PLASC Meeting Minutes 2021 December 15

Public Library Archives & Special Collections Section Meeting

Society of American Archivists

December 15, 2021, 1pm PST

Minutes

Meeting began at 4:03pm

Present: Heather Lanctot, Laura Carroll. Catherine Oseas, Johanna Russ, Matthew Peek, Dylan Gaffney

Approve  November 17, 2021  meeting minutes. Motion to approve. Seconded. Approved unanimously.

Updates

Chair, Heather Lanctot. Jasmine was asked about updates on the annual meeting and it looks like a decision about the meeting will probably not be made until February. Emergency fund ending today. 

Vice Chair, Laura Carroll. No updates other than newsletter, to be covered in Old Business. 

Website, Johanna Russ. No updates. Question about whether we could embed twitter on our microsite. Matthew has explored and it seems as if it is possible (on the sidebar) but functionality may be limited. 

Secretary & Social Media Coordinator, Dylan Gaffney. One twitter poll conducted about desired resources on mini-site. 7 answers with most listing Policy Examples as the most desired resource. Followed approximately 40 new accounts thanks to lists submitted by Heather and Dylan.

Outreach, Laura Carroll. No updates. Newsletter to be covered in Old Business.

Advocacy Resources, Matthew Peek. Will be covered in New Business.

Old Business

Newsletter - Laura

• Mock-up of newsletter as blog. Plugged in content from the last newsletter (as limited as it was) to compare Medium and WordPress. Both seemed very easy but in this test, WordPress was preferred for structure and look. We could use WordPress to push it out like a newsletter if people followed/subscribed (notifications would come with each post). We would have to pitch in to help post contributions. 

• Share draft content with Laura - Catherine to summarize Survey. Matthew has drafted a “Meet the Member” piece. 

• How do we move forward? How do we hear from members whether they would prefer a blog or a newsletter? Twitter? Email blast? Would a monthly post highlighting institutions work? Does that frequency sound doable and would it appeal to our audience and keep them coming back? How can we be sure we will have enough content? Posts can be scheduled in advance in the event that we get a flurry of submissions. Survey results have suggested that respondents wanted more communication, to hear more from us. They were not asked how they wanted that info communicated. Should we do a surveymonkey/google form poll through SAA Connect to get feedback on people’s preferences? Ask about the format and frequency desired. Heather will create a survey and we will send out a few times in the next month and we will discuss based on feedback in January. 

New Business

Twitter 

• Questions for polls - Resource categories desired. Light hearted polls like last year. Checking in again about the state of public libraries in the pandemic. Mask mandates? Are there notifications in place? A monthly venting thread? Address the great resignation? Test availability? Ask about staffing levels and support. With residual effects of parenting/quarantine rules, layoffs, etc If institutions are allowed to have students, workstudies, interns back. 

Resources page on Microsite - Wait until next month until we have more info on categories to be included.

• Create categories (5-10)

• Assign categories 

Speakers/Applying for funding from SAA - the form (with deadline of March 1st) seems more suited to creating a workshop, in collaboration with other groups, not to fund a speaker necessarily although the category is briefly listed in the document. California Library Association did a recent series on library advocacy. Would we want to create a workshop around advocacy and DEI work (how can we better advocate, for example, for more bilingual resources to explore our collections). Catherine had a suggestion of a group (Invisible Histories Project) to address how to increase LGBTQ+ collecting in our repositories and point potential donors to appropriate repositories. We could put on an event or workshop at SAA, possibly in collaboration with other sections on this topic. We should reach out ASAP and gather info on the group’s other programs and how they were structured and possible collaborations with other sections. 

Action Items

Jo will reach out to the Diverse Sexuality and Gender Section to ask about general interest.

Matthew, Dylan and Catherine will finish their newsletter drafts.

Send out 2 Newsletter surveys.

Matthew will start a spreadsheet of possible twitter poll topics in shared folder.

Jo will look into the possibility of embedding twitter content on mini-site.

Meeting Adjourned at 5:36PM.