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Tip Sheet

Basic Committee Tasks and Tips:

Please note that precise deadlines are spelled out on the Calendar of Activities page.

General Main Tasks for Subcommittee Chairs:

  1. Chairs are expected to lead the process for their subcommittee, keep everyone on track, and divide the work as needed.
  2. Familiarize yourself with the calendar of activities and award description, including eligibility and application deadline.
  3. Follow awards calendar and meet deadlines.
  4. At the beginning of the cycle, incoming chairs should liaise with outgoing chairs for ins and outs of committee processes.
  5. Identify and open the lines of communication with your subcommittee colleagues.  Subcommittee chairs should get alternate phone numbers or email addresses from each member. Make sure everyone is on the SAA Awards e-list.
  6. Identify section/roundtable representative liaisons, if that’s pertinent to your award.
  7. In October, you should be working with your committee to plan your advertisements. This would be a good time to approach others about collaboration between awards, if you are interested!
  8. Starting in November, lead your group in the publicity/advertisement of your award in variety of mediums; use your personal networks to spread the word; plant seeds with prospective nominees and remember that self-nominations are acceptable.
  9. In February, you should find out from SAA Awards or the Awards Committee co-chairs whether your application numbers are concerningly low; if so, you can strategize different ways to drum up more applicants. Review your committee’s scoring rubric in SmarterSelect to ensure that no alterations need to be made.
  10. March-April: Deliberate and select. See Selection section below.
  11. Late April: email the Awards Committee Co-chairs and the SAA Awards office with your groups’ decision, so they can make sure no two groups award the same person.
  12. May: Notify recipient(s) and nominator(s) via email (and in hard copy on SAA Letterhead if requested).
    1. See Notification section below for specific details.
  13. Notify nominators of non-winners via email (do not notify non-winners themselves UNLESS theirs was a self-nomination or you are certain they are aware of the nomination).
  14. Create citation (approx. 150 words) which SAA will use for press release, web site, Awards Ceremony. 
  15. Communicate with recipients regarding ceremony details (date, time, location, etc.).
  16. Pass down to incoming chairs the ins-and-outs of subcommittee procedures.

General Main Tasks for Subcommittee Members: 

  1. Be responsive to your chair’s contacts. Make sure your contact info is up to date on the SAA Awards e-list. If you have any issues, contact the Awards Committee co-chairs.
  2. Familiarize yourself with the calendar of activities, award description, including eligibility and application deadline.
  3. Follow awards calendar and meet deadlines.
  4. Starting in November, as a group, publicize/advertise your award in variety of mediums; use your personal networks to spread the word; plant seeds with prospective nominees and remember that self-nominations are acceptable. 
  5. February: if your application numbers are low, your chair will direct you in additional advertising.
  6. March-April: Deliberate and select.
  7. Incoming members are encouraged to connect with the outgoing members in the summertime to get information on the ins and outs of the process.

Deadlines:

  1. The deadline for all award nominations/applications is February 28. 
  2. Additional deadlines are on the Calendar of Activities.

Publicity:

  1. SAA logo is available for advertising/publicizing awards (contact Julia Pillard).
  2. SAA staff can provide direction (contact Michael Santiago).
  3. Take advantage of the SAA Announcements e-list and allied professional listservs; for more targeted advertising, consider SAA section listservs; use your personal networks to spread the word. Note that SAA Awards staff post messages to the SAA Announcements list about the whole set of awards, but for some awards this has proven not to be enough to garner a well-developed pool of applicants.
  4. Invite people to submit nominations or to nominate themselves.
  5. Does your subcommittee have a codified list of publications, listservs, or other venues for publicizing the award?  If not, start one and pass it on!
  6. Consider creating a joint publicity group with other award subcommittees.  This is something that changes every year based on the desires of the committees, but suggestions include clumping by categories such as travel awards (4 awards), student scholarships (3 awards), contributions to the profession (7 awards), advocacy (2 awards), and writing/publishing (5 awards). Please note that even if you collaborate on some messaging, you can still engage in targeted messaging as needed!

Selection:

  1. Subcommittee Chairs should initiate communication with their committee members as soon as nominations are received from SAA.
  2. Decide how you will proceed and set deadlines.
  3. Review nominations to ensure eligibility and notify Awards Committee Co-chairs of ineligible nominations. Awards Committee Co-chairs will handle any ineligible nominations.
  4. Each committee should have a standard protocol or rubric built into SmarterSelect. If you wish to make adjustments to it, please reach a group consensus, and let the Awards Committee co-chairs and SAA Awards staff know. The SAA Awards staff can make alterations to the rubrics.
  5. If any members of the subcommittee are unavailable for review, the Awards Committee Co-chairs are ex officio members of each subcommittee, and can step in to review as needed.
  6. Once the selection is made, Subcommittee Chairs should notify the Awards Committee Co-chairs and awards@archivists.org.

Notification:

  1. On the date specified by SAA (see the Calendar), contact the winning recipient and nominator, and copy the Awards Committee Co-chairs and awards@archivists.org on these communications.
  2. Subcommittee Chairs should then notify the nominators whose nominations were NOT selected.  Do NOT notify nominees who were not selected EXCEPT if theirs was a self-nomination or you are certain they are aware of the nomination. Again, copy the Awards Committee Co-chairs and awards@archivists.org on these communications. 
    1. How soon after a selection committee makes its decision can it notify the recipient? Because SAA does not give multiple awards to a single individual (in a given cycle), we ask that all subcommittee chairs first email the co-chairs to notify them of their selection decision. After selection decisions have been made by all award subcommittees, the Awards Committee Co-chairs will let the subcommittee chairs know whether any conflicts exist. Once all decisions have been reconciled, the co-chairs will email all awards subcommittees to confirm they can move forward with notifying the recipients (and nominators, if applicable). For accounting purposes, all award notices must be issued within the same week. 
    2. How should notification be made? All nominators or applicants should be notified via email by the chair of the subcommittee. This includes the winner and all other nominators/applicants. 
  3. Submit your letters and citations to the Awards Committee Co-chairs on time
  4.  For award prizes that include traveling to the annual meeting, annual meeting registration, and/or complimentary membership, the winners should contact Michael Santiago).
  5.  Press releases will be drafted, proofed, and released throughout the summer by SAA staff.

Pay It Forward:

  1. Document your procedures so that they are available for your successors. Send new and/or revised documentation to Michael Santiago for posting on the Awards Committee microsite.
  2. If your subcommittee has any internal documentation, make sure that any handoffs are completed ahead of the cycle’s end (e.g. Google/Sharepoint permissions are updated).

Ideas and Suggestions:

  1. What worked for your selection committee? What didn’t work?
  2. How would you enhance the process?
  3. Please pass along your ideas and suggestions to the Awards Committee Co-chairs 

If you feel stuck or aren’t sure, contact the Awards Committee Co-chairs!

SmarterSelect:

SmarterSelect is the application collection and evaluation tool that SAA uses.  New committee members will be granted access to set up their logins in January. For a refresher, please revisit the tutorial at https://smarterselect.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/44001305574-basic-training-for-evaluators-a-walkthrough. (Click on “Are you a customer? Login here.” to access.)

To access these nominations and the evaluation forms, log in to your SmarterSelect account: https://app.smarterselect.com/login. From the top navigation bar, click on My Evaluations to see all the applications. Scroll down to the end of each application and you will see the evaluation form (which is hidden from the applicant's view). You may complete and submit the form or save to submit later.

SAA staff creates the rubrics, but committees can choose to revise them and request that they be updated with SAA staff. If you would like to revise them, we encourage you to do so prior to starting your evaluations.

Need help? SAA Awards staff may be able to answer your questions. The Awards co-chairs do not have access to SmarterSelect unless they are called to fill in for a subcommittee member.

Awards Committee