Society of American Archivists
Committee on Education Meeting
August 24, 2011
Hyatt Regency Hotel – Chicago, Illinois
Minutes
Wednesday, August 24 ‑ 8:00 am to 10:00 am (Gold Coast Room)
- Welcome/Introductions – Johnson
Present: Jennifer Johnson, outgoing Chair; Susan Irwin, incoming Chair; Amber Cushing, Julie Graham, Heather MacNeil, Ellen Swain, Lori Lindberg, and Jamie Roth, committee members; Naomi Nelson, incoming committee member; Scott Cline, Council Liaison; Solveig De Sutter, Director of Education; Amanda Look, Education Coordinator. Present for part of the meeting: Cory Nimmer and Marcy Flynn, Representatives of the Standard Committee; Guests: Chatham Ewing and Jackie Esposito. Absent: Abby Adams and David Kay.
- Review and Approval of the Agenda – Johnson
- Update on Council decisions made on Monday, August 22, 2011 – Cline
Cline reported on issues that the SAA Council discussed at its August 22, 2011 meeting:
- In response to the Labor Dispute and conversations over social media among members, Council created a task force for the Annual Meeting. The group will look at the structure and location of future annual meetings and SAA’s social responsibilities in regard to the meeting.
- Five members will look at the SAA Glossary and ensure that it remains up to date.
- Two new awards – the Diversity Award and the Emerging Leader Award – were approved.
- SAA adopted the revised GPAS Guidelines, the new standard: EAC-CPF, the DAS Curriculum and Certificate Program, and the Core Values of Archivists statement.
- Greg Hunter was appointed as the new Editor of the American Archivist.
- Standards Committee Representatives – Nimmer and Flynn
De Sutter introduced Cory Nimmer and Marcy Flynn, Representatives of the Standards Committee. They were invited to the Education Committee Meeting to discuss the interaction between the respective committees, and ways to develop a closer working relationship. The two committees will work together and keep each other informed on developments/revisions for new and existing standards..
- Nimmer spoke about creating working groups/technical subcommittees and asked for feedback from the Education Committee.
- One way to provide better communication would be to include liaisons from the Education Committee on the Standards Committee listserv, so they can be aware of information pertaining to their ACE category.
- Johnson asked for volunteers from the Education Committee to act as a liaison to the Standards Committee; this liaison position is to be a three-year term.
- Johnson also suggested that De Sutter add a section for standards to the program and audit evaluation forms that Education Committee Members complete for proposal evaluations and audits.
- Nimmer reported that DACS and EAD are under revision are expected to come out in 2013. Appraisal standards are being revised as well.
- Flynn added that the standards mentioned are all SAA initiatives, and that there are others the committee is looking at.
- The ICA is working with SAA and vice versa. ICA is currently compiling a list of standards.
- The Standards Committee and SAA staff has been working to create the Standards Portal. It is a gathering pace for a list of standards with the first page listing all standards that have been adopted/endorsed by the Society. There will be a resource page for each standard, and we will list upcoming workshops/education events regarding each standard. The portal resides at www.2.archivists.org/standards.
- Johnson would like to populate that page with workshop information as soon as possible. SAA staff will find a way to add this information to the portal.
- Lindberg suggested posting information about the upcoming revisions for DACS and EAD on the Standard Page to keep people updated. The Standards Committee was open to that idea.
- Send questions to Marcy Flynn, Cory Nimmer, or Brian Doyle.
- The group discussed the terms of the liaison’s position and the length. The consensus was that the position should be a bit more flexible. Heather MacNeil volunteered to be the liaison for the Standards Committee, and Johnson will provide her contact information to the committee.
- Council decisions from May and August ‑ what does this mean for the coming year?
- Irwin recapped that the committee’s big projects in FY ’11 were the approval of GPAS and the DAS Curriculum and Certificate Program. For FY ’12 that will mean re-evaluating non DAS offerings in view of the DAS curriculum structure.
- Johnson and Irwin gave an overview of the DAS Curriculum and the DAS FAQ, which will be posted on the SAA DAS page once it’s finalized.
- DAS Subcommittee report – Lindberg
- The first meeting (via conference call) took place on July 28, 2011. The next subcommittee call is scheduled in September, and at that time the members will re-assess what needs to be done and make work assignments. The four members of the subcommittee are Mark Harvey, Mark Matienzo, Mahnaz Ghaznavi and Lori Lindberg (chair).
- The subcommittee will be auditing the DAS courses and ask the Education Committee for assistance when needed.
- DAS will be divided by ACE Category, so the shepherd from the Education Committee will be assigned to any DAS workshop that will fall into their category.
- The committee agreed that we should adopt the DAS tier structure for all SAA educational offerings.
- Development of a concept-based archival curriculum by archival educators – MacNeil
The “Pluralizing the Archival Curriculum” group has done some work and published an article in the most recent American Archivist. The idea was developed during discussion in 2009 between Archival Educators and doctoral students. They would like to revive archival education that has been lacking – primarily developing a curriculum that is service-based, and, they want to address language like “records”, and questions including “What is an archive? What is authenticity?” etc. MacNeil participated in a June meeting at UCLA where discussion included incorporating a concept-based curriculum. She feels it’s useful to know that there is a lot of discussion about revisiting archival curricula. AT the ARIE meeting this year, there was a mapping meeting and 50 people attended; so there is great deal of interest.
- SAA Education Staff Report – De Sutter (attachment)
Fiscal Year 2011 Summary:
- Scheduled 58 programs; offered four Web seminars at 214 sites with a total of 827 attendees; offered 50 face-to-face programs with 1,190 attendees; cancelled three workshops due to lack of registrants (see table in attachment); cancelled Summer Camp; and, secured 12 new hosts (see Table 1 for details on FY11 schedule).
Year-To-Date Fiscal Year 2012 Summary:
- Scheduled 48 programs; offered two Web seminars at 72 sites with a total of 256 attendees; offered three face-to-face programs with 76 attendees; cancelled two workshops due to lack of registrants (see table); and, secured 11 new hosts (see Table 2 for details on FY12 schedule).
Activity highlights since the last Education Committee Meeting in February 2011 included:
- Offering the May Web seminar “Archon: Making It Work for You!” with a new subcontractor (Peach New Media) on a trial basis, and it turned out very well! Based on that experience three more Web seminars were offered realizing significant savings in the process.
- Continued outreach to potential hosts for FY 2011 and 2012 workshops. February “working list” of 25 hosts included 10 new contacts.
- Managed logistics of 11 pre-conference workshops, including five new topics, one of which is a DAS course. Relocated another pre-conference workshop off site due to unanticipated AV costs, and offered five workshops off site.
- Contributed to an MLIS grant, submitted by the University of Virginia, for funding of 20 scholarships per SAA EAC-CPF workshop to be offered seven times in different regions. SAA will be a subcontractor – participating in the scholarship selection committee and coordinating sites, etc. just like we do for other workshops.
- Implemented Phase Two of the Education Directory and increased the number of paid providers to 33.
- Streamlined workshop processes and strengthened communication between hosts, instructors, and the education office.
- DAS Curriculum and Certificate Program
- Work with the Digital Archives Continuing Education (DACE) Task Force to integrate feedback from sections and roundtables and the Committee on Education (COE) into the DACE report continued and was subsequently approved by SAA Council.
- Developers of existing courses were contacted to create exams.
- Developers were contracted for:
1) Standards for Digital Archives (Web seminar) scheduled for September 29.
2) Digital Curation: Creating an Environment for Success available October 3.
3) Legal Issues in Digital Archives available in February.
4) Outreach for Digital Archives available December 15.
5) Digital Forensics available January 30.
6) Information Architecture (Web seminar) scheduled for February.
- Preserving Digital Archives: Concepts and Competencies, scheduled on August 23, will have an exam by October.
- New England Archivists (NEA) worked with staff on a model that enables archivists in that area to fulfill the DAS certificate requirements within the expected two-year time frame.
- Society of California Archivists, Midwest Archives, and Society of Southwest Archivists were contacted to implement the same or similar model.
- A pricing structure was created for the DAS courses.
- CEU allocation within the system was developed.
- A DAS Flyer was created and Look and De Sutter worked to “test drive” and set up exams, registration of test takers, and necessary reports in the Classmarker online testing service.
- An FAQ was created for the DAS.Program Web page.
- Education Committee AO article contributions
Jamie Roth’s piece about the DACE Task Force was published in the May/June issue of AO. Amber Cushing produced an article about the updated Education Directory that will be published in the September/October edition. Jennifer Johnson is working on an article about Webinars. Jamie Roth is working on a piece about the DAS Program. Johnson asked for volunteers to write for AO and for suggested topics:
- Article about the Education Committee is working with Standards Committee – Lori Lindberg volunteered
- How the Education Committee is connecting with membership and the career center, how the committee is reaching out more and are more active than people may know – Jamie Roth volunteered
- How workshops are developed/how the committee goes about creating a webinar and a face-to-face workshop – Susan Irwin volunteered
- Writing a good pre-conference proposal – Amber Cushing and Naomi Nelson volunteered
- Hosting a workshop – what’s involved - Julie Graham volunteered
- Follow a DAS student – Jamie volunteered Erica Boudreau to blog – “Diary of a DAS Student” (the idea is to have the SAA website link to her live blog)
- Solveig De Sutter will send information about deadlines.
- Other pressing issues/new business: Johnson
- Heather MacNeil is the new liaison for the Standards Committee
- Amber Cushing will stand in for Heather MacNeil at the Archival Educators Roundtable
- Susan Irwin served on the Pease Award
- Abby Adams will be liaison to the Student Poster group.
- The deadline for Pre-Conference Proposal forms are due October 3, 2011 for the 2012 Annual Meeting.
- De Sutter will send out the proposals to each shepherd on the Education Committee. Johnson re-assigned members to different shepherd areas for the upcoming year.
10:00 AM to Noon
FACULTY SESSION
Welcome from incoming Chair Susan Irwin
Present: Jennifer Johnson, outgoing Chair; Susan Irwin, incoming Chair; Amber Cushing, Julie Graham, Heather MacNeil, Ellen Swain, Lori Lindberg, and Jamie Roth, committee members; Naomi Nelson, incoming committee member; Scott Cline, Council Liaison; Solveig De Sutter, Director of Education; Amanda Look, Education Coordinator. Guests: Elizabeth Adkins, Fynnette Eaton, Tom Rosko, Cynthia Ghering, Jackie Esposito, Kathy Marquis, Erin O’Meara, Greg Colati, Jessica Branco Colati, Seth Shaw, Cal Lee, Tim Pyatt, Nancy Deromedi, and Michael Shallcross.
- Lindberg presented the Faculty Train the Trainer Session, starting with an overview of DAS and how that development is influencing other continuing education courses
The meeting was adjourned at 12:00pm.
