PLASC Meeting Minutes 2019 October 9

Public Library Archives & Special Collections Section Meeting

Society of American Archivists

October 9, 2019, 3:00pm EST

Notetaker: Johanna

In attendance:

Angela Stanley
Patricia Delara
Dylan Gaffney
Johanna Russ

Approve September 11, 2019 meeting minutes

Minutes approved.
Johanna will post a view only link to the microsite. Also links to last year’s meeting minutes. Angela will share the links with the committee members before we post them to the web.

Discussion Items

Welcome new Steering Committee Member

Catherine Champion was unable to attend the meeting because of an internal work approval process required for her participation in PLASC.

Soliciting content for next newsletter

We decided to put out a call for submissions with a mid-November deadline and an early December publication goal. We decided to limit announcements to 200 words, but no word limit on articles. Patricia will send out the call.

Publicizing meeting dates, links, agendas, minutes to membership

Once meeting minutes are up online, Angela will send an email to membership to alert them to the updates to the microsite to include meeting minutes, slides from lightning round talks at SAA 2019, and meeting dates so members can call in if they want to.

SAA Proposal or Session

Dylan and Patricia have both discussed PLASC related session proposals with different members. Patricia is likely going to be part of a proposal through this spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ScmNcQPc4dVLBrpjEpVIC3zmJywUgJ-LnizAeMyZP3E/edit#gid=0. Dylan’s colleague may be amenable to participating in the PLASC section meeting’s lightning round talks instead. 

We discussed generally how difficult it is for most members to attend the PLASC section meeting, thus creating interest in public library archives-focused sessions in the general conference. We all admitted we may not have the bandwidth to put together a proposal for this year, but that if our PLASC work yields results we may put something forward for next year. 

We also discussed the option of hosting a table or happy hour outside of the PLASC meeting or the sessions to publicize PLASC and answer questions. Angela noted that we get $200 from SAA that could fund an honorarium for an outside speaker or possibly a webinar some other time during the year outside of the annual conference.

PLASC focus for upcoming year

We discussed gathering data on public library archives because it does not currently exist. Data would go toward answering such questions as how many public libraries have archives? What is the impact of public library archives and special collections? Why are they important? Why are they distinct from general corpus of data about archives and special collections? 

We may not need a lot of money to pull it off, but a consultant for question and survey design would be helpful.

Action Items

1. Send links to last year’s meeting minutes to everyone ahead of Johanna posting online - Angela

2. Post minutes to microsite - Johanna

3. Distribute call for newsletter - Patricia (if you want something up on the microsite about it, please give Johanna the language)

4. Follow up on getting social media permissions to Dylan and Derek - Angela

5. Ask Felicia at SAA about hosting a table - Angela

6. Share ideas for PLASC-sponsored session proposal ahead of next meeting, if you come up with any - Everyone

Adjourn