PLASC Meeting Minutes: 2020 February 24

Public Library Archives & Special Collections Section Meeting

Society of American Archivists

February 24, 2020, 2:00pm EST

In attendance: 

Derek Mosley
Dylan Gaffney
Angela Stanley
Patricia Delara
Heather Lanctot

Notetaker: Patricia Delara

Approve January 8, 2020 meeting minutes - Angela will reshare after meeting and conduct an email vote to approve minutes.

Updates

Chair, Angela Stanley

Section Meetings will take place Wednesday, August 5, 2020

Collaboration Form; Angela added that PLASC is interested in partnering with Lone Arrangers group to hold a lightning session during annual. Proposal is due soon; Angela is asking if we can continue to do lightning talks as we have done in the past, or have a speaker this time around.

Meeting Request Form (due 3/1) must be completed by this date

Component Group Funding Requests (due 3/1)

Derek suggests to submit the form and not collaborate with another section since we do not have much time. Suggests the lightning talk format might work out better.

Heather also likes having the lightning talks, but has reservations about how many submissions we would receive. Angela mentions that we can propose to have the meeting in the afternoon.

Patricia feels the same as Heather about the lightning talk, but also was interested in having a speaker come since we haven’t had that before.

Dylan says that if we can have a speaker that will draw people it’s also a great option.

Heather was part of Chicago area archivists group and offered to reach out to see if there would be anyone that would be interested in speaking. Derek agrees that we can reach out to the Chicago PL and ask the archivist there about their efforts with their public library archives. Might also work out better this way since other speakers might not make it to Chicago in time for annual. 

Derek’s ideas include speaking about collection development/management in public library archives (how do you deal with influx of patrons wanting to donate), collection policies, grant management or thinking about how to get a grant for public library archives. Heather also included discussing the library’s friends groups / donors and funding streams.

Angela will reach out to invite a speaker in the Chicago area to discuss the suggested topics, and also include some time for lightning session. Will draft a proposal by this evening or tomorrow (2/25).

Newsletter, Patricia Delara

CFP for newsletter submissions will go out in early March for a women’s history-themed issue. Deadline for submissions is April 3rd.

Patricia asked for feedback about the newsletter.

Social Media, Dylan Gaffney and Derek Mosley

Twitter use - both Derek and Dylan have been retweeting and tweeting content just to keep the Twitter page active. Dylan mentioned that they need to find more accounts to follow to provide more content, Derek suggested putting a call out for institutions and their Twitter handles for us to follow.

Website, Johanna Russ

Survey Working Group, Catherine Oseas & Heather Lanctot

No new updates for now. Catherine had developed preliminary questions for the survey, but Heather needs to revisit them. Content is in the shared drive for us to review the material as well.

Old Business

Survey timeline

New Business

Section Meeting format

Potential for a PLASC Happy Hour! Can revisit during the next meeting to decide when and where. 

Action Items

Angela will work on the draft of the section meeting submission

Next meeting will be Wednesday, March 18, 3:00 pm EST (12:00 PM PST)

Adjourn