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I had the great opportunity to speak on a panel this afternoon about a pre-college course I co-developed with a graduate student at the University of Rochester, Hands on history: telling stories with stuff. We’ve taught this class two summers in a row and during the two week session we expose high school students from all […]

During lunch I went to a discussion about facilities planning in light of new stardards coming out of the committee. Key take-aways included: Talk with your building manager as prjects get underway to ensure that the needs of special collections are met as best as possible during all construction or renovation projects. Determine what your […]

For the morning session I heard Mark Myers from the Texas State Library and Archives talk about key questions and considerations for digital archives. He encouraged us to think about how to best provide access to these records when trying to protect the privacy of the donor? Key considerations include: where we store our records […]

I went to three unconference sessions during the afternoon. The first was about taking collections on the road. The road can be upstairs to a different department, to another building on campus or out for a traveling exhibit or exhibit loan. Several concerns came up, including: security, environment, and bang for the buck. At the […]

I’m kicking of SAA 2015 with an unconference. Lee Ann Potter offered her thoughts to start the day. She’s the Director of Educational Outreach at the Library of Congress. She encouraged us to consider what can’t special collections teach us? In short, her message was that primary sources all teach us something and support scholars […]

The last session of the conference ended on a hig note for me, as I got to hear about how six different repositories are implementing ArchivesSpace. Several of the biggest challenges articulated by the speakers included: Developing new workflow documents to ensure adoption across staff or departments. Balancing technical infrastructure and support limitations or competing […]

Raising critical questions about the future of our profession and the current climate for new professionals, this session offered numerous points of views and perspectives about entering the archives field. Several take-aways included: Consider the benefits of the informational interview. Think about what skills or experiences you’d like to gain, and then seek out professionals […]

Sands Fish presented the plenary this morning and shared with us his ideas about connections across communities made possible by networked information. Fish described projects going on at both the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, ad well as MIT’s Center for Civic Media. Fish described the project Promise Tracker, which encourages civic […]