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Alexandra (Lexy) deGraffenreid is the Interim Co-Head of Collection Services & Processing Archivist at Penn State University’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library where she stewards the ingest, accessioning, processing, and collection maintenance of their archival and special collections holdings. Prior to Penn State, she worked as a Staff Archivist at History Factory (2015-2019) after graduating from the University of Michigan’s School of Information in 2015. She has previously served SAA as a member of the SAA Mentorship Subcommittee (2020-2022) and as a Steering Committee Member of Students and New Archives Professionals (SNAP) Section (2019-2020).
Please provide a one or two paragraph candidate statement that expresses why you are interested in a position with the Accessioning, Acquisitions & Appraisal Section?
Following a thirteen-year career in public education, I returned to school to study Library Science in the Fall of 2017. From day one of my program, I knew that I wanted to be an archivist. I completed my degree in December of 2019, earning an MLIS as well as graduate certificates in Archival Studies and Digital Information Management. During my time as a student, I completed three internships: digital archiving projects at the Arizona State Museum and the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and traditional work with small collections at the Pima Air and Space Museum. My first job out of graduate school was actually the Curator of Collections for a small museum that also had its own library and archives. I had the opportunity in this role to oversee the archives from a supervisory level – working at a bird’s eye level – and the experience helped me to examine the archives’ relationship to our mission as well as how it interacted with both the museum and library sides. I appreciated this learning experience but longed to “get my hands dirty” as an actual archivist. In January of this year, I accepted a position with the Penn State Eberly Family Special Collections Library as the Accessioning and Collections Management Archivist. The position is brand new, and I work closely with my colleagues to develop and solidify workflows that get new collections (or accruals to existing collections) quickly into our system. My job involves assessing the collections/accruals, creating accessioning records for them, developing minimal level finding aids and publishing them, and assigning them physical locations. We are also beginning collaborative work on formalizing our procedures for born digital accessions. My work ensures that strategically selected collections, particularly ones related to DEIA, are prioritized and made available via MPLP methods instead of languishing as “pending accessions” for years.
The core of my position is accessioning collections (or accruals to collections) to guarantee their swift availability to our patrons. Each archive I’ve worked in has had heaps of legacy projects that were deemed “unimportant” at the time of their acquisition and have been languishing without any record for years. The accessioning work I do every day aims to prevent that from happening, supporting the strategic collection development and cultivation performed by our team of curators, and putting information into the hands of our patrons. Positive trends within the archiving field indicate accessioning is (a) finally being recognized as separate from processing, (b) is incredibly meaningful and vital to archival work, and (c) allows archives to achieve the golden minimum of finding aids for all collections. Even so, as a recent graduate I can attest that this trend has not yet fully reached our educational institutions, and that many archival students are either taught that accessioning and processing are essentially the same thing or have simply never been taught how to accession a collection. This omission leaves a gaping hole both in the knowledge of new members of the field but also in the process of creating accessibility that often results in unrecorded collections. As a member-at-large on this committee, I hope to raise awareness among working archivists about the vital role accessioning plays in the acquisition process; to support education of current archival students on the necessity of accessioning; to share and collaborate with colleagues the workflows that are helping Penn State be successful in achieving the golden minimum; and, as archives face head-on a history of underrepresenting minority groups, to communicate how accessioning can help us bring representation to these groups in an efficient and timely manner. The accessioning trend is an exciting one and it could potentially (and hopefully will) change the ways we archive by putting access and representation at the forefront of everything we do.
I am currently the Archivist for Collections Management at Northern Arizona University, where I oversee and coordinate donor relations, acquisitions, appraisal, deaccessions, loans, rights management, environmental controls, and space management. Prior to joining the NAU Special Collections and Archives team in March 2022, I was the Archivist, Librarian, and Records Manager at the Museum of Northern Arizona from 2018-2022 and Photo Research and Permissions Librarian at History Colorado from 2013-2018. I earned my MS in Library and Information Science with a concentration in Archival Studies from Drexel University in 2012 and BA in Anthropology and History from the University of South Dakota in 2008.
Please provide a one or two paragraph candidate statement that expresses why you are interested in a position with the Accessioning, Acquisitions & Appraisal Section.
After working in museum archives with various roles for a decade, transitioning into a purely collections management role in a university archives is an exciting time for me professionally. I'm very interested in exploring the practices and issues around accessioning, acquisitions, and appraisal more closely, and becoming involved in this section as a steering committee member to connect with peers with similar duties and interests will allow me to contribute to SAA and the profession.
The addition of accessioning to this section not only makes sense in the grander scheme of archival work, but I think offers a chance to study the intersections of these integral tasks. I welcome the opportunity to utilize my practical experience to serve this section, which has become one of the most relevant to me in the day to day work that I do, and help continue integrating and expanding upon the work already done by leaders of this group.
Meaghan O’Riordan has served as the Accessioning Archivist for the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives & Rare Book Library at Emory University since 2016. Previously she was a Library Associate for Gwinnett County Public Library and a Library Associate for the Special Collections Resource Center at North Carolina State University. She holds a masters in library science from UNC-Chapel Hill, a masters in theological studies from Emory University, and two bachelor’s degrees from North Carolina State University. She currently serves as the co-chair for the Best Practices for Archival Accessioning Working Group under the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and founder and chair of the Airtable Archival Community of Practice. She is currently under consideration for an IMLS grant to further the work of the best practices working group.
Please provide a one or two paragraph candidate statement that expresses why you are interested in a position with the Accessioning, Acquisitions & Appraisal Section.
I am interested in serving a second term as Member-At-Large for the Steering Committee for the Accessioning, Acquisitions & Appraisal Section because I have enjoyed working with other committee members on designing and promoting Section events and providing additional resources to Section members. In particular, the committee’s support of the Best Practices for Archival Accessioning Working Group that I co-chair with Rosemary K.J. Davis has been excellent, and I would like to continue that partnership. The three archival functions in the name of the section are essential to the profession, and I am committed to advocating for the resourcing and professionalization of them, which this section helps to do. I appreciate the community the Section provides to archivists performing this work and enjoy being part of the team that creates that space.
Meg Rinn is the assistant archivist at the Bridgeport History Center, part of the Bridgeport Public Library, where she wears many archival hats including appraisal, arrangement, description, and digitization. She serves as the vice-chair of the New England Archivists Inclusion and Diversity committee and is a co-founder of Archives and Special Collections Connecticut (ASC-CT) and recently co-authored Nothing About It Was Better than a Permanent Job: report of the New England Archivists Contingent Employment Study Task Force, a study focused on the impact of contingent employment on archival workers in New England.
Please provide a one or two paragraph candidate statement that expresses why you are interested in a position with the Accessioning, Acquisitions & Appraisal Section?
Working as an archivist in a public library, acquisition and appraisal has a different shape and texture compared to other repository types. My interest in joining acquisitions and appraisals comes from this perspective, and the understanding that our profession’s attempts to create more diverse, equitable, and inclusive archives starts at acquisitions and appraisals. As we are expected to be the first to examine material and determine the historic value and the appropriateness for our institutions, we must always consider what stories are being told or hidden, and the choices that we make at the outset impacts the rest of the archival process. I am also looking forward to becoming more active in SAA as a whole.