2023 Labor Archive Retreat Minutes at GW during SAA 2023

2023 Labor Archive Retreat Minutes at GW during SAA 2023

Present: Conor Casey (University of Washington), Steven Calco (Cornell University), Sarah Lebovitz (Ruether), Vakil Smallen (GW), Shannon O’Neil (NYU), Alan Wierdik (University of Maryland), Lisa Vallen (Georgia state), Ben Blake (University of Maryland), Andre (NEA Archivist), Lewis Jones (Reuther)

Agenda

1. Introductions

2. Section News/updates

3. Brainstorming ideas (past and present)

4. Next steps

• Presentations from this year’s SAA involved several themes relating to labor including many presenters from Labor Archives around the country:

1. Wednesday July 26th 11:00 AM - Tour at the Gellman library featuring Teamsters collections
2. Wednesday July 26th 1:30 PM - Labor Archivists Retreat at the Gellman library
3. Thursday, July 27th 1:00 pm – 2:15 pm 103: People's Media Record: Archiving Activism
4. Thursday, July 27th 3:45 pm – 5:00 pm 301: Organizing Archivists: Archives and Libraries in the Labor Movement
5. Thursday, July 27th at 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm Conversation Lounges – “Reframing ‘Labor’ Collections as Social Justice and Community History: Educational Initiatives to Counter Historical Erasure and the Symbolic Annihilation of Working Class History”
6. Friday, July 28th - 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm 406: Advocating for Archival Workers
7. Saturday, July 29th - 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm 706: Collective Work and Changing Hazards: Reimagining Emergency Planning for Cultural Institutions

• Announcement of Vakil as Co-Chair, thanks to Vakil for organizing space for the retreat
• With the conversation about section participation, we sent along a letter of our accomplishments to SAA leadership.
• Those who want to be nominated for steering committee, please send me a bio at your earliest convenience

1. Brainstorming ideas

• Shannon from NYU – position itself on positions as a resource for activating ways that people can; Work closer with the Archive labor taskforce and Archival workers collective
• Work together for presenting at labor history organizations:
  • NALHC North American Labor History Council - Wayne State hosts conference every other year; Create an Archives version of LAWCHA; LAWCHA (Rutgers in the past?); Labor online newsletter – highlights from the section; Labor notes – at Chicago; ILO 100 year conferenc; IAHLI – international; Next March – Organization of American Historians; NYLA; Labor heritage foundation? (labor radio podcast); Great labor archives exchange; Southern labor studies association; Wisconsin labor;  Labor research action network LRAN
• Awareness of the different labor conference events ; Budget for a table banner) funding SAA foundation
• SEIU – qr codes with local individuals and leaders ) on the wristbands
• Oral histories at union conventions; Longshoreman – set up a recording thing in suite -
• Vakil – GIS labor Tableu linking locations of collections; Linked data (STACK) ; Labor organizations by THINK? History and merger of successor unions – linked data to
  SNACK? Social networks and archival context – linked data authorities – temasters Hoffa , etc merge and link collections to that group
  Archives west (Conor) (national finding aid  Directory – HTML – working meeting idea (code into the github) ; Zoom work party
• Lisa AFLCIO civil rights, Digital collections reparative work – grapple with how are going to do this/
• Tabling ideas
  (labor archives – social justice history, you may already have labor archives)
  Flyers from different repositories
  Labor archives directory
  AFLCIO – flyers and buttons – talkin gabout local union history
  Union hall into an exhibit – labor in Philly panel
  ATU convention in Atlancic
  EHA (econmimc historians association ) dupes types of materials

Takeaways:

We will look into tabling oppurtunities at conventions, creating a flier of labor archives for tabling, create a directory of labor history organizations, try to collaborate together at conferences of labor history organization's annual meetings