Meeting Notes – GRS Section Meet and Greet - Oct. 18th, 12:00PM-1:00PM PST

Meeting Notes –

GRS Section Meet and Greet - Oct. 18th, 12:00PM-1:00PM PST

Hosted by Ingi House – Chair

Jessica Knox – Jensen – Chair Elect

Agenda and Topics Discussed

Agenda  

Introduction by Ingi and Jessica

Roll Call By State and Location

Went through previous meeting notes and discussed any ideas present in those.

How to Make GRS Better

-Anything that makes the list serve more active is a good thing. Using momentum and keeping it going – creating traffic so that people keep coming back and sharing ideas. The more that goes on the more that people will come back.  

-Posting national news as well as fun stuff and policies to share. Make it more inclusive.

-Not everyone subscribes to the main list serve, for various reasons, so passing along information from the main list serve is good to keep everyone in the loop on what is going on. Examples can include anything interesting regarding government archives or major SAA deadlines and fun topics of interest that you think anyone in the group would like.

-SAA can be very intimidating for government archives and is not particularly open to it. GSA will work on being inclusive and making sure that all government archives ideas are supported and responded to. This topic got brought up a lot and we are going to work on making this a friendly place!

-Publicize GSA on other list serves! There are a few other list serves that mingle with government archives such as records management, local government records, acquisitions and appraisals and various others. If you see something interesting on one of those list serves, make a comment and link back to GSA. In the future perhaps we could work on some collaborative efforts with a few other groups.  

-The roster is automatic to list serve, we can use this to call out to specific people or call attention to specific topics to various people while still engaging the group.

-Understand that this list serve is to focus on government needs! This was a big one too, we can all participate in various groups that are not government oriented but we need a place to voice our issues with government archives. Fun information about business regulations is interesting, but shouldn’t be the focus.

-Government archivists can get involved in the benefits of the list serve by using it to ask questions, reaching out to others in the list serve or simply sharing various policies and information that can be useful.

-NAGARA and COSA, these are our unintentional partners and can be good places for ideas, they have robust government archives and we can learn from them!

Ideas to Get More Involved

-It’s intimidating to post to list serves! Feeling like what we post has to be big instead of just ideas. GRS is working on making sure that everyone feels good about posting ideas! Even if you are just having a crappy day and want to post, or ask, for pictures of cats. (I have a cat so she will be posted at some time. She loves government archives because it enables her to have crunchies!)

-Big burning issues and no stupid questions! You don’t have to have a major idea to post. And if you don’t understand something ask away! I know had no clue what NAGARA was until Jessica said something. Ask away!!   

-Lighting talk sessions! Many people had great ideas that would be great to focus on and get more in-depth information on in quick talks. We could start forums and specific threads for topics and use Facebook Live and recordings to expand on various ideas.  

-Other options, we love the conference calls and will continue to use them. Also we would like to bring in subject matter experts for talks.

Platforms for GRS to Use  

-The conference calls are a great way to start but we are also looking for some other platforms to host on. We would love to share, not only voices, but faces and presentations too! Below are some ideas we had.

-Platforms to use - WebX, Google Hangout, - post yours to the group!

-Facebook Group – GSA actually has one! Sad thing is we don’t have access to it right now. https://www.facebook.com/Government-Records-Section-of-SAA-273445389352982/

Dave Evans – Pardon I forgot if this was the former leader or someone who could get in contact with the person who owns this page so we can get back to using it. There is very little intuitional knowledge of the group and the usage of it. We will attempt to rectify this once we get it back and will pass on access once we get it.

-Who would be interested in the Facebook Group? Let us know and we will get it up and going.

-We could use this to promote news and use the Facebook Live feature to do social forums and talks.

Ideas for Discussion Topics

-Email management! This was a big one, we are looking for any information on it, who has programs and what do they use, and how they deal with classified information on it.

-Stanford ePADD - https://library.stanford.edu/projects/epadd Jessica sent out an email with this information but here is the link again!

-Electronic content and how we deal with digital content.

-Appraisal records and how to get them in shape for being in an archive.

Critical Information Infrastructure

-Informational Scheduling – This was another big one. Looking at various policy. How to decide to release information or not. Access in regards to the U.S. code restructure. How does this impact various repositories.

-The States and the Feds work close and what policies impact this relationship. If NARA says it wants to keep various records does this mean that the states should follow the same policy? What about cities? How should we be consistent across different government levels?  

-New regulations in regards to unclassified information and the implications for state level government. What can we do about this? Sharing policy? How do we get it up the chain so that that our concerns are heard?

-Criminal justice information from FBI and how to handle inmate police records and discharge files. This was another big one. What happens when these files overlap? Even in NARA files there is a lot of information on state prisons due to inmates going between facilities. What do we do to protect inmate privacy and still provide access?

-Less or more database information. Dealing with how much to put into databases and how much that information could be used in various ways. What do different archives do? Examples?  

-Granular vs higher level information.

-Selecting and appraising information to go into databases and to keep. How do various archives deal with this? Working on Records Mangers perhaps to help solve this.    

Discussion Forum Meeting 

We would like to focus on inmate records, as this was a hot topic for the meeting. Plan on hearing something about it soon and we will schedule it for some time after Thanksgiving!

Next Phone Meeting 

To Be Determined

We are planning on the meetings being once a month with other activities scheduled in between. We welcome any and all input to the group! Stay tuned for the next meeting time!

Happy Halloween and Fall-fest Of Your Choice! – My dad’s birthday is on Halloween so I’m going to throw in a Happy Birthday to all the Fall people too!

Post your thoughts to the group!