Section Meeting Minutes, August 10, 2012

Section Chair, Becky Schulte, welcomed members in attendance (171 in all) and minutes from the 2011 meeting were approved.

·       Program Committee 2013 Presentation

·       National Historical Publications and Records Commission Presentation by Lucy Barber of NHPRC:

 Lucy reported that funding of NHPRC is uncertain as of the moment – they are waiting to hear about federal deliberation on funding. Further, that the NHPRC has a booth in the Exhibitors Hall during the conference – she invited us all to visit them there.

 ·      OCLC Presentation by Jackie Dooley:

-        Rough-and-ready: a project to enable linking of PDF versions of legacy finding aids to ArchiveGrid metadata.

-        Legacy Finding Aids for ArchiveGrid.

-        OCLC wants to help its constituents speak to their audiences, especially library and archives deans and directors: To help de-mystify what we do, especially digital content.

-        Wikipedia: A project to build a community of archives and library Wikipedia editors, as well as to link various types of name authority data into Wikipedia—all designed to ramp up access to our collections via hits on Wikipedia articles.

-        Demystifying Born Digital Content: A series of brief reports to help archivists who haven’t yet implemented born digital management to get started.

-        Collections Assessment: A report published a few months ago detailing strategies for inventorying and assessing collections for various purposes (digitization, preservation, etc.).

-        Name Extraction: A linguistics-based project to algorithmically identify personal, corporate, and other names within open-text documents such as finding aids in order to create name indexes and improve discovery.

·       Standards Committee Presentation by Tom Sommer:

-        Wants feedback – will forward standards to membership.

-        There’s a new Standards portal.

-        Standards Proposal Ideas: These are welcome, and they will be vetted by the Committee.

-        The URL to the SAA Standards Portal is: http://www2.archivists.org/standards.  The Standards Portal has links to:

      1. Procedures for Review and Approval of an SAA-Developed Standard
      2. Procedures for SAA Endorsement of an External Standard
      3. Proposal for Inclusion of Non-Endorsed Standard

·       DACS (Describing Archives: A Content Standard) Presentation by Gordon Daines:

Produced a revisions draft, encouraging submissions of revisions.

·       SNAP (Students and New Archives Professionals (SNAP) Roundtable): 

SNAP Chair Rebecca Goldman spoke, and encouraged the ‘SNAPpers’ in C&U settings to join their roundtable and their listserv discussions, especially as so many new professionals – and student workers – are in academic setting.

·       Government Affairs Working Group by Frank Boles:

-        This SAA group’s main purpose is advocacy.

-        Its aims are to affect public policy.

-        Frank made a call to the C&U membership to help write GAWG’s content.

-        Frank made a further call to the C&U membership to join GAWG.

·       College and University Archives Section President’s Report by Becky Schulte:

-        Becky urged the C&U membership to respond to the Section’s communications survey.

-        She welcomed membership to look at and review the Section’s new web content and  mentioned that the newest C&U newsletter is up online and sent to membership as well.

-        Becky thanked the Steering Committee especially outgoing members Kevin Glick and Heather Briston and Section Vice-Chair for their work of the past year.

·       SAA Council Liaison Presentation by C&U Council Liaison Tom Frusciano.

-        Tom thanked the Section for working with him and with Council.

-        He welcomed the new C&U Council Liaison, Tanya Zanish-Belcher.

-        The January was primarily discussing the SAA budget.

-        The January 2012 Council meeting included a review of SAA's strategic priorities and the June meeting included discussion and adoption of the budget. 

-        Council agenda materials are posted before each meeting and Section members should review those materials and contact the Council liaison with any concerns they may have.

-        Council has revised the SAA Advocacy Agenda. There is an increased emphasis on advocacy – and encourages membership to get involved.

-        Council Guidelines are on the microsite on the SAA website.

-        Roundtables now need bylaws.

-        The SAA Membership Needs and Satisfaction Survey:  Council will be examining members’ comments.

-        NHPRC Report on the changing nature and environment of the historical record and research.

·       Nominating Committee Report by Cynthia Ghering:

-        Over 300 C&U members voted in this year’s election.

-        Cynthia announced election winners:

* For Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect: Rachel Vagts of Luther College.

* Steering Committee:  Thomas Sommer of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

                                   Kat Stefko of Duke University.

·       Newsletter Editor Newsletter Editor and Website and Newsletter Committee Reports by Michelle Sweetser:

-        There have been two issues of newsletter, The Academic Archivist, that have come out this past year.

-        Michelle appealed to the membership for submissions.

-        The Newsletter and Website Committee produced a survey, which was recently distributed to the C&U membership. It will be up for the rest of this month. Michelle reported on the preliminary responses to date. Primarily, the survey polls membership to see just what they want to see in both the newsletter and in the website content. And also just how they want to receive it (electronically via which formats, etc.).

 ·       College and University Archives Section Guidelines Update by Becky Schulte:

-        Currently up are the 1999 Guidelines for revision.

-        Guidelines language should be updated – unanimously by C&U membership.  Becky will work on this with Council Liaison Tanya Zanish-Belcher

 ·       SAA Diversity Initiative Report by SAA Diversity Committee Member Deborah Torres:

-        The Diversity Committee met on Tuesday of this week.

-        The Committee is going to put a proposal forward to expand the Mosaic Program, with a grant from the Laura Bush Foundation for America's Libraries, which has a deadline of September 24th. SAA is working with both the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) as well as Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) on this.

-        This initiative to expand the Mosaic Program will need letters of support, which probably will be in the end of August or the beginning of September.

-        Mentoring with the Mosaic Program will be expanding under this initiative. It is being modeled (in part) on the American Library Association’s well-known and successful Spectrum Scholarship Program.

-        Further, the SAA Diversity Committee is seeking in general to diversify the archival record. The Committee will be putting a call out to SAA membership to solicit ideas on how to do this – and what to focus on.

·       Lone Arrangers Roundtable Survey of Membership Report by Alison Stankrauff:

Earlier this year, the Lone Arrangers Roundtable assembled a working group to create a survey that was sent out to the LAR membership. The goal is to ascertain particular characteristics of lone arrangers – to best answer the needs of the roundtable membership, as well as to more broadly understand just who lone arrangers are, across the field. Questions were asked along the lines of ethnic and gender identification, any perceived disabilities the respondent might have, just where they worked – both in terms of kind of repository as well as location within the United States and beyond. Other questions included levels of education, how long they’d been employed as an archivist, etc.

·       Future Directions for the C&U Section – Becky Schulte and Alison Stankrauff:

-        An emphasis on the SAA directives of diversity as well as advocacy.

-        Alison stressed she wanted to work with – and hear from – the C&U membership in the coming year.

·       Presentation on Best Practices in Fair Use in Academic Libraries by Heather Briston

- (http://www.arl.org/pp/ppcopyright/codefairuse/code/index.shtml

 ·       Q&A

·       Adjourn

Referenced Group Meeting: