Society of American Archivists

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 […]

I decided to branch out for the roundtable meeting this afternoon and went to the College and University meeting. We divided into small groups for discussion, which was great because we then got to talk meaningfully with a few people and get to know one another. In addition to groups who discussed establishing the value […]

The session on exploring the digital divide began with three provocative questions: 1. Are digital archivists hired into situations where they are expected to do “all the digital stuff”? What potential effects might that have? 2. If one person does “all the digital stuff” how do others in the institution build these skills? Does this […]

I’m a proud member of RAO, or the Reference, Access and Outreach group. Yesterday I participated in the second year of the “Marketplace of Ideas” where there are six stations and participants get 15 minutes at one of four stations during the meeting. I contributed to the recent survey about archivists’s use of primary sources […]

I started my Thursday afternoon with Exploring the User Experience with Digital Primary Source. Sherri Berger, Rachel Hi, Jody DeRidder, Donghee Sinn and Roger Schonfield spoke about their different user research projects. Across their presentations was the common theme that researchers want more- more digital content. While this may not surprise us, it seems that […]

I spent my lunch time on Thursday talking about SAA’s strategic plan with President elect Danna Russell and several members of council. Only a few other SAA members came and despite the low turn out we had a great discussion about key areas in the strategic plan. Most important to me is SAA’s objective: to […]

I kicked off Thursday with the session about succession planning, or how to plan for the time when key staff members with years of tenure retire or move on. Nancy Bartlett defined succession planning as, the recruiting, training, development of staff to fill key positions. She argued that within this kind of planning there is […]

I ended the day on Wednesday with the SNAP roundtable. There were two panels, one related to the DAS program and the second about being a project archivist. My big takeaway from the DAS panel was that by taking classes you can better articulate to your IT folks what your needs are. I wonder though […]