SAA Council Adopts Diversity Statement, Best Practices for Working with Researchers/Archives Employees with Disabilities

At its August 9 meeting held in conjunction with DC 2010, the SAA Council:

• Reviewed member feedback on the draft “SAA Statement on Diversity,” agreed to changes that help to explain its context vis-à-vis SAA’s strategic planning activities, and adopted the statement.
• Approved a Standards Committee recommendation to endorse "Best Practices for Working with Researchers/Archives Employees with Physical Disabilities," pending revisions regarding specific ADA facilities requirements.  The best practices documents were developed by the Archives Management Roundtable/Records Management Roundtable Joint Working Group on Diversity in Archives and Records Management.
• Discussed proposed revisions to the "Guidelines for a Graduate Program in Archival Studies" and referred the revisions to the Committee on Education for feedback.
• Discussed the revised "Core Values of Archivists" document prepared by the Task Force to Develop a Statement of Core Values for Archivists, agreed to minor language changes suggested by legal counsel, and charged staff to circulate the statement for member feedback, with a comment deadline of October 15.
• Discussed voting methods for dues increases, constitutional matters, and other issues of broad interest to the membership, and charged a subgroup of the Council and staff to develop options and recommendations for amending SAA’s Constitution to enable all members to participate in major organizational decisions via electronic voting.
• Approved a proposed revision to the mission statement of the EAD Roundtable.
• Discussed the history of institutional membership in SAA in light of an apparent inconsistency in “primary contact” benefits and referred questions to the Membership Committee for further analysis and recommendation(s).
• Reviewed and approved a proposal for Strategic Activity Plan monitoring by Council members.
• Reviewed officer, staff, and committee reports.  SAA Treasurer Aimee Felker reported that SAA ended FY10 with a net loss of $17,502.  Revenue fell short of budget by 4.23% and expenses were contained at 3.02% under budget.

At its August 14 meeting, the Council charged SAA Executive Director Nancy Beaumont to negotiate a contract renewal with MetaPress for continued hosting of American Archivist Online.

Minutes of the August 9 and 14 Council meetings will be posted on the SAA website no later than 60 days after the meetings. The SAA Council will meet again in Chicago in late January and late May.