2021-01-13 Steering Committee Meeting Minutes

 Agenda and Minutes

Original date: January 6, 2021

Meeting postponed to: January 13, 2021

Attendees:

April Feldman (Communications Manager)

Allison Fischbach (Student Member)

Tori Maches (Chair)

Kiera Sullivan (Secretary)

Melissa Wertheimer (Vice-Chair)

Ryder Kouba (Education Coordinator)

Agenda items:

 I. News/Questions/Announcements?

A. Community Webs call for applicants (Tori)

1. A past steering committee member emailed Tori about sharing out Community Webs’ call for applicants, but CW has already been emailing the listserv, so they’ve got it covered. 

2. Retweets welcome, however!

II. New Business

A. Rapid-response web archiving (Tori)

1. Passing along “how to nominate” info from Archive-it

a. IIPC Covid collection https://archive-it.org/collections/13529 

b. Examples of event-based collections (but institutional ones)

2. Tori noted that there are both short and long-term web archiving activities surrounding rapid-response collecting.

a. Short term: Contributing to the Archive-it spreadsheet / nominating seeds.

b. Long-term: Starting wider conversations about how to handle it, relationship/mechanism-building, putting together resource lists.

3. The following discussion took place (for a compilation of our main questions to be posed to Archive-it, see the Questions for Archive-it document here:

B. Allison asked if there is some kind of deadline for this collaboration with Archive-it, and if we have the capacity right now to lead a discussion/presentation. Additionally, what would need to provide/prepare? Tori noted that a series of discussions on this would be an excellent long term goal, and that an informal conversation to talk it through would be appropriate for the short term.

C. Melissa further noted that right now, Archive-it wants our section to contribute seeds. She raised the following questions for Archive-it: How do we do that? What do we say to our members? How do we get recognition for our contribution? Where will the collection be accessible? Where is the spreadsheet for contributing seeds? Melissa also raised concerns about members duplicating efforts of other contributors.

D. Tori forwarded the email with the spreadsheet link to the steering committee members. She stated that it will be a discrete collection available through the Archive-it interface.

E. Melissa asked the following questions concerning guidelines: Does Archive-it have limits in terms of scoping? Will there be any appraisal of proposed seeds? Are there any guidelines for suggesting seeds? 

F. Melissa then provided examples of possible considerations: Do they allow nominations from journalism articles behind paywalls? Dynamic media? Reddit posts, twitter hashtags, specific twitter accounts? Only primary source stuff? Just through American sources? Or also commentary/reception/perception of this American event through international eyes?

G. Tori agreed that we need guidance from them as to what kinds of seeds they are hoping for. She pointed out that Archive-it provided example collections in their email, but not the kinds of details we need.

H. Allison suggested that we ask about their internal controls, and what will be done with the seeds list. Will they just plug all the nominations in and crawl them?

I. Tori raised the considerations of left wing and right wing press, misinformation, and hate speech. Will there be flagging for any of that?

J. Ryder suggested a long term project of contacting OCLC/Jackie Dooley and asking for a workshop, webinar, or blog post about metadata with this collection as an example.

K. Kiera suggested that we define our short-term goals. She suggested

1. Sending an email and setting up a call with Archive-it,

2. Calling membership to collaborate once we have some more guidance,

3. Scheduling a coffee chat in the very near future to discuss the project and rapid-response web archiving, generally.

L. Kiera mentioned that she is particularly concerned about intellectual property issues and how Archive-It is going to handle that.

M. Melissa wondered about the column on the spreadsheet asking for contributors’ names. Are they wanting personal names, or an indication that they are SAA WAS members? What are they doing with that information? On a related note, will SAA WAS be recognized as a collaborator?

N. Allison and Tori mentioned privacy concerns of our members. Allison indicated that we could act as intermediary and field the seed recommendations, then submit them to Archive-It.

O. Kiera recapped the questions that the group had generated so far, and indicated that she will create a concise list of the questions and link them to these minutes.

P. Melissa asked if Archive-it has a workflow model for this kind of collecting. Tori pointed to their IIPC Covid collection https://archive-it.org/collections/13529. Ryder pointed to their Fake News collection https://archive-it.org/collections/12099. Logistical answers are needed so that the seed list can be useful.

1. ACTION: Kiera will type up our questions for IA and post to our shared Google Drive by 1/14/21. Tori will get an email/call invitation out to IA by 1/15/21.

2. Tori suggested we move to business from last meeting. The group agreed.

III. Business from last meeting

A. Blog content ideas document (Kiera)

1. We have received new ideas for submissions!

2. April informed the group that she has scheduled a two-part series of blog posts (February and March) but that we do not have a post ready for January (next week). We also did not get one out in December.

a. Ryder stated that a colleague has some articles pre-written and ready to go.

b. ACTION: April will email Ryder and ask him to reach out to his colleague about the blog post for next week.

c. Melissa noted that information from our call with IA can yield a blog post, as well.

d. April suggested that we all get a head start on our own blog posts. The group agreed.

B. Questions/ideas to discuss with Jess Farrell from the Committee on Public Policy, who will be a guest at our February meeting. (Tori)

1. Tori asked if we had received any questions from membership for COPP/Jess Farrell, and if we would want to send out another call.

a. April indicated that we had not received any responses to that call for questions.

b. The group agreed that we should get people involved and interested before we send out another call for policy-type items.

2. Kiera suggested that the response to our election survey would make for some good topics to chat about. The group agreed; Tori pointed out that it would be good to show her/COPP what our membership is interested in and thinking about.

C. Microsite broken links

1. Tori stated that someone emailed her about a broken link on the microsite. As people find them, we will forward them to the webmaster.

The meeting was adjourned.