2010 MDOR Annual Meeting Minutes

Minutes of the Metadata and Digital Object Roundtable Annual Meeting  

Society of American Archivists, Washington, DC, August 11, 2010 

The meeting was called to order at 5:30 pm.   

Cochair Janet Carleton ran the meeting. 

Business 

1. Carleton welcomed the attendees and introduced the roundtable leadership. 

2. Janet Carleton (digital initiatives coordinator at Ohio University Libraries) was nominated and reelected to serve another term as cochair of the roundtable. Carleton nominated Polina E. Ilieva (Project 

Archivist at UCSF Library) for a new cochair. There being no other nominations, the vote was called and 

Ilieva won by vote. 

3. Carleton led a discussion about future directions for the roundtable. She mentioned that this 

roundtable is relatively young and has been in existence for about 6 years and rapidly changing digital 

environment necessitates updates to the roundtable mission statement. Carleton displayed current mission 

statement that is posted on the roundtable website and noted that one of the suggestion by the steering 

committee was to add “digital object management” to present description. She mentioned that the steering 

committee will conduct the discussion on the roundtable mission updates and changes through the listserv 

and post the findings on its website. 

Announcements

1. Margery Sly, Council Liaison reported on SAA Council actions and gave the steering committee 

the new Leader Manual.  

2. Dennis Meissner is roundtable’s new Council liaison. 

3. SAA 2011 Program Committee Representative Brenda Gunn announced that the next SAA 

meeting will be held in Chicago and program proposals must be received by the Committee by Friday, 

October 1st, 2010. She noted that roundtables can endorse up to two session proposals and an abstract for 

proposals has been increased to 150 words. 

Program 

1. The program included “lightning talks” (15 minute presentations) on: 

• “Workflows Designed for Efficient Metadata Creation,” Karen Weiss, Archives of American Art, 

Smithsonian Institution 

• “Improving Efficiencies Through Cost-Benefit Analysis of Metadata Creation,” Joyce Chapman, 

North Carolina State University 

• “Putting the Pieces Together: Bringing Archival Tradition to an Item Focused Web,” Aaron 

Rubinstein, University of Massachusetts, Amherst 

2. Q&A period wrapped up the panel. 

3. Carleton asked for discussion topics from the audience and several attendees voiced topics they 

were interested to learn more about and discuss with the fellow roundtable members. 3

The larger group broke into 3 sessions for discussion, however most attendees left for the reception as the 

RT timeslot overlapped with the reception at the National Archives. 

• Group One: Metadata creation workflow that was led by Karen Weiss 

• Group Two: Metadata for oral histories facilitated by Janet Carleton 

• Group Three: Digital repositories facilitated by Polina Ilieva. Participants discussed the following 

topics: Should institutions create their own repositories and strive to achieve the status of the trusted 

digital repository or join established ones like the Online Archive of California and the Internet Archive? 

What software is available for users (Fedora, DSpace, etc.)? How to built working relations with other 

institutional units contributing materials to the digital repository? 

The meeting was adjourned at 7:15 pm. 

Minutes by Polina Ilieva, UCSF Library