No Sleep Till Austin!

Hey everyone:  

Just received the following message from Jacquelyn Ferry:  

I am very pleased to inform you that the Student Program Subcommittee for Sustainable Archives:  AUSTIN 2009, the Joint Annual Meeting of the Council of State Archivists and the Society of American Archivists, has accepted your student chapter paper proposal.  

So, let's give ourselves a quick pat on the back and cross a few more hours of sleep off of our schedules.  With everything going on at present, we need to come strong (remember, we'll be representing Sixburgh).  

SAA Conference Proposal

Here's the proposal that I submitted last month, so you all know what you signed up for.

The Society of American Archivist Student Chapter at the University of Pittsburgh would like the opportunity to present a poster at this year's SAA Conference in Austin, Texas. In discussion concerning this year's conference theme, Sustainable Archives, we were influenced by the recent economic crises that have affected nearly every aspect of American society over the past year. The increasing unavailability of credit, grants, and revenues across all sectors of the economy put many archives at risk as corporations, non profit institutions, and governments all seek cost reductions. This has thrown into sharp relief the need for archivists to demonstrate the value of the collections they maintain. To this end, we propose a poster documenting our research into the creation and application of materials for archive evaluation, specifically in the area of user surveys. We will review the literature currently available as well as draw directly on the experiences of many of our members currently working in the profession, some of which are already being asked to justify their project's existence. By incorporating existing frameworks available and addressing concerns as they appear in the institutional, private, and corporate archives in which we work, we hope to develop a survey that is sufficiently flexible to serve as a standardized tool throughout the profession and sufficiently structured to allow for meaningful comparison and contribute to the efforts of others exploring this aspect of archives. The poster will document our research and developments observed in the field as well as our findings and recommendations.

General Meeting on Wednesday 2/11/09, and info about Field Trip

Just a reminder that there will be a SAA meeting at 3pm this Wednesday in room 502 of the SIS building. There is a meeting in there before us so we may have to mill about in the hall outside a for a few minutes.

For people attending the after hours tour of the Heinz History Center on Friday, below you'll find a Google Map with a few example bus times from Oakland.


View Larger Map

FIELD TRIP!!!

I talked to David Grinnell, Chief Archivist at the Heinz History Center. We are scheduled for a tour on February 13th starting at 5:00 PM. We need a loose estimate of how many people will be in attendance. So if people could start RSVP-ing (Tim, can we perhaps get this out in a group email?) that would be wonderful. The museum is located in the Strip District on Smallman Street, which is just a block over from Penn Ave. It is in between 11th and 12th Street. The address is 1212 Smallman Street, Pittsburgh PA. If you use Google Maps it gives directions for using public transportation.

Thanks

Justin

Proposals for Poster/Paper Presentations

As we discussed at the last (1/14/09) meeting, proposals for poster and paper presentations at the SAA Conference this August are due at the end of January. We'd like to use the comments of this space as a forum for discussion before we meet again next Wednesday to finalize a definite proposal (or potentially proposals if there is enough interest). This is just an informal brainstorming space, no need to come up with an abstract, just kick around some ideas.

First SAA Meeting of 2009

Happy New Year All, better late than never I suppose.
We'll be having an general body SAASC meeting this Wednesday, January 14th at 3 o'clock in room 501 of the IS building. We plan to keep the meeting to 40-45 minutes, and one of the things we'd like to do is break up into small groups/sub committees to discuss separate ideas.

One of the small groups will discuss potential presentation/session ideas for the SAA conference in Austin coming up in August. Proposals for student groups are due at the end of January, and we'd need to get a feel for who is interested and what other ideas they might have about potential topics.

Another point we'd like to deal with in small groups is potential field-trip spots. We already have two in the works and we'll announce those on Wednesday but we would like to hear what other places would be of interest.

Outside of that there will also be an opportunity to discuss any other potential activities and also form small groups exploring those as well.

Cheers and see you Wednesday.

To describe at the item level or not to describe at the item level, is that the question?

Last monday was a strangely bookended day for me and the rest of you who have the "hat-trick" Intro to Archives, Intro to Technology, and Intro to Preseveration. In the morning, Dr. Callery and Dr. Cox drove home the message: "forget about item-level archival description," while Joel Blanco-Rivera in Preservation talked about archival digitization, which, he points out, requires that same much-maligned "item-level description." What is an archivist to do?

I haven't figured it out, but, based on a brief conversation with Dr. Tomer and some internet searching, here are some thoughts on the issue:
1) each side is probably looking at different literature, and probably have different ideas of "archives" in mind when they make their predictions or warnings
2) while not everything that is in traditional, physical media form will be digitized (especially with current technology), more and more - Joel said 93% - of information is being "born-digital", which is more available for item-level description through metadata schemes, etc.
3) new technology, such as this , this , or this represent the constantly advancing field of digital scanning, which should remind us that we don't know exactly what the future holds for the technology (while we should avoid the allure of futurism and technological determinism).
4) supply and demand: as online access to library and archival holdings increases, digitization and the loved/hated item-level description will happen where there is demand for it, consider the large amount of photographic material already available online because of the interest in photography supported by sites like Flickr - ex: Library of Congress.