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I. Section Business: Report on the section meeting at the 2010 SAA conference
II. News From Members: Reports from the field
III. Other News: Events and news pertaining to acquisition and/or appraisal
IV. Upcoming Events: Workshops, Conference Sessions, etc. pertaining to acquisitions and/or appraisal
V. Recently Published: A sampling of works published on appraisal or acquisition since our last newsletter
Brief comments were then made by Paige Smith of the 2011 Program Committee for the SAA Annual Meeting, who encouraged those present to submit session proposals and reminded them of the procedures for doing so.
She was followed by SAA Council Liaison Dennis Meissner, of the Minnesota Historical Society, who was recently appointed Council Liaison for the Acquisitions and Appraisal Section, and who introduced himself. Meissner also briefly discussed the proposed SAA dues increase, encouraging members to be present at the business meeting to vote on that and ask questions about it. He also discussed SAA’s strategic planning, and the process of drafting a values statement for the association, an outgrowth of past President Mark Greene’s presidential address in 2009.
Merrilee Proffitt, of the RLG Partnership, then spoke on her organization’s “Mobilizing Unused Materials” project, and alluding to handouts she provided, she outlined some of the various facets of this project. Of most relevance to the present audience, she discussed a study that surveyed archival repositories, led by Jackie Dooley. Among other findings, she discussed how the finding revealed the growing numbers of backlogs at surveyed repositories, as the rate of acquisitions outstrips that of cataloging and processing. Following Proffitt’s comments several audience members posed questions about the metrics used in the study, and stressed the need for surveyed institutions to use consistent metrics.
Report of Deaccessioning and Reappraisal Development and Review Team (DRDRT): This report was given by committee chair Laura Uglean Jackson (American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming), who identified the members of the team. She then described the method used of surveying institutions and drafting guidelines, and noted that the team met the previous Wednesday at the annual meeting to edit the guidelines. They are seeking to make their guidelines similar to those of other professional guidelines in their ease of use and format. She did not want to talk about the content of the guidelines until those team members who were not able to attend SAA had the chance to weigh-in on the edits and changes that have been made. The team has stated its goal is to have a draft ready for section members and the SAA Council to review by next spring.
Report on Section-sponsored and endorsed sessions at the 2010 annual meeting: Carl Van Ness reported that the Acquisitions and Appraisal Section endorsed four proposed sessions, of which three were accepted by the Program Committee. These were sessions
103. Western Trailblazing: The Movement Toward State and Regional Collaboration.
407. Trust Me, I’m an Archivist: Transparency, Accountability, and Archival Documentation.
607. But He’s Really Rich! Selection, Appraisal, and Fundraising Campaigns.
Session 306, “Sex, Sports, and Parking: From Documentation Strategy to Documenting Society” was not reviewed by the Acquisition and Appraisal Section’s Steering Committee, but nevertheless was related to this section’s interests. All of the above sessions were good and were well-attended, Van Ness stated, reflecting a continued interest in the areas of acquisitions and appraisal. Over the past few years, the section has done a good job of offering sessions that have been approved by the Program Committee, and Van Ness encouraged those present to continue this trend by submitting their proposals and discussing them with the section’s steering committee.
New business: At this point, Van Ness called for any new business from the floor, as well as any ideas for session proposals for next year’s annual meeting program, but there were no motions from the floor nor any session ideas offered. Van Ness then provided a number of updates about ongoing projects within the section, including:
Website update: With the process of migrating content from SAA’s old website to the new website, which uses the Drupal content management system, Van Ness reported that much of the content from the Acquisitions and Appraisal page has been migrated, with some material remaining on the old site. He then described the timeline for the completion of this project, at which the new website will take over the old site’s web address. The old system operated with one web liaison for the section, Michelle Sweetser, but the new system will eventually allow all of the steering committee members to have the ability to add content to the webpage, or alternately to assign designated officers for this function. For the moment, the section chair and past-chair, Van Ness, incoming chair Brad Bauer, and web liaison Sweetser will be the officers for the steering committee.
Content of website: The new content management system will raise questions about how to add content, and what content will be most relevant to the members. Should the newsletter, for example, continue to be compiled and added to the site as it currently is, or should it give way to a more interactive system of adding announcements from members and repositories, and articles generated by members? In addition, how will bibliographies on recently published articles pertaining to acquisitions and appraisal be added—via the newsletter, or as an ongoing feature? The list of appraisers has recently been updated to remove appraisers who are no longer active, but how will this continue to be maintained? These are just a few of the questions that section members should think about with the migration to the new content management system.
Section listserve: Van Ness noted that our section’s listserve has very little traffic, and that this may in part be due to members not realizing they are subscribed, or perhaps having been inadvertently unsubscribed. Van Ness encouraged those present to check their own status by reviewing their account information on the SAA website.
At this point, Van Ness opened the floor to questions about the new content management system, stressing that it has the potential to greatly impact the way that the section works, with the potential of making the section’s website more interactive. One comment from the floor stressed that the contributions of section members should be highlighted on the website, noting that the presence of the section could be strengthened within SAA, and that this is just one way of doing that.
Report on Elections: Past chair Tara Laver reported on the work of the nominating committee, publicly thanking its members, Linda Whitaker and Jennifer Graham, as well as thanking those who agreed to run for positions on the steering committee. Laver announced the results of the online election, and then announced the results of the runoff election that was held during the section meeting, to break the tie between candidates Burk and Cuervo for the remaining steering committee member seat, announcing that Cuervo had won the runoff.
Section meeting program: The program for the section meeting was titled Making Choices: Real Life Records Selection for Twenty-First Century Archivists, and was chair by Jennifer Graham of the Wisconsin Historical Society. Three speakers presented about specific issues, methods, and procedures for defining and carrying out the mission of their repository or documentation project. These included:
Claire Galloway, of the University of Texas-Arlington, whose talk “Direct Action Gets the Goods” presented an overview of the work of the Texas Labor Archives, and in particular, how appraisal work is carried out within this repository and how necessary it is to hone one’s approach toward appraisal in order to ensure that the repository has a proactive rather than a passive collecting approach. Galloway provided a brief history of the Texas Labor Archives, which were established in 1967 as one of the first labor archives in the West. The repository had a field agent who was responsible for acquiring collections prior to Galloway’s arrival as archivist in 2008, and she discussed the need to codify appraisal practices in archival terms, which had not been done prior to that. Many of the challenges faced by the Texas Labor Archives are common to many types of repositories: the growing backlog of unprocessed material, the lack of storage space, the preponderance of bulky organizational records with inadequate inventories, and the tendency of donors to give the archives what they wish to part with, rather than what the archives and its users most need. Galloway then outlined the three phases of acquisition and appraisal, beginning with preliminary research once a potential donor has been identified (or has approached the archives with an offer to donate material), an onsite appraisal of the material offered, which often involves identifying material that will not be accepted, as well as sampling voluminous organization records series; and the post-visit work, including the accessioning, description and arrangement of the collection and donor follow-up. Galloway accessions and catalogs the collections, and re-boxes them herself, but then other staff do the additional description and arrangement that lead to a finding aid. In conclusion, Galloway felt that success in her work was defined by good public relations with donors coupled with much up-front work that is done with the collections before they are brought into the archives.
Chana Kotzin, of the Jewish Buffalo Archives Project, next presented a talk titled “Down in the Basement Or Out in the Garage: Appraising Jewish Community Historical Materials in Buffalo, NY.” Rather than working within a fixed archival repository, Kotzin’s work centers more around identifying the sources of records of the Jewish community in greater Buffalo, and then appraising the records for eventual placement in the archives of the University of Buffalo. This project started with the idea that while other ethnic groups in Buffalo, such as Italians and Polish communities, were well-documented, that little had been done to document the presence of the Jewish communities of this region, and that as these communities were declining in numbers (due to aging, people moving out of the area), that something needed to be done to preserve this history. A grant was awarded from the New York State Documentary Heritage Program, which enabled the University of Buffalo to partner with the Board of Jewish Philanthropies to hire an archivist—Kotzin—to work on this project. Kotzin’s primary tasks were to conduct a survey of records that were in the field—i.e., housed in temples, including some that had already closed, as well as papers retained by individuals—as well as conduct oral histories with community members, especially focusing on rabbis, cantors, and members of synagogues that were slated for eventual closure. The end goal of this project was to see that both records and oral histories would be placed in an appropriate, publicly-accessible, repository, which for this project was identified as the Unviersity of Buffalo. A similar project had been initiated decades earlier by a history professor at the university, but after his death this project had been moribund until it was revived in this form during Kotzin’s tenure. The remainder of Kotzin’s talk discussed collecting priorities, as well as the actual process of identifying and surveying the records on-site. Kotzin’s approach is to survey first, and then collect, and that while she ultimately hopes that many of the collections that she surveys will end up at the university, her main priority at the moment is to create a list of what records actually exist, and to stress to records-keepers the importance of preserving and eventually placing these records in a repository such as the university. As many of the records are poorly housed (e.g., in boiler rooms, basements, etc.) or scattered among members of an organization, she sees this as a key step that is necessary to halt the further loss of the records of a disappearing community.
Adriana Cuervo, of the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music at the University of Illinois, gave a presentation titled “Playing it by ear: appraisal considerations for acquiring music collections.” The core collections in the repository where she works are the papers of composer and bandleader John Philip Sousa, the records of the University of Illinois Band, and collections of composers of electronic and experimental music. Cuervo focused in her presentation on how her work with the Sousa Papers has shaped how she and other staff approach other collections that they appraise and acquire. The Sousa Papers are split between several repositories, and those papers that were placed at Illinois by Sousa are furthermore divided between an initial accession that arrived shortly after Sousa’s death in the early 1930s and a much later accession in the 1960s. Cuervo said that in examining the original accession, she identified many issues in the appraisal of those records that would likely have been addressed differently nowadays, and that she has sought to apply these lessons to other collections that the repository has recently acquired. The original accession of Sousa’s collection consisted primarily of written music, but Cuervo asked what happened to his business records, sounds records, photographs, or personal papers? Some came with the subsequent accession, some went to other repositories, but why were they not chosen to come to Illinois in the first place? In particular, her work with the Sousa Papers and with other collections of composers at this repository has led her to focus on several questions such as:
--What is the best way to document the history of music and composers? Acquiring such collections often leads to the inclusion, preservation and display of non-traditional materials (from an archival perspective), and is a repository prepared to take on this added responsibility?
--Should the archivist look beyond the donor’s role as a musician or composer, and seek to document other facets of their lives, under the assumption that such areas define their activities as composer?
--What should the archivist know about aesthetics, and more specifically in this case, music, in order to effectively do one’s job in acquiring and appraising such materials?
Following the end of the presentations, the meeting adjourned.
Compiled by Brad Bauer
The Department of Commerce received a transfer request from the private earth observation satellite firm GeoEye regarding their OrbView-3 collection. Under U.S. law all private satellite holdings must be offered to the government when a U.S. firm desires to purge a collection. The law supports the 1992 legislation establishing the National Satellite Land Remote Sensing Data Archive (NSLRSDA). The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) manages the NSLRSDA and has a formal appraisal process in place to evaluate collection offers. The OrbView-3 collection consists of over 500,000 earth observations taken between 2003 and 2007. Observational records can not be recreated and even with the relative abundance of earth observing platforms today, these records are considered unique because of their detail and wide coverage of the earth. The USGS appraisal process is lead by an Archivist who directly involves scientists having relevant experience with the type of records being reviewed and programmatic managers to ensure that acceptance of a collection would receive appropriate resources for preservation and access functions. A formal appraisal recommendation to accept the collection was accepted by both our science and management reviewers. The GeoEye firm began transfer of the collection June of 2010 and completed the 66 terabytes activity by September of 2010. The USGS will require several months to process the collection and develop appropriate finding aids. The USGS distribution policy is open and free to the user. For questions about the collection or USGS' appraisal process, please contact John Faundeen (faundeen@usgs.gov or 605-330-4061)
submitted by John Faundeen
Utah Manuscripts Association announces that a Utah Appraiser’s List is now available at: http://utahmanuscripts.wordpress.com/appraisers/
Section member Shari Christy, the contract archivist (MacAulay-Brown, Inc.)at the Air Force Research Laboratory History Office Research Division, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH along with Adriana Cuervo, Assistant Archivist for Music and Fine Arts, Sousa Archives and Center for American Music, and Lonna McKinley, Manuscript Curator at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, Ohio, will be participating in a session at the Midwest Archives Conference Spring 2011 Meeting. Their session is titled: "The ABCs of Acquisition & Appraisal." Here's the description:
Are you new to the field and need to apply all that "learning" in a practical way but don't know where to start? Already experienced in archives but want to pick up some helpful hints? The ABCs of Acquisition and Appraisal is the session for you! Hear what three archivists from diverse repositories have to say about the nature of the acquisition and appraisal process from donor relations to the point of processing a collection! Pick up strategies on figuring out what to keep and how that decision is made. Panelists' experiences range from a lone arranger in a small, science and technology related archives, an archivist in a university setting, and a manuscript curator/archivist in a large museum. Walk away with helpful advice and tried and true practices in working with donors as well as tools and sample forms used by the presenters.
Submitted by Shari Christy
Caswell, Michelle. “Hannah Arendt’s World: Bureaucracy, Documentation, and Banal Evil.” Archivaria 70 (Fall 2010): 1-26.
Brief abstract: This paper applies Hannah Arendt’s theory of the banality of evil to documentation and recordkeeping through application to the Khmer Rouge tribunal. Caswell argues that the primacy of insidious evil should be kept in mind during appraisal, preservation, and access decisions in order to avoid complicity. Full abstract available here: http://journals.sfu.ca/archivar/index.php/archivaria/article/view/13293/14596
Jackson, Laura Uglean and D. Claudia Thompson. “But You Promised: A Case Study of Deaccessioning at the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.” American Archivist 73, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2010): 669-685.
Brief abstract: The authors describe the deaccessioning program at the American Heritage Center and discuss how a structured deaccessioning approach can increase value of the overall collections and mitigate the anger and disspointment of donors whose material is being deaccesioned. Full abstract available here: http://archivists.metapress.com/content/297691q50gkk84j4/?p=17b01f26be4c4b82b501c912e2dc70bb&pi=11
Society of Archivists 2010 Conference, Manchester, UK.
The 2010 theme “We are What We Keep” drew presentations and papers on both appraisal and acquisition. The following are available online. Powerpoint presentations without explanatory notes were excluded.
Astell, Martin. “ ‘Not Just Oral History. In Fact, Not Just History’: the Acquisition of Sound Archives in Specialist and Non-Specialist Repositories.” September 3, 2010. Manchester, UK. http://www.archives.org.uk/download.asp?id=2454
Bolton, Larysa. “Nasha Istoria! (Our History!): Collecting Community Archives: Challenges and Opportunities.” September 3, 2010. Manchester, UK. http://www.archives.org.uk/download.asp?id=2502
Pickford, Chris. “Appraisal Issues: Local Authority Deposited Building Plans.” September 1, 2010. Manchester, UK. http://www.archives.org.uk/download.asp?id=2461
Scott-Davies, Daniel. "Acquisition & Appraisal in Specialist Respositories: Creating a More Inclusive Archives." September 1, 2010. Manchester, UK. http://www.archives.org.uk/download.asp?id=2462