Military Archives Section 2020 Annual Meeting Summary

On August 12, 2020 the Military Archives and Records Section held its annual meeting.

The program portion of the meeting featured two presentations:

• Bill Carpenter and John Powers from the Information Security Oversight Office at NARA led an informative and engaging conversation about declassification. Their presentation on declassification realities is attached to this post.  
• Professor Edward Benoit, III and Gillian Brownlee from Louisiana State University gave an update on their Virtual Footlocker Project. There presentation about this project and challenges of running this project during COVID-19 is attached to this post.

Professor Heather Soyka from Kent State University encouraged members to submit articles to The American Archivist or serve as a peer reviewer for the journal. You can sign up as a peer reviewer here: https://www2.archivists.org/american-archivist/peer-reviewer. General information about submissions, editorial policy, and the journal: https://americanarchivist.org/

The MARS would like to thank the Prtizker Military Museum & Library which had agreed to host our staff ride in Chicago before the in-person conference was canceled.

The MARS Steering Committee for 2020-2021 is:

• Eliot Wilczek, The MITRE Corporation, Chair
• Andrew Hinton, Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University, Vice-Chair / Chair-elect
• Amy Mondt, Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University, Secretary 
• Chris McDougal, National Museum of the Pacific War, Communications Liaison

We would like to thank our outgoing Chair, Laura Jowdy of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, for her service to the section. Thank you! 

We would also like to thank SAA staff and Council for making the annual virtual SAA meeting possible under very challenging circumstances.