2005 Annual Report

2004-2005 Student Members

Shannon Bohle – President
Mark Bloom - Treasurer
Helena Richardson – Secretary, Events Coordinator
Jodi Jameson – Public Relations Officer
Colin Mack – Historian
Megan Anderson
Caroline Bruno
Michael Collins
Nicole Laflamme
Pat Rainey
Anne Salsich
Nancy Tresch

Faculty Advisor: Roland M. Baumann

Contact: saa@kent.edu

CHAPTER MEETINGS AND EVENTS

February 15, 2005

The first meeting of the Kent State University Graduate Student Chapter took place. Members and prospective members were introduced to the archival profession by Roland Baumann, Archivist at Oberlin College and archives faculty member at KSU, during his talk “Initiating the Archival Experience.” The lecture was complimented by “Library Careers’ Night,” an annual event hosted by the School of Library and Information Science where information professionals visited the campus to discuss careers in librarianship and archival studies.

March 28, 2005

KSU students from the SAA and SOA student chapters spent the day in Cleveland. In the morning, students participated in two free grant writing workshops offered by The Foundation Center called “Grant Seeking Basics” and “Proposal Writing Basics.” The workshops were followed by an afternoon tour of the Cleveland State University’s Archives and Special Collections departments. Bill Barrow, Special Collections Librarian, and William Becker, University Archivist, led members on a tour which featured the Cleveland Memory Project as well as the Production Services Department, which plays a great role in digitizing archival photographs and audio recordings.

April 26, 2005

Daniel Pitti, who teaches courses on Encoded Archival Description (EAD) at the University of Virginia’s prestigious Rare Book School, gave a short talk and hosted a discussion on EAD via a telephone conference call. Mr. Pitti offered excellent observations about the future of digitized archival materials. Students in attendance ranged in experience with and knowledge of EAD from those who had newly entered the archives program without any exposure to EAD to those who had already taken an EAD workshop offered through the SAA.

May 10, 2005

The SAA Council approved Kent State’s student chapter.

Megan Sniffin-Marinoff, University Archivist at Harvard University, spoke to Kent State faculty, staff, chapter members, and student guests via phone conference about the character of archival and manuscript collections at Harvard. Ms. Sniffin-Marinoff was directly involved with the Google Print digitization project and specifically addressed the Google Print project and its potential effect on archives and manuscript collections at Harvard. She also talked about a major online archival digitization project focusing on the history of women in the United States’ labor force called The Hewlett Open Collections Program. This program involved the joint efforts of archivists, manuscript curators, and librarians. Her talk, “Digitizing Archives and Manuscripts at Harvard: What’s New?” was followed by an invigorating question and answer session.

June 8, 2005

A trip to the archives and preservation lab at Oberlin College is scheduled to take place.

INDIVIDUAL MEMBER ACCOMPLISHMENTS

• Anne Salsich, who holds a master’s degree in Public History from the University of California, Santa Barbara, was hired in October 2004 as the archivist at Ursuline College in Pepper Pike.  She is working on her MLIS at Kent State University.  She is also a subcommittee member of the Greater Cleveland History Digital Library Consortium. 

• Caroline Bruno , a musician and long-time fan of the orchestra, worked as an intern at the Cleveland Orchestra Archives.  In this position Caroline organized General Manager office records from the 1940’s as well as processed records of the annual music appreciation contest and educational concerts. She also transcribed an oral interview with the son of Mr. Landesmann, former photographer of the Cleveland Orchestra.  

• Shannon Bohle completed the SAA’s workshop on Encoded Archival Description taught by Michael Fox and Kris Kiesling in November 2004. In the spring of 2005, Shannon, along with two other students at Kent State, Nathan Troup and Mark Bloom, began work on a KSU-SAA cooperative effort to create the first online consortia database of archival internships in the United States. Shannon was selected to appraise, arrange and describe press kit materials covering the span of the U.S. space shuttle program at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio for her practicum experience during the summer of 2005; she was the first student selected for an archival practicum at NASA-Glenn.

CHAPTER ACCOMPLISHMENTS

• In just its first year, the Kent State chapter has become one of the largest SAA student chapters in the nation.