Spontaneous Scholarships for SAA/CoSA joint annual meeting: June 30 deadline

In 2011, Kate Theimer, who comes up with more good ideas in a single week than I typically manage in an entire year, started the Spontaneous Scholarships, an informal program that helps to defray the cost of attending the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists (SAA).  The scholarship pays only the conference registration fee -- applicants must pay their own travel, lodging, and meal costs -- and anyone who feels the need to ask for this form of support is welcome to do so. Kate collects the donations and awards the scholarships by drawing applicants' names out of a hat.  Spontaneous Scholarships helped make it possible for 26 students, new professionals, and other archivists in need to attend SAA's 2011 meeting in Chicago and for 34 people to attend the 2012 meeting in San Diego.

The deadline for applying for a Spontaneous Scholarship or donating to the Spontaneous Scholarship fund is June 30.  If you need a little help getting to the annual meeting this year, simply contact Kate, state that you're applying for a Spontaneous Scholarship, and let her know whether you're a regular or student member of SAA (NB: only SAA members may receive Spontaneous Scholarships). If you're interested in donating to the Spontaneous Scholarship fund, you have multiple options for doing so.  If you can donate only $5.00 or $10.00, that's okay. Every little bit helps.

And if you're going to the joint 2013 annual meeting of SAA and the Council of State Archivists (CoSA), which will be held in New Orleans on 11-17 August, here's a friendly reminder: Friday, 5 July is the deadline for registering at the Early Bird rate.  If you're a full member of SAA or CoSA and fail to register by 5 July, you'll have to pay an additional $50.00.  If you wait until after 15 July, you'll be on the hook for an additional $110.00.

Image: "Renascence" (1998) by Enrique Alferez, New Orleans Botanical Garden, New Orleans, Louisiana, 24 March 2010.

San Jose State SLIS colloquia

Every semester, San Jose State University's School of Library and Information Science offers a series of online colloquia that is freely accessible to anyone with an Internet connection and a modest array of hardware and software.  Information about the spring 2013 series has apparently been up for a bit, but I've been out of grad school so long that I've lost my once-profound connection to the rhythms of the academic calendar.  However, there's nothing like being appointed to a brand-new Staff Development Team to focus one's mind on free continuing education possibilities . . . .

Several of this semester's colloquia will be of interest to electronic records archivists and other information professionals seeking to preserve born-digital content.  Three of them will take place next week, and the fourth will occur in April:

Looking Back on the Preserving Virtual Worlds Projects
Henry Lowood, Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections and Film & Media Collections in the Stanford University Libraries 
Monday, 25 February 2013, 6:00-7:00 PM PST
This colloquium will be held in SJSU SLIS's Second Life virtual campus.  (You will need to establish a Second Life account and learn the basics of finding SLIS's "island" in order to attend.)

Digital Preservation for the Rest of Us: What's in it for Librarians and Library Users
Philip Gust, Stanford University -- Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe (LOCKSS) program
Tuesday, 26 February 2013, 12:00-1:00 PM PST
This colloquium will be held online via Collaborate Web conferencing (set-up info)

The Next Major Challenge in Records Management is Already Here: Social Media
Anil Chawla, Founder & CEO, ArchiveSocial
Tuesday, 26 February 2013, 6:00-7:00 PM PST
This colloquium will be held online via Collaborate Web conferencing (set-up info)

Professional Ethics for Records and Information Professionals
Norman Mooradian, VP of Information and Compliance, CookArthur Inc. 
Tuesday, 16 April 2013, 6:00-7:00 PM PST
This colloquium will be held online via Collaborate Web conferencing (set-up info)

If scheduling conflicts keep you from taking part in a colloquium you wish to attend, don't worry:  SLIS regularly posts Webcasts of completed colloquia on its website.

Need help addressing your e-records issues?

If one of your New Year's resolutions involves finally doing something about your electronic records, be sure to check out Preserving Electronic Records in Colleges and Universities: Getting Your Program off the Ground. This online workshop, which records and knowledge management expert Steve Goodfellow developed for the New York State Historical Records Advisory Board, will take about two hours to complete and covers a host of topics:

• E-records to be aware of in your environment
• Awareness of the issues
• Standards and other e-preservation initiatives
• Goals and strategies for your preservation efforts
• Disaster preparation and recovery planning
• Developing an action plan

As the title suggests, this non-technical workshop was originally developed for college and university archivists in New York State. However, the information it contains is relevant to archivists working in a variety of settings who are trying to figure out how to start addressing their electronic records issues, and the workshop videos -- which can be viewed in one sitting or in ten-minute increments as time permits -- and supporting materials are freely available to everyone with an Internet connection.

Help support diversity in the archival profession

Remember the Spontaneous Scholarships that Kate Theimer over at ArchivesNext started? Well, 94 generous people stepped up to the plate, and 26 happy archivists will have their Society of American Archivists (SAA) Annual Meeting registration fees covered as a result.

My esteemed colleague Terry Baxter over at Beaver Archivist has come up with an equally innovative way to direct donations to SAA's Mosaic Scholarship, which provides financial and mentoring support to minority students enrolled in graduate archival education programs: if SAA receives $1000 in Mosaic Scholarship contributions by 26 August, Terry will, with the help of select donors, shave off his luxuriant beard.

As Terry explains on Beaver Archivist, the more you give, the more you get:

• $any amount – listing on [Beaver Archivist] as a supporter of a more diverse archival profession
• $25 – all of the above, and your choice from Terry’s Bag o’ Ephemera; come see me and I’ll hook you up. If you’re not at SAA Chicago, send me an email at terryx66 [at] tmail.com and an address and I’ll mail you my choice. Shipping and handling included!
• $50 – all of the above and a picture of you, with the Beaver Archivist, on a special Facebook album dedicated just to diversity superstars. You can even hold the SAA chico bag if you want. If you’re not in Chicago, email me a head shot. I’ll photoshop something up.
• $100 – all of the above and snip the beard! You get a pair off scissors and the opportunity for mayhem. Who can resist that? Must be present or willing to authorize proxy snipper.
• $500 – all of the above and party with the Beav! An all expense paid weekend (transportation not included!) at the Beaver Den. Explore Portland’s food carts and microbrews. Take in a show. Sit on the fire escape while enjoying a tasty adult beverage and watching the lights of Portland. All on the Beaver Archivist’s dime. Tail-slapping optional.

I know times are pretty tough these days, but if you're in a position to do so, please help support this beautiful coming together of archives, diversity, and tonsorial practice. Make a donation to the Mosaic Scholarship via the SAA Web site or mail a check (be sure to note that you're donating to the Beaver Archivist's Mosaic campaign!) to SAA at 17 North State Street, Suite 1425, Chicago, IL 60602-4061.

Union label, Associated Master Barbers of America, 1938. Image courtesy of the New York State Archives. New York (State). Dept. of State. Union Label Registration Application Files, ca. 1901-1943. Series 12979-79, Box 3, Folder 9, No. 148.

Spontaneous Scholarships for SAA Annual Meeting

Kate T. over at ArchivesNext is a font of amazing ideas that would never in a million years cross my mind. A few days ago, she asked her Facebook friends and Twitter followers to contribute $20.00 each to help a grad student attend this year's annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists (SAA). The contributions quickly exceeded the cost of a single registration fee, and the Spontaneous Scholarships were born.

Here's the deal:

• If you would like to attend the annual meeting but don't have the resources to do so, contact Kate at info[at]archivesnext.com no later than midnight on Friday, 8 July. You do not need to explain why you are requesting one of these scholarships, but you must be an SAA member and note whether you are a regular or student SAA member. Kate will select scholarship winners -- and create a "waiting list" of applicants who will be funded if more donations are received -- by drawing applicants' names from a hat.
  
• If you are in a position to make a donation -- large or small -- to this effort, you can do so via PayPal (there's a handy link on the ArchivesNext homepage) or via snail mail (e-mail Kate for a physical address). Kate will accept donations received after 8 July, but please keep in mind that recipients will need some time to make travel arrangements and that 11 July is the Early Bird registration deadline.

Please note that the Spontaneous Scholarships are meant to defray the annual meeting registration fee and that recipients will be responsible for all travel and lodging costs. However, this is a great opportunity for people whose careers are just starting or are between jobs at the moment, and, as always, I'm once again astounded by the inventive way in which Kate identified a problem and unhesitatingly took practical action. The Spontaneous Scholarships won't fix the larger problem -- the manner in which the annual meeting registration fee inhibits students' and new archivists' participation in SAA -- but they will help several people who might not otherwise be able to attend this year's meeting.

I realize that times are tough and that donating to the Spontaneous Scholarships fund isn't an option for everyone. However, if you are able to do so, please consider making a contribution.

Image: Fireworks over the Empire State Plaza, Albany, New York, 4 July 2011, 9:03 PM.

Looking for a digital preservation workshop or course?

The Library of Congress's Digital Preservation Outreach and Education (DPOE) initiative has a new online calendar of online and in-person digital preservation courses and workshops offered by American academic institutions and professional associations.

At present, the calendar includes offerings from the following organizations:

• AIMS Project
  
• American Library Association
• Amigos
• Library of Congress
• Los Angeles Preservation Network
  
• Lyrasis
• National Association of Government Archivists and Records Administrators
• North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
• Northeast Document Conservation Center
• Purdue University Libraries
• Rare Book School
  
• Society of American Archivists

You can sort the offerings by title, start date, format (i.e., on site or online), location, and cost. You can also use this dandy Web form to add information about courses and workshops that your own organization is offering.

Despite our best intentions, efforts to publicize continuing education opportunities are sometimes scattershot or excessively localized. We've needed a calendar of this sort for quite some time, and I'm really glad that DPOE has created it. I plan to consult it frequently and add to it as appropriate. Please do the same.

Digital Preservation Management workshop, Albany, NY, 5-10 June 2011

On June 5-10, the University at Albany, SUNY will host the Digital Preservation Management: Implementing Short-Term Solutions for Long-Term Problems workshop.

This workshop, which is a radically revised and expanded version of the workshop (with accompanying online tutorial) that Nancy McGovern and Anne Kenney developed at Cornell University in 2003, is aimed at managers at organizations of all kinds who are or will be responsible for managing digital content over time. Nancy McGovern will be the lead instructor, and three other instructors will teach sections of the workshop. Theresa Pardo of the Center for Technology in Government will deliver a keynote address.

The workshop will begin on the evening of Sunday, June 5, continue Monday -Thursday from 9:00 AM- 5:00 PM, and conclude on Friday, June 10, at noon. The cost of registration is $950.00.

Additional information about the content and instructors is available at: www.icpsr.umich.edu/dpm/workshops/fiveday.html.

N.B.: Prospective attendees must submit an application. The application will be made available at http:// www.regonline.com/DPMworkshop-Albany2011 at 1:00 PM ET on Wednesday, 13 April (i.e., tomorrow!) and will be available until all 24 workshop slots have been filled. Applicants will receive notification of acceptance or denial within five business days of applying, and successful applicants will able to complete the registration process in early May.

Unfortunately, I won't be submitting an application: I'm not a manager, training funds are scarce these days, and I have a conflicting commitment. However, everyone who has attended one of these workshops has raved about the experience, and I obsessively studied the accompanying online tutorial when I first became an electronic records archivist. If you manage an archives, you should attend this workshop if at all possible. If you work with electronic records, you should strongly encourage your boss to attend this workshop.

Archival continuing education opportunities in New York's Capital District

If you're an archivist who lives or works in the Hudson Valley, southern Vermont, western Massachusetts, or eastern Connecticut, the following continuing education opportunities may be of interest to you.

17 March 2011, Albany: FREE Security Training
The New York State Office of Cultural Education Security Committee is hosting a special training event on the protection of cultural property. Entitled "Identifying and Responding to Both External and Internal Loss Incidents," this interactive session was developed by the National Archives and Records Administration’s new Holdings Protection Team and is being delivered to NARA branches throughout the country as part of their security initiative. Larry Evangelista, Michael Knight and Lee Johnson, members of NARA’s Holdings Protection Team, will present and facilitate this 90-minute version of the training session, especially customized for us. Topics include:

• Warning signs of external and internal theft
• Loss Prevention techniques for all types of facilities
• Policies and procedures for prevention strategy
• Communicating security concerns and incident response
• Strategies for interacting with the public when a theft is suspected
  

The session is Thursday, March 17, 2011 from 10:00am until 12:00pm, with a brief break. It will be held at the Cultural Education Center's Huxley Theater. The CEC is part of the Empire State Plaza in Albany, NY and is on Madison Avenue, across the Plaza from the State Capitol Building. For directions, public transit and parking information, visit http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/information/general/muswhere.html.

There is no cost to attend this presentation; however, reservations are required. To RSVP, please contact Brittany Turner at bturner-at-mail.nysed.gov call 518-473-0130 by Wednesday, March 15, 2011.

27 April 2011, Waterford: Fundraising for Preservation and Conservation Workshop
The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Conservation's Bureau of Historic Sites is hosting a fundraising workshop at its Peebles Island Resource Center (PIRC) headquarters.

Through thoughtful planning and effective grant writing, your organization can be competitive in the race for public and private funding to preserve cultural collections. This workshop will examine the planning process that funders want to see in place and the components that make a grant request compelling. With examples drawn from success stories at museums, historic sites, libraries, and archives, program participants will gain an understanding of how to effectively develop and implement a funding strategy to raise money for their collections.

The workshop will address:

• Planning: Moving from a preservation needs assessment to a funding strategy
• Potential funding sources: Triaging your time to focus on your best funding prospects
• Writing the request: Anticipating the funder's questions and answering them concisely
• Evaluation: Incorporating the new standards

Instructor Lee Price, Director of Development at the Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts, has worked as a fundraising consultant for many regional and national cultural institutions. He has written successful grant requests for preservation funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Save America's Treasures.

WATERFORD, NY - APRIL 27, 2011
Peebles Island Resource Center (PIRC)
Peebles Island State Park
Waterford, NY 12188
Driving directions are available at: http://nysparks.state.ny.us/historic-preservation/bhs/getting-there.aspx

Program times
8:45 AM - 9:15 AM Registration & Refreshments
9:15 AM - 4:45 PM Program
4:45 PM Optional tour of the Conservation Laboratory, PIRC, Waterford, NY [not to be missed!]

There is a program fee of $110, and registrations must be completed two weeks prior to the workshop date. Registration, secure credit card payment, and additional program information are available at:
www.ccaha.org/education/programm-calendar

• Lunch will not be provided. However, a list of local restaurants will be available and
• participants are welcome to bring lunch.
• Refunds will be given until two weeks prior to the program date, minus a $25 cancellation fee.
• If you have special needs, please contact CCAHA three weeks prior to the workshop date so that accommodations can be made.

The Academy of Certified Archivists will award five Accreditation Recertification Credits (ARCs) to eligible Certified Archivists (CAs) attending this program. For more information, go to: www.certifiedarchivists.org.

To learn more about CCAHA and its programs and services, please visit its website at www.ccaha.org. If you have any questions about this workshop, call CCAHA Preservation Services at 215-545-0613 or send an e-mail to pso-at-ccaha.org.

Upcoming electronic records workshops

Just in case you're interested:

• Next Thursday, 27 January, the Society of American Archivists (SAA) is offering a new workshop, Electronic Records - The Next Step! It will focus on "systems that any archives must put in place to ensure it can manage electronic records, it will cover how to prepare for and address a still uncertain future concerning the management of electronic records." The instructor is none other than my exceptionally knowledgeable and talented colleague Geof Huth, and you don't even have to leave home to benefit from his sage advice: this short workshop is being offered online, so there are no travel requirements, and it's being recorded so that you can register for and watch/listen to it after the fact -- just as you can register for and watch/listen to the Basics of Managing Electronic Records workshop that Geof taught last spring.

• On Thursday, 24 February, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC) is offering a new Practical Electronic Records workshop at Rutgers University. This all-day, in-person workshop will explore the basic components of an electronic records program, discuss how to address the human challenges of electronic records, examine open source and other software tools, and help participants develop an action plan for dealing with their electronic records. I'll be there with bells on: I'm the instructor. For more information about this workshop, see the MARAC Web site.
  

N.B.: Geof and I are developing these workshops independently of one another, and although I'm sure that there will be some points of overlap -- our views on all the big issues align pretty closely -- each workshop will contain lots of unique content.

Why you shouldn't become an archivist

There are lots of reasons to become an archivist: a passion for ensuring that the past is adequately documented, a desire to help people find information they need and want, and -- for those interested in working in government archives -- the need to safeguard the rights of citizens and to hold government accountable for its decisions and actions.

However, there are also some good reasons not to become an archivist, and Rebecca Goldman, who blogs over at Derangement and Description (and whom I got to meet at MARAC a couple of weeks ago--yay!) and Amy Schindler have produced a video that trenchantly and hilariously enumerates them.

As Rebecca cautions, this video doesn't provide the whole picture; it's best thought of as a counterweight to all the pie-in-the-sky pronouncements made by silver-tongued graduate school admissions directors. I nonetheless recommend it to anyone contemplating becoming an archivist, particularly at this economically grim moment in time. (Oh, and by the way, if you watch this video and still want to be an archivist, keep in mind that you'll not only be dealing with the voluminous paper records of the postwar era but also with the burgeoning electronic records of the digital age. Enjoy!)

I also recommend it to archivists who have the immense good fortune of having reasonably secure employment and extensive professional networks. It's all too easy for those of us who have somehow managed to establish ourselves to avoid thinking about how our profession looks to those going from contract job to contract job, working as technicians despite having mad archival knowledge and skills, or getting out of grad school at a time when the job market seems unremittingly wretched.

Finally, I would be remiss if I neglected to point out that this video isn't the only great thing that Rebecca has done lately. During the dozen-odd years I've been an archivist, I've been moved to tears twice by records that I've processed and once by a post on an archivist's blog. Rebecca's contribution to the It Gets Better Project is astounding, and you owe it to yourself to check it out -- and then share it with your friends.

Best Practices Exchange, day three: educating stewards of public information

The view from a rest stop, Interstate 10, south of Phoenix, Arizona, 1 October 2010.

This is the second of two posts relating to the Policy and Administration 7 session held at the 2010 Best Practices Exchange (BPE). The first part, which concerns the Vermont State Archives and Records Administration's functional classification system, is available here.

Helen Tibbo and Lori Richards discussed the Educating Stewards of Public Information in the 21st Century project, an Institute of Museum and Library Services-funded effort to create a joint MPA/MSIS and MPA/MSLS program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This initiative grew out of recognition that archivists, librarians, and other information professionals are responsible for the preservation of an ever-increasing amount of digital materials and must be able to advocate for digital preservation within the policy arena.

To date, two cohorts of students, one of which started last fall and one of which started a few weeks ago, have enrolled in the combined degree program. They will complete their degrees in three and a half years and will complete internships at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, the North Carolina State Archives, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Archives, or the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Environmental Finance Center.

Helen and Lori then highlighted the skills that 21st century information professionals either must or should have:

• Ability to write short, concise documents that officials will read and can understand
• Strong oral communication skills
• Ability to convince others that records management is important
• Ability to determine who to influence and to cultivate stakeholders
• Ability to develop a business case and to estimate the costs and benefits of programs
• Knowledge of national and international initiatives that inform one's professional activities
• Ability to evaluate policy and its implementation
• Ability to conduct macro-level appraisals (a point of overlap with the Vermont project that Tanya Marshall discussed during the first half of the session)
• Ability to advise government officials about both the technical and the social aspects of preserving and providing access to public information
• Understanding of the fundamentals of consensus building
• Knowledge of how government works and what the different parts of government are
• Knowledge of how the activities of government are conducted in an electronic environment
• Ability to engage in project planning, management, and evaluation
• Knowledge of information flows across the agency and between agencies
• Ability to engage in change management
• Understanding of the legal framework and the legal issues that impact stewardship of digital information

The attendees then engaged in a lively discussion about the need for these skills and the extent to which new archivists and librarians were (or, more accurately, were not) being prepared to meet 21st century challenges. Although a few of the points made consisted of the complaints that seasoned professionals always have about their newer and, in particular, their younger colleagues (e.g., "they don't know how to behave"), many of the comments were substantive and, in my opinion, completely accurate. They centered around three main areas of concern:

• People skills. Given that archivy and librarianship attract disproportionate numbers of introverts, it's not surprising that many new archivists and librarians have unpolished verbal communication skills. The attendees noted that public speaking is a particular problem area and wished that graduate programs devoted more attention to cultivating this skill; one noted that she has referred new colleagues to Toastmasters in order to ensure that they become polished speakers.
• Project skills. New archivists and librarians must be able to demonstrate the ability to develop workable projects and to see them through to completion. Unfortunately, at present, many library/information science programs do not devote sufficient attention to project management.
• Technological skill and comfort level. This is a particular concern of mine: even though future archivists will be responsible for preserving and providing access to an exponentially increasing volume of electronic records and the repository for which I work is located a few miles away from a university that educates future librarians and archivists, I have real difficulty finding interns interested in working with electronic records. Perhaps I'm overseeing some uninteresting projects, but several other attendees have encountered similar problems. Unfortunately, the archival profession is still attracting people who are not comfortable with technology and who want to work only with paper records. This does not bode well for the future.

All in all, a fascinating session, and one that made me start thinking that archival education really needs to change. When I commented during the session that many of the skills listed above were those that I would expect to find in an archivist who was in the middle, not the beginning of his or her career, Helen Tibbo noted that schools of government and public policy strive to ensure that students begin their careers with these skills in hand.

I'm starting to think that a two-year master's program simply isn't sufficient and that we as a profession will eventually have to commit to a three- or four-year graduate program or to a two-year introductory degree and an additional, perhaps mid-career advanced certificate or degree program. The list of skills that archivists need is growing and growing, and our education programs must expand accordingly.

Catching up

The American Southwest, as seen from Continental Airlines Flight 362, 28 September 2010, 4:44 PM Mountain Standard Time.

Sorry for the sparse posting as of late. I'm currently in Phoenix for the 2010 Best Practices Exchange (BPE), and getting ready to spend a few days out of the office took up all of my time. I'll be posting about the BPE during the next few days, but in the meantime here are a few things that you might want to check out:

• Earlier this evening, Academy Award^®-winning actor and passionate proponent of civics education Richard Dreyfuss received the 2010 Empire State Archives and History Award from the New York State Archives Partnership Trust. This morning, Dreyfuss spoke to WAMC morning host Joe Donahue about the award and the value of civics education, and you can listen to their discussion here. WXXA has just posted a brief clip of his
• In other Richard-related news, Digital Preservation Pioneer Richard Pearce-Moses, formerly of the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records, was the subject of a great profile concerning his new gig: he's the first director of Clayton State University's Master of Archival Studies program. Unlike most other American archival programs, the program that Richard is building is fully free-standing; it's not part of a larger library/information science or history program. It's going to be really interesting to see what Richard does with this program and whether it leads to the creation of more archives-centric graduate programs.
• The cover story of last Sunday's New York Times Magazine highlights the complicated, fraught, and -- there really no other word for it -- Kafkaesque custodial history of some of Franz Kafka's manuscripts.
• Microsoft expects that Blu-Ray discs will soon become obsolete, but Jason Mick at Daily Tech and Robert Butler of the Kansas City Star note that, for a variety of reasons, commercially produced Blu-Ray discs and DVDs will no doubt be around for a little longer than the entertainment industry might like.

Reading Archives reading group

Kate T. at ArchivesNext is a font of superb ideas about archival use of Web 2.0 technology, and her latest initiative is an online "group read" of Rand Jimerson's Archives Power: Memory, Accountability, and Social Justice. Kate's started a new blog, Reading Archives Power, that will serve as the vehicle for the group's discussion, and so far approximately 35 people -- a multinational mixture of new graduates and seasoned professionals -- have publicly expressed interest in participating. Rand Jimerson will also participate, so the discussion ought to be really stimulating.

There is no formal signup for the group, but if you are interested -- and I hope you are -- you will need to obtain a copy of Archives Power and start reading it before the discussion begins on 11 January 2010. (Tip from Kate T.: the Society of American Archivists bookstore is charging a lot less than Amazon and other retailers.) Although it's not absolutely necessary, you should also consider introducing yourself to the other members of the group and reviewing Kate's proposed discussion schedule.

I'm really looking forward to this discussion, and I hope to see you over at Reading Archives Power.

SAA 2009: Taking Archives to the Streets: Creating Sustainable Archives (Session 509)

Shoreline of Lady Bird Lake, Austin, Texas, as seen from the Congress Street Avenue Bridge, 14 August 2009.

There’s been a lot of talk at this year’s meeting about the need to reach out to local- and community-based archives, and my own interest in the subject led me to attend this session, which focuses on the Basics of Archival Continuing Education (BACE) curriculum developed by the National Forum on Archival Continuing Education and the American Association of State and Local History (AASLH). Several of my colleagues were actively involved in the development of BACE, I was consistently impressed by what I saw of it, and I wanted to learn how other archivists are using it.

Sandra Clark of the Michigan Historical Center discussed the development of BACE, which was intended to provide basic archival training for individuals from grassroots organizations, diverse communities, and allied professions by incorporating non-traditional approaches to delivery, the findings of adult education specialists, and leveraging technology. The workgroup (comprised of people from New York State, Ohio, Michigan, and AASLH) learned it was really hard to create a one-day workshop, sacrificed archival theory for archival practice, and used common English. It also focused on enrollees’ wants and needs, not what the group thought they should want and need, and took into account the differing needs and skills of instructors and students and the differences between the in-person and online environments. The end result: a workshop curriculum distributed to and available from all 50 state archivists and an online workshop offered by AASLH.

Sarah Canby Jackson of the Harris County (Texas) Archives detailed her use of BACE as an outreach tool for the archival profession. After Hurricane Katrina, archivists were confronted with the pressing need to educate people about the importance of local records, and BACE can play an important role in teaching local records holders to care for their records.

Jackson devoted the remainder of the session to offering some practical guidance for BACE instructors, many of which will be useful to presenters of other archival workshops

• If at all possible, share facilitation/teaching responsibilities with multiple archivists, which eliminates fatigue and promotes networking.
• Modify the curriculum to meet the needs and interests of your students (BACE makes it easy to do so). Do not attempt to present BACE without carefully reviewing it first!
• Plan in advance: determine your schedule, your enrollment cap (25-30 is ideal), whether you will charge a fee (and whether you will incorporate membership fees for an area archival organization into the workshop fee), whether you will provide lunch, and what will be included in the packets distributed to enrollees.
• Bring in supplies so that you can demonstrate actions.
• Interact with participants during breaks and lunch and cultivate relationships with them -- you want to encourage them to contact you if they encounter problems in the future.
• Figure out how you will publicize your workshop. I’ve done publicity via e-mail and flyers, local genealogical newsletters, and have targeted offerings to various constituencies (e.g., church groups, historical societies).

Shelly Henley Kelly of the University of Houston-Clear Lake outlined the results of several surveys documenting BACE’s use and reception. According to a Council of State Archivists survey, BACE’s distribution varies widely: some states have sent curriculum CD’s to every local government and historical organization, while others rely on their own training programs or can’t stray from their narrow legal mandates. Another survey indicates that BACE attendees are drawn from a wide array of backgrounds: religious groups, community organizations, local historical associations, historians who hoped to figure out how to locate records, genealogists, librarians with archival duties, paraprofessional staff, volunteers, and student assistants, and local government personnel. Moreover, a survey of Houston-area enrollees indicated that all of them were confident about their ability to work with archival records, find records in a repository, and many had contacted their instructors after the course. All of them saw the course as worthwhile, and many of them wanted more in-depth information about processing.

During the brief discussion that followed, Elizabeth Dow offered an interesting observation: she and her colleagues in Louisiana piloted BACE by allowing people to work through the curriculum CD in a classroom and then drawing them into a discussion. They discovered that people really liked working through the CD at their own pace but needed to be in a room together; people attempting to review the materials by themselves tend to lose their enthusiasm. I hope that other archivists experimenting with new ways of delivering training make use of this insight.

I really liked the practical thrust of this session, which packed a lot of valuable information into a 60-minute timeslot, and I'm glad I dragged my sleep-deprived self out of bed for it.

"I was an archivist, yeah."

The Democracy Now Web site has just posted audio, video, and text versions of host Amy Goodman's 2004 interview with U. Utah Phillips, who died in May 2008. In it, Phillips looks back on his life as a rail-riding teen and young adult, soldier, peace activist, labor activist, anarchist, folksinger -- and archivist for the State of Utah.

Phillips became an archivist at some point in the 1960s, but was fired in 1968, when he ran for the U.S. Senate on the Peace and Freedom ticket. Although Phillips never again worked in a repository, his archival work left a lasting impression:

AMY GOODMAN: So, you were an archivist in Utah?

UTAH PHILLIPS: I was an archivist, yeah. I handled 75,000 cubic feet of public records. For an information junkie, that’s heaven. Yeah, I loved studying archival science, and I still have a library in my home that I curate, my own little research library of popular antiquities. And that’s where my mind lives when I’m at home.

In the interview, Phillips went on to denounce electronic records, which he viewed as dangerously unstable and vulnerable to alteration, and asserted that corporations had deluded libraries and archives into investing in digital technology. It's painfully obvious that Phillips hadn't engaged with the ever-growing body of archival literature relating to electronic records -- and that his politics led him to view digitization and electronic recordkeeping solely as conspiracies perpetrated by rapacious corporate interests -- but it's also plain that he continued to think about archival issues and to seek out archivists and librarians well after he gave up hope of finding another archival position.

To me, the most remarkable thing about Phillips's brief archival career is that he was hired in the first place: after high school, he joined the Army, moved from town to town, and then spent eight years at a Catholic Worker house in Salt Lake City. In 2009, his chances of getting archival job would be slim to none.

There's a running debate within the profession as regards the appropriate educational background for archivists. Should obtaining a master's degree be a prerequisite for obtaining a professional position? If so, should it be in history, library/information science, or archival science? What about dual-degree programs? Can on-the-job experience and immersion in the professional literature compensate for the lack of an advanced degree or an advanced degree in the "wrong" subject?

Even though I fall a few credit hours short of the mark, I believe that a dual M.A. in history and M.S. in library/information/archival science is the optimal credential. However, at times I wonder what we as a profession are losing as a result of our increasing emphasis upon having the "right" graduate degree(s). Will the profession eventually be dominated by people who have little experience of life beyond academe, and, if so, how will this situation affect our ability to document society in all of its complexity?

Having spent the better part of my twenties in a history Ph.D. program, I'm not exactly swimming against this particular tide. I nonetheless think that there should be a place in our profession for people with non-traditional backgrounds. I know lots of great archivists who have only one master's degree or bachelor's degrees and decades of work experience. There are also lots of people who become de facto archivists because they are passionate about the history of their communities or organizations or think that professional archivists have somehow fallen down on the job. We should reach out to these folks, some of whom instinctively "get" the basics of archival theory and want guidance re: preservation, etc.; doing so is one of the goals of the SAA roundtable that I currently co-chair.

Perhaps promoting archives as a second career would help to ensure that the profession remains grounded in the real world. I know plenty of people who went back to school and became archivists after doing other things: teacher, realtor, director of a non-profit organization, social worker, independent bookstore owner, seminarian, secretary, nurse, potter, actor, stay-at-home dad. All of them bring their past experiences to bear upon their current work (e.g., the former non-profit head knows the world of grants like the back of her hand).

Endowing a scholarship or two for prospective archivists entering the profession after at least a decade of doing something else might help, albeit in a small way, by supporting the education of a few archivists and raising the profile of the archives-as-second-career option. Maybe we could even figure out a way to pull a few wayfaring musician/agitators into the fold . . . .