2004 Annual Report

Aimée Primeaux, President
Maggie McNeely, Vice-President (Fall 2003)
Benjamin Johnson, Vice-President (Spring 2004)
Deborah Sager, Secretary (Fall 2003)
Timothy Muldoon, Secretary (Spring 2004)
Joy McNally, NEA Liaison
Jeremy Schmidt, ARMA Liaison (Fall 2003)
Nicole DeAngelo, ARMA Liaison (Spring 2004)
Jeannette Bastian, Faculty Advisor

The Simmons College Student Chapter of the Society of American Archivists (SCoSAA) spent much of the 2003-2004 academic year planning for the 2004 SAA conference, to be held in Boston. In preparation for this we have organized the student poster session, recruited volunteers, and helped plan the student events, such as the “mixer” and the “student forum.” We will also be co-hosting a Simmons alumni/student mixer. Gregor Trinkhaus-Randall, chair of the host committee, spoke at our April meeting, and Aimée Primeaux served on the host committee.

In addition to planning for the conference we had our annual fall potluck at faculty advisor Jeannette Bastian’s house where everyone showed off their culinary expertise. An e-newsletter was sent out every month after meetings so that members could keep up with events from a distance. A WebCT discussion was also started for SCoSAA events or concerns. Our fall panel “Who Is an Archivist Anyway?” was a success, answering many questions that new students had about the profession. Our spring panel was entitled “Convergence and Conflict: Digital Records in the Real World.” This panel was hosted in conjunction with the student chapter of ASIS&T, and both librarians and archivists participated. In April SCoSAA also hosted a discussion on digital asset management at the iForce center at WGBH.

Our ongoing project that was started in 2003 is the “Student Organization Records Project” which is concerned with the retention of graduate student organization records at Simmons. It is our opinion that if awareness of the importance of these records is impressed on both library and archives students, they will be more likely to give them to the Simmons College archives. Nicole DeAngelo, ARMA liaison, drafted up a records retention schedule, and met with various heads of organizations to actively look through their documents. Jason Wood, records manager at Simmons, attended our March meeting and will take the records at the end of each academic year.

SCoSAA members are very involved in the Boston archival community; they are working in repositories, interning and volunteering. Representatives attended both the ARMA and NEA conferences, and will be well spoken for at the upcoming SAA conference. There is always more we wish we could do, but each event was a success, and the Simmons SCoSAA chapter is a growing community of future archivists.