2026 Annual Business Meeting

Review of past year:

1. Wrote and submitted Feedback and Recommendations Following the 2025 Diversity Forum to Council.
   1. This involved first cleaning then synthesizing notes from eight breakout rooms, which Elizabeth Heu should get credit for leading.
2. Attended November 2025 Council meeting to discuss this report as an agenda item.
   1. Zachary read an email sent to him from another leader while Gayle and Jim read their own statements.
   2. A group of Councilors wrote an official response on behalf of Council, which was shared with Diversity in January and was supposed to be shared publicly–we are still waiting on this. This group also made themselves available to Diversity if requested.
   3. Zachary made a Leader List post which generated an unusual amount of discussion. This called into question the purpose of the leader list if it is not supposed to be a place for discussion and instead merely announcements.
3. Formed a subcommittee to plan a spring event around one of the action items in our report. This became Building Digital Resilience: Digital Protection Strategies for Archivists, which was held on 28 April.
   1. They also submitted a funding request to Council, which was approved as part of a pilot to fund component group requests.
4. Formed a subcommittee to plan the 2026 Diversity Forum. This will be Proactively Safeguarding Records at Risk, and Invisible Histories will once again be joining us.
   1. A separate funding request was submitted.
5. SAA posted Statement on Restrictions on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Work in October. This request was originally submitted by one of our subcommittees last academic year.
6. SAA posted Statement on Changes Being Made at National Parks and Monuments in April. This request was initially proposed by Gayle, who led its submission in February.
7. Thoroughly updated microsite and officially sunsetted Case Studies on Diversifying the Archival Record after someone submitted a case study to us. This was supposed to have happened in February 2024, but text was left on the Case Studies Series page on SAA’s website, which linked to a page hosted on our microsite.
8. Reviewed revised Guidelines for Reappraisal and Deaccessioning for Chair of TS-GRD.

Comings and goings:

1. Thanking members who are rolling off: Zachary, KayAnn, and Elspeth.
2. Congratulations to Jim on his retirement from UT Austin!
3. Introducing next year’s Vice Chair: Renee.
4. Introducing new members who will be joining: Olivia Newsome, Records Coordination and Processing Archivist at Barnard College and Gideon McDaniel, Special Collections Director at Dayton Metro Library. We still have one vacancy left to fill.

Open forum:

1. How are we doing in the year since the 2025 Diversity Forum, which was a breakout room-based town hall on anti-DEIA actions at the federal level?
2. Is there new information which should be shared with this committee or Council, especially as SAA's next strategic plan takes shape?
3. What would you like to see SAA doing over the next two years related to diversity and inclusion and how could this committee support that?