I went to the Advancing the Ask: Proactive Acquisitions for the Modern Age. Mark Cave talked about his work with first responders after Hurricane Katrina. He conducted oral history interviews to capture their experiences dealing with the storm and the aftermath. Kate Donovan talked about her work at University Archivist at Emory with documenting recent student protests on campus. The last speaker was Chela Scott Weber and she presented her work with the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Several themes emerged from these presentations:
1. The importance of listening to your target donors.
2. Educate your potential donors to distinguish your work from that of a campus administration, national/local media.
3. Be comfortable or get comfortable relinquishing control to collect more widely.
Chela shared her belief that the “totality of collection is greater than the sum of its parts.” We must accept that we may not be able to collect all of the documentation of an event or organization that we’d like to especially given the prevalence of social media and web content. But by sharing some collection development responsibility with targeted donors or groups, we can work to develop relationships that may yield fruit in the months or years to come.