Dear Section Members,
As was announced earlier this year, the Collection Management Tools Section Steering Committee is proposing significant changes to the mission, goals, and name of this section. The overall vision is to move from a narrow focus on collection management tools to a broader focus on all aspects of collection management of archival materials. Major changes include:
Changing the section name from Collection Management Tools Section to Collection Management Section
An increased...
Hello, everyone!
The P & C Steering Committee is proposing updates to the Standing Rules to officially create a Past Chair position and add a fourth Steering Committee member.
The majority of other sections also have Past Chair positions and P & C has informally done this as well for many years. The Past Chair can serve a valuable role by providing continuity and institutional memory, and traditionally within the P & C leadership works closely with interns and spearheads special...
Please send any nominations by Friday, May 31st! 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 credit...
The Students and New Archives Professionals (SNAP) Section is seeking nominations for a Vice Chair/Chair-Elect, Secretary, and three At-Large positions.
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 be students at the time of the election.
In order to hold a...
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 24, 2019.
On International Roma Day, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum welcomes efforts in Congress and in US embassies around the world to recognize the genocide against Europe’s Roma at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators, to honor the Romani community and culture, and express concern about continuing violence directed against Romani populations.
In light of the history of the persecution of Roma, which culminated during the Holocaust when at least 250,000 Roma were targeted and...
In the early 1920s, the director of the Bristol Museum in Britain received a package containing two human skulls. The donation came from Alfred Hutchins. He had left England seeking brighter horizons and by the late 1800s was living in Southern California. There he became an amateur archaeologist, excavating Native American graves on the Channel Islands. He offered the museum this collection, apparently in honor of his son, who perished during the First World War.Last week in a ceremony,...
Who has the right to own photos of slaves? We speak with Tamara Lanier, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Papa Renty, the enslaved man whose image was captured in a 19th century photograph currently owned by Harvard University. She is suing the school, accusing it of unfairly profiting from the images. We also speak with her attorney, Benjamin Crump.
Watch the interview here.
After years of failed attempts, the front-facing staff at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum have finally announced their decision to unionize. In a vote held Monday, April 15, the workers voted in favor of joining Local 2110 UAW (United Auto Workers) by a 96% margin.The new union members include employees in the education, retail, and visitor services departments. The workers report low wages, scarce benefits, and unstable working conditions. These inadequate conditions, the organizers say,...
Documenting the Now is accepting applications from US-based social justice activist organizations that would like to benefit from a free community-based digital archives workshop in their city or town in 2020. The workshops will focus on helping activists to develop the skills and to use available tools to collect, preserve, and share their web, social media and other types of digital content in their own digital archive.
Our hope is that activist communities, in creating their own archives...
We are delighted to announce that the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s late photo archivist, Lucia Raadschelders, is to be honoured posthumously by the Presidency for her role in South Africa’s freedom struggle.
Raadschelders passed away on 19 November 2018 after a long battle with cancer. The Presidency will honour her with the Order of the Companions of OR Tambo in Silver.
Elinor Sisulu, who nominated Dutch national Raadschelders, said that she had “devoted most of her life to the struggle for...
In a 1995 interview with Linton Weeks of the Washington Post, the Howard University librarian, collector and self-described “bibliomaniac” Dorothy Porter reflected on the focus of her 43-year career: “The only rewarding thing for me is to bring to light information that no one knows. What’s the point of rehashing the same old thing?”
For Porter, this mission involved not only collecting and preserving a wide range of materials related to the global black experience, but also addressing how...
If you are attending any of the above conferences in May, the HRA Section Blog could use your help! It's not as hard as it sounds, and it's a great way to add a publication to your resume. The post can be a simple summary of the issues discussed at a certain session, or you can get a little opinionated and say what you thought was most productive about the session or not as productive. Here are two examples of sessions covered in the past year. If you're interested in covering a session at...
We're excited to reach out and ask for nominations for next year’s BAS Steering Committee. Self-nominations are encouraged!
We have 5 positions (listed below) available and you can read more about their respective duties in Section IV of the Governance page of the BAS website. Better yet, please reach out to any of the current Steering Committee Members (you can see their current position here and grab their contact info here) to learn more.
Steering Committee Positions:
Vice Chair (3 year...
Hello RAO Members!
Are you looking to shape the future direction and activities of the Reference, Access, and Outreach Section? Put yourself forward for an elected RAO position!
The RAO Nominations and Elections Committee is seeking nominations to fill vacancies on the RAO Steering Committee; we invite you to volunteer yourself or someone you know as a candidate! We value a variety of ideas and perspectives in RAO, and we encourage candidates from diverse backgrounds, institutions,...
Join us on Wednesday, April 24th 2019 from 1:00 - 3:20 PM EDT for #PresTC19, a Preservation Week Twitter Conference hosted by the Society of American Archivists Preservation Section. This free and inclusive conference on Twitter will present a series of lightning talks that we hope will be of interest to librarians, archivists, and anyone who may care about preserving cultural heritage.
Each speaker will have 10 minutes to present their talk, and then take questions from you, the audience. Of...
The Webinar was hosted by Rachael Woody of Rachael Cristine Consulting LLC. Rachael discussed how she set up her business, reviewed business and financial logistics, revealed how to select an appropriate consulting rate, and offered her tips and tricks for successfully entering the consulting world.
Rachael presented for about 45 minutes and then answer questions from the audience. If you have a question you’d like to ask Rachael, connect directly at 503-922-3402, consulting@rachaelcristine.com...
ml4arc - Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Natural Language Processing Applications in Archives
Friday, July 26, 2019 - 9:00am Wilson Library, Pleasants Family Assembly Room
The RATOM Project will host “ml4arc - Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Natural Language Processing Applications in Archives” July 26, 2019, from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. at Wilson Library, Pleasants Room on the campus of UNC Chapel Hill. The event will focus on applications of machine learning, deep learning, and natural...
Welcome Whitney Miller & Michael Law!
Whitney Miller is beginning as our Disaster Chair, taking over from Liz Francis. Whitney is RAAC’s Michigan Archival Association representative and works at Michigan State University in Archives and Historical Collections. Her research interests include Southern History, particularly South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida as well as New York City history, in particular architecture and transit history.
Michael Law began earlier this year as our...
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 April newsletter, please send you submission by April 23, 2019.
Renowned Nigerian art curator Okwui Enwezor has died at age 55 after a battle with cancer. Enwezor was the director of the Haus der Kunst museum in Munich, Germany, until last year. He was also an art critic, educator, editor and writer. He worked to put African art and artists center stage, as well as women artists. In 1994, he founded Nka, a magazine for contemporary African art. His exhibit “The Short Century,” celebrating African art and independence movements, was hailed as a landmark...
The Nelson Mandela Foundation partnered with the Socio-Economic Rights Institute (SERI) today in launching the exhibition Insurgent Citizens: Reflections on Protest in Democratic South Africa at the Foundation’s Centre of Memory. Keynote speaker for the event was former Public Protector Advocate Thuli Madonsela.
The exhibition is designed to provoke discussion on South Africa’s constitutionally protected right to protest, the limits to that right, and appropriate ways of participating in...
In March 2019, The Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives changed its name. Today, we are known as The ArQuives, a name we believe more accurately reflects the diversity of our communities, the people and communities that are already represented in our collection. We spent 6-months reaching out to our stakeholders and recognized the growing number of underrepresented people; most notably trans, queer, bisexual, and 2-spirited folks. Read the rest of this post here and read about the new ArQuives...
The Immigration History Research Center Archives (IHRCA) offers Grant-in-Aid Awards to support a visit in order to conduct research in our collections. Awards are available through co-sponsorship from the Immigration History Research Center and the IHRCA through the ethnic and general funds. This award is open to scholars of all levels, including independent scholars, and supports a research visit of 5 days or more. Typically, awards are for $1,000, and four awards are given each year. The...
