts and photographs which have been put together by Yad Vashem for its new, online exhibition recalling the Passover holiday during the Holocaust era.
The exhibition, which is now online, illustrates the stories of Jews caught up in the horrors of the Nazi genocide and cataclysmic world...
Sites of Conscience is hosting a series of free webinars in response to the COVID-19 pandemic on a range of social, political and cultural heritage topics including memorializing the pandemic, civil liberties, and refugee communities. There are upcoming webinars in May and June, and you can view previous webinars from earlier this month.
Read more and register here.
In case you missed our second Rights & Records webinar last month, you can view the recording on SAA's PathLMS platform here.
For human rights defenders, witnesses, and those caught in between some of history’s most violent and difficult moments, video footage functions as a mechanism for seeking justice, accountability, and hopefully, one day, peace. Join WITNESS (a global organization that helps people use video and technology to protect and defend human rights) as representatives share...
Created in the midst of the COVID-19 global pandemic in 2020, the Archival Workers Emergency Fund was established to provide financial assistance for archival workers experiencing acute, unanticipated financial hardship due to the crisis.
The number of recipients and award amounts will be determined by the SAA Foundation AWEF Grant Review Committee in collaboration with the SAA Foundation Board of Directors based on need and available funds. During the initial period (April 15 to December 31,...
In 1995, when the Willard Psychiatric Center, located in the Finger Lakes region of N.Y., closed its doors, an incredible discovery was made in the attic: hundreds of suitcases, untouched for decades, filled with the most important belongings of their former owners.
These suitcases tell the stories of the lives that were left behind when patients entered the center, many of whom never left. They tell of dreams and aspirations. Of futures unfulfilled. Of incredible accomplishments. Of love...
The site sits hundreds of miles from any major city. There are no statues to admire, no gift shops to buy postcards, and no cheery activities for the kids. To get there, one must drive through hours of farm and dirt roads amid potholes and sometimes ice patches in winter littering the journey like land mines.
And when you arrive at the Sand Creek Massacre site, you’ll find open plains and a few markers. The rest is up to you.
This quiet piece of land tucked away in rural southeastern Colorado...
The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) has accelerated the launch of a new online feature in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, inviting people to share their human rights stories by video.
Initially envisioned as a way to collect personal stories about contemporary human rights issues,“Share Your Story” now creates an opportunity for people to connect and relay their experiences during the pandemic. Participants aged 18 and over are invited to record and upload short videos (up to two...
In August 1992, in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo, nearly 2 million books went up in flames.
Fragile, 500-hundred-year-old pamphlets and vibrant Ottoman-era manuscripts disintegrated into ash as the building holding them, the National Library of Bosnia-Herzegovina, was shelled and burned. It was not the first act of cultural destruction by Serbian forces against other ethnic groups in the Balkans, and it certainly wasn’t the last: Over the next seven years, Serb nationalists led by dictator...
New light will be shed on one of the most controversial periods of Vatican history on Monday when the archives on Pope Pius XII – accused by critics of being a Nazi sympathiser – are unsealed.
A year after Pope Francis announced the move, saying “the church isn’t afraid of history”, the documents from Pius XII’s papacy, which began in 1939 on the brink of the second world war and ended in 1958, will be opened, initially to a small number of scholars.
Critics of Pius XII have accused him of...
Our organization and mission depends on donations, admissions, education program fees and event sales to operate. Our closure will have a significant impact on our operating budget and your support is needed now more than ever.
Our effort to reveal stories of freedom’s heroes and to challenge and inspire everyone to take courageous steps of freedom today has not been diminished and our light of freedom will shine brighter than ever. Rest assured that, with your contributions during this time,...
In case you haven't had a chance to read our interview with StoryCorps Union Bargaining Committee member Maura Johnson, you can read it here. It has been updated with new informational links by author Claire Bennett.
StoryCorps is an American nonprofit founded in 2003 by David Isay with a mission to preserve and share the stories of people from all backgrounds. Modeled after the oral history projects conducted by the WPA in the 1930’s, the organization places recording booths and facilitators...
In April 2019, the Joint Working Group on Issues and Awareness offered the webinar "Archival Advocacy at Home Preparing and Messaging for Visiting District Congressional Offices."
To view this webinar, please click the following link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-qUNEi-K3Vm8SIqAY0XUM3MJ-BRMnkHU/view?usp=sharing
This timely webinar addressed the dynamics of recording remote interviews. The webinar covered the legal and ethical considerations and implications of oral histories conducted via distance interviewing, aspects of interviewing in a distance environment, and best pratices for recording archival-quality distance interviews.
This webinar was conducted by faculty from Baylor University Institute for Oral History and was supported by the Oral History Association. The full recording of the webinar ...
The Students and New Archives Professionals (SNAP) Section is seeking nominations for a Vice Chair/Chair-Elect, Secretary, and three At-Large positions. To nominate yourself or someone else, please complete our form.
Serving in a leadership role on the Section is a wonderful way to become more involved with SNAP and SAA and get to know other archivists. Our proposed SNAP bylaws require that to ensure adequate student representation in SNAP leadership, at least two candidates on the slate must...
Jeremy Linden gave a special extended Preservation Week webinar on May 8th, 2 PM E.S.T. (previously scheduled for May 1st)
The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in the advent of sustainable practices throughout the cultural heritage community, ranging from redefined standards and best practices to broadened discussions and understanding of what sustainability means in the context of collecting organizations including archives, museums, and libraries. This webinar will:
· Outline...
