MDOS Mini-Newsletter - November 2021

Dear colleagues, 

The MDOS Steering Committee would like to share November's MDOS Mini-Newsletter with you, with our best wishes for a happy holiday week!

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November MDOS Steering Committee Report

At the MDOS Steering Committe's November meeting, the following subjects were discussed:

• Initiating a search for an interim Steering Committee member, as one of our members is unable to complete their term.
• Reviewing our assessment of overlaps in MDOS' focus and objective with other SAA sections, as well as gaps that could be filled.
• Brainstorming a potential focus group session or other feedback gathering to better understand and serve MDOS members' interests and needs.
• An update on future Mini-Newsletter plans and structure.

Metadata Resources of the Month

SNAC (Social Networks and Archival Context)

In their own words (from About SNAC): 

"SNAC (Social Networks and Archival Context) is a free, online resource that helps users discover biographical and historical information about persons, families, and organizations that created or are documented in historical resources (primary source documents) and their connections to one another. Users can locate archival collections and related resources held at cultural heritage institutions around the world.

SNAC is an international cooperative including, but not limited to, archives, libraries, and museums, that is working to build a corpus of reliable descriptions of people, families, and organizations that link to and provide a contextual understanding of historical records."

SNAC was established with funding from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities in 2010. To learn more about SNAC and follow their work, check out the below links.

SNAC Twitter: @SNACcooperative

SNAC Website: https://snaccooperative.org/

Metadata Figure of the Month

November's Metadata Figure of the Month is Henriette Davidson Avram (1919-2006). In 1968, Avram led a small team at the Library of Congress in completing the MARC Pilot Project - for Machine Readable Cataloging. Before joining the Library of Congress in 1965, with no library work experience, she had worked the National Security Agency as a systems analyst and programmer since 1952. Avram retired from the Library of Congress in 1992, at which point she was the associate librarian for Collections Services, supervising a staff of 1,700.

Source:

Schudel, Matt. "Henriette Avram, 'Mother of MARC,' Dies." Library of Congress Information Bulletin 65, no. 5 (May 2006). https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0605/avram.html

All the best,

The MDOS Steering Committee