2003 Annual Report

Student Members:
Hallie Jones, Co-Coordinator
Sophie Madej, Co-Coordinator
Amy Shaffer, Co-Coordinator
Amanda Pomicter, Webmaster
Kathryn Hensley
Kara Jackman
Andrew Newman
Dawn Schmitz

Activities:

February 13, 2003
Pittsburgh Records Managers Speak with SAA@Pitt members
On Thursday, February 13, two local records managers shared their experiences with the members of SAA@Pitt. The first speaker, William Ainsworth, Jr. of Buchanan Ingersoll, provided insight into records management in a legal environment. He spoke of streamlining processes so as to better serve his clientele in the fast-paced legal realm. The second speaker, Chris Nettrour of Federated Investors, offered a glimpse of the more mundane side of records management, detailing her work with arrangement and organization of her company's records, space issues, and her continuing education.

April 4, 2003
Panel Session Featuring Pitt Alumni
On Friday, April 4, SAA@Pitt presented a panel session of Pitt alumni, our peers who have entered the "real world." The panel members reflected on their experiences in the job market, their respective fields, and how their Pitt education has worked for them. Panelists included Jim Gerencser, '95, Archivist and Special Collections Librarian at Dickinson College; Dr. Bernadette Callery, '02, Museum Librarian at Carnegie Museum of Natural History; and Holly Mengel, '02, Project Assistant on the Dick Thornburgh Archives at the University of Pittsburgh Archives Service Center.

May 30, 2003
Panel Session on Collecting and Its Impact on Archives: "Collecting, Collectors, and Collections"
On Friday, May 30, SAA@Pitt presented a panel session on the phenomenon of collecting and how it affects archival practices. Panel members included Amy McCrory of the Cartoon Research Library at Ohio State University, Randall Szott, M.F.A. and a collector, John Smith of the Andy Warhol Museum, and Lee Stout of Penn State University. The panelists discussed the psychology of collecting, how their collections have been affected by collecting, and what they themselves collect.

November 14, 2003
SAASC joins Student Preservation Group 'Infinity' on tour of Iron Mountain NUS Facility
Infinity planned a trip to visit Iron Mountain's underground record storage facility and invited SAASC to join them. About a dozen students drove to Boyer, PA and, after passing through the security check, met with Tom Roth gave the students a brief presentation about the history of the storage facility, including both the development of the coal mine and its conversion into a records storage site. He then led them on a tour of selected vaults at the facility, allowing students to see storage rooms with different sizes, purposes, and environmental conditions.

November 21, 2003
Lecture and Social
On Friday, November 21, Dr. Richard Cox presented the opening lecture of a new lecture series, "Archives & Recordkeeping in the Digital Era: Lectures and Ruminations," which is co-sponsored by SAASC. Dr. Cox’s lecture, “Searching for Archival Knowledge: The Revolution in North American Archival Publishing in the 20th Century,” was adapted from a plenary address given to the Association of Canadian Archivists in June 2003, and surveyed and evaluated the changing patterns of archival publication and the impact on archival knowledge – including the tensions between scholars and practitioners – over the 20th century in North America. Drawing on his own work as SAA Publications Editor and as the author of many books (both manuals and monographs), Dr. Cox addressed the general state of archival knowledge and its future prospects as a result of these publishing changes. Afterwards, students joined Dr. Cox and fellow attendee & museum librarian Bernadette Callery for a social gathering at the Church Brew Works.

December 12, 2003
Lecture
On Friday, December 12, Bernadette Callery, Museum Librarian at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, presented the second lecture in the “Archives & Recordkeeping in the Digital Era” series, entitled “Endangered Data: Managing Sensitive Information in Virtual Museums.” Callery discussed the cumulative and often sensitive nature of museum collection records, and the increasing pressure to make those records available online to an unknown audience, focusing on how natural history museums have dealt with the problem of choosing which information to disclose and how to indicate the existence of additional information.