This session focused on how reporting structures within the library and archives, as well as how restructuring of units or departments can present opportunities for archivists.  The key take-aways from the presenters were: 1. Consider how the cultural divides that exist across units will be effected by a restructuring. 2. How can we use the […]

To finish day 1 of SAA, I went to my first Research Libraries meeting. Boy am I glad I did! It was great to hear so many positive tales of collaboration across library departments in the face of budget cuts due to the Great Recession. As Tom Hyry characterized the current landscape, as we’ve emerged […]

I finished out my time at the unconference with a great discussion about the opportunities and barriers to collaborating with subject librarians when designing and teaching instruction sessions. I’m a big proponent of collaboration with library colleagues (see previous posts about a processing pilot project that paired catalogers with reference librarians, etc.) In 2013 I […]

This morning I kicked off my week at SAA with the TPS Unconference. The first morning workshop: “Trigger Warnings” addressed key issues related to presenting mature content to archival and museum users. Most interesting to me was the presentation about the AIDS America traveling exhibit that was displayed at Kennesaw State University. Katy Malone discussed the […]

Presenters shared their exeriences implementing ArchivesSpace. Several key issues and opportunities emerged. The central challenge was Data clean-up- at the University of Rochester we only had plain html records and we’ve chosen to outsource conversion work to a vendir to avoid this kind of time intensive work. We have yet to upload legacy accession records, […]

This session focused on terminating specific programs or services in the archive or library. Key themes included: improved efficiencies, twenty-first century library user needs and expectations, and adhering to or implementing archival best practices. Rebecca Goldman touched on a very important issue when she asked us to consider: if special collections are expected to be […]

This session provided by a theoretical framework and practical advice for new or experienced managers. In Sasha Griffin’s remarks she asked us to consider the balance between what’s good for the institution and what’s good for the archives? I think that an archive and library always needs to work to be alignment with the broader […]

Today ended with the RAO section meeting. In the Marketplace of Ideas, I heard about a class scheduling system developed at Harvard, from Emilie Hardman. This is an open source platform that you can access through GitHub. Through this system faculty can schedule classes in the archive, which removes the back and forth nature of […]