PLASC Meeting Minutes 2019 March 20

Public Library Archives and Special Collections (PLASC)
Section of the Society of American Archivists

Meeting Minutes

Teleconference (WebEx)

March 20, 2019

In attendance: Lauren Algee, Patricia Delara, Suzanne Im, Angela Stanley

Purpose of Meeting: Share findings and recommendations for moving forward with creating and implementing our outreach/communications plan.

1. Finalizing plans for implementable products from our outreach / advocacy explorations

• Timeline for pushing out twitter and newsletter: in the next month

• Lauren on Twitter account status:

  • Chosen handle: publibarchives

  • Issue: Twitter has undergone changes, and now requires an email and phone number; Lauren will email SAA leadership to see how other groups may have handled this; 

  • Alternative: create a gmail for PLASC (publicarchives handle available)

• Creation of gmail account for PLASC

  • Angela in favor of this action in order to keep all of the committee’s coordinating documents in Google Drive, as it is searchable and indexed; when a person leaves the committee, all documents will still be centralized rather than locked in someone’s personal account

  • Heather agrees as well; she thinks we’ll have more control over content created 

• Newsletter

  • Frequency of newsletter

    • Monthly, starting after election

  • Patricia will work with Lauren on newsletter launch

  • Patricia shared some Canva templates she had selected as possibilities

  • Suzanne’s exploration of newsletter options: 

    • There is no SAA newsletter platform; other sections have a variety of approaches to newsletter creation and distribution

    • Mailchimp: 

      • Free account allows up to 2,000 subscribers across all lists in one account 

      • Can send up to 12,000 emails per month 

      • In any 24-hour period, you can send up to 2,000 emails.

      • Pros: Newsletter is embedded in email; slick out-of-the-box designs; can share your campaigns with followers and create social posts on Twitter; unlimited data storage.

      • Cons: limited number of subscribers; users must subscribe to list

      • Question: Can we subscribe the PLASC listserv email? Suzanne will ask Matt Black

    • Canva: https://www.canva.com/templates/newsletters/email/ 

      • Traditional printable newsletter look

      • Pros: Free templates; professional-looking designs

      • Cons: Must send out as a PDF attachment; 1 GB data storage

    • Adobe Spark: https://spark.adobe.com/make/newsletter-maker/ 

      • Pros: Free templates; highly customizable, similar to Mailchimp, unlimited data storage

      • Cons: Must send out as a PDF attachment

    • Google Docs Templates: https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/?tgif=c&ftv=1 

      • Traditional printable newsletter look

      • Pros: Easily saved with all other PLASC coordinating documents; unlimited data storage

      • Cons: Must send out as a PDF attachment; simplistic default template designs

• Angela shared an updated elevator speech document draft: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18DGnNG6ZcgOF9caKA9ia5nOGwtUC-n9a/view?usp=sharing 

  • Incorporated suggestions from steering committee members

    • Lauren: Newspapers feature prominently in public library special collections and should be included in item 1

  • Worked in programming, a strength of public libraries, into item 4

  • Angela will play with the color scheme to make the document pop more

  • Angela foresees the document being shared in the inaugural newsletter, as well as the introductory round of tweets

  • Angela is working on a wishlist of metrics for a fact sheet, but finding it challenging; she’s trying to pull out some points that exist that we can boast about

    • PLASC may conduct a future survey with an intern who can do a gap analysis

• Heather sent out a bookmark and brochure template

  • Used word document, as it is an editable, widely available format

  • Heather will try to make a version in Google Suite, which may retain formatting better and is also widely accessible.

3. 2019 Annual Meeting

• Lauren submitted description of what the PLASC section will be presenting: lightning talk; thinks it can be changed; once we have specific description; 

  • Last year’s lightning talks were very successful. It provides a platform for a lot of institutions that are not otherwise well-represented at SAA. 

• Angela proposed a “World Cafe” style program geared toward small institutions. It would be comprised of topical tables with conversations that participants can rotate through. Each table would have an experienced practitioner stationed. Topics of conversation can include collection development, donor relations, rights assessment, and other areas of professional development that were identified in the membership survey. It’s a decentralized presentation style that is less formal than a lightning talk. 

  • Lauren: There are not a lot of public library attendees at SAA; we want to try to make the content of the section meeting broad so that other folks would attend as well

  • Heather pointed out that she was able to obtain funding to attend SAA last year because she was presenting; this may be a factor that encourages public library attendees. 

  • World cafe could be a joint collaboration with the Lone Arrangers or other sections in a future conference year

  • Last year’s theme was community focused projects; committee to brainstorm other ideas in an email chain

Next meeting: 

Lauren will send out Whenisgood poll for April meeting. Lauren will also start an email chain to discuss Twitter hashtags and content, as well as potential lightning talk themes.