Society of American Archivists Museum Archives Section Business Meeting
Friday, August 5, 2016 at 1:00pm [Atlanta Hilton, Atlanta, GA]
Minutes submitted by Tamara Gaydos, Recording Secretary
There were about 75 people in attendance.
Greetings and Introductions
Current chair Christiana Dobrzynski welcomed everyone to the meeting and thanked the working group and the steering committee. She introduced the new Chair Elect, Gregory Jackson. She welcomed Dennis Meissner, President of SAA, who attended the meeting.
Christiana read remarks from outgoing chair Barbara Mathé, who mentioned that CALM finally had a representative this year from the Museum Archives section.
The new steering committee members are:
Chair
Christiana J. Dobrzynski, CA, Bryn Mawr College
Vice Chair
Gregory A. Jackson, CA, Glencairn Museum
Recording Secretary
Tamara Gaydos, CA, Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum
Web Liaison
Rebecca Morgan, American Museum of Natural History
Newsletter Editor
Margaret Huang, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Steering Committee Reports
- Becca Morgan, Web Liaison, explained that she had updated the MAS microsite this year. She would like an image, a visible brand, to be used on social media and asked for suggestions.
- Marge Huang, newsletter editor, encouraged submissions to the winter newsletter. There will be a call for submissions in October or November.
- Susan Hernandez, Standards and Best Practices Working Group co-chair, described this year’s project, which added materials related to born-digital records to the online resource guide. She spoke about the half-day symposium on born-digital records in a museum setting held on Wednesday and thanked the members of the working group. She encouraged members to join the group at the end of the meeting.
- Christiana read Lorraine Stuart’s report about her participation in the annual meeting of in the International Council of Museums (ICOM) International Committee on Documentation (CIDOC), where she and David Farneth, Getty Research Institute, organized the panel discussion, “How Can We Achieve GLAM? Understanding and Overcoming the Challenges to Integrating Metadata Across Museums, Archives, and Libraries”, held in Delhi, India, September 8, 2015. A copy of the report can be found in the summer newsletter.
Kris Keisling, SAA Council Liaison
- Kris gave an update on recent activities of the SAA Council. The Council has decided to eliminate the distinction between sections and roundtables and going forward there will only be sections.
- The Council approved an information brief on archives and the environment.
- The Council approved a revision of the SAA Statement on Diversity and Inclusion to include “inclusion.”
Amy Schindler, SAA-ACRL/RBMS Joint Task Force on the Development of Standardized Statistical Measures for Public Services in Archival Repositories and Special Collections Libraries
- Announced that version 1 of a draft standard is open for comment until August 22nd and one can comment online or via email
Christiana called for suggestion for activities for the section and plans for next year. She would like to see us tackle social justice issues and better unification of different types of museums.
Announcements from the Floor
- Susan Irwin, Arizona Historical Society, is a member of the Collective Wisdom Cohort and she and others from the cohort described their recent activities and possible outcomes
- Kathleen Roe talked about contemporary artists who create digital art. We have an ally in AAM (American Alliance of Museums). We should develop a “tool kit” for living/working artists.
- Someone from RiC (Records in Context, an international standard for archival description) stated that a draft will be released in 2017.
- Marge Huang announced that the Philadelphia Museum of Art in coordination with ARLIS is administering an NDSR Art Program. The applications for host institutions are due October 31st. More information can be found here: http://ndsr-pma.arlisna.org/.
- Richard Hulser, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, announced that they will have an NDSR and that that they have a job opening for an archivist.
Standards and Best Practices Working Group Meeting Minutes
Friday, August 5, 2016 [Atlanta Hilton, Atlanta, GA]
Present: Jessica Gambling, Susan Hernandez, Marge Huang, Greg Jackson, Kayla Jenkins, Becca Morgan, Gregory Raml, J.E. Molly Seegers, Sara Seltzer, Dawn Sueoka, Brian Wilson
Susan Hernandez, S&BP Working Group Co-Chair convened the meeting.
The group recapped this year’s project. We agreed that the symposium was useful and that revisiting born-digital records every other year is valuable. Greg Jackson mentioned that the Lone Arrangers SAA group has used the S&BP online resource guide.
Susan reminded the group that she will be stepping down as co-chair. Megan Schwenke from Harvard University will be taking her place.
The group discussed ideas for next year’s project:
- History of the first generation of museum archivists. Perhaps interviews? Perhaps a collaboration with the oral history section?
- The online resource guide is valuable but may not be adequately publicized. Can we get web statistics from SAA to analyze use?
- A project to take the temperature of museum archives through a survey. Working group members indicated that they would be interested to learn:
- Where the archives are located administratively within museums
- How many years has the archives program been established
- How far from the origins of the museum was the archives initiated
- When did the museum hire a professional archivist
- Establishing a records management program in museums is an issue some members of our working group are dealing with. Collaboration with records management section?
- Outreach to newly established museum archives programs, perhaps pairing institutions that have similarities, creating a peer mentoring program for museum archivists.
- Working group members conveyed a need to meet socially to network. Maybe we, or museum archives leadership, could pioneer a museum archivist meet up at the annual meeting.
