short blogs – Issues & Advocacy

ICYMI: #NoHateALA

Brought to you by Vice Chair Courtney Dean on behalf of the Issues & Advocacy Section Steering Committee

During the 2018 ALA Annual Conference, ALA Council passed an amendment to the Library Bill of Rights that explicitly defended the right of hate groups to use library meeting room spaces. For the full text, see the information on ALA’s site.

This is something the I&A Steering Committee has been following closely. While neither SAA or I&A have made official statements on this issue, the Steering Committee felt it important to provide our membership with a roundup of information, resources, and petitions related to the recent ALA controversy. We searched for links from a variety of perspectives and found the below, listed in alphabetical order by title. Please feel free to leave links to additional readings in the comments.

Draft Resolution to Rescind Meeting Rooms: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights, Melissa Cardenas-Dow and other ALA Councilors

Further Response on ALA OIF Hate Group definition response, unsigned

Libraries Can’t Afford to Welcome Hate, Alessandra Seiter

My Bought Sense, or ALA Has Done It Again, April Hathcock

Petition to Revise ALA’s Statement on Hate Speech & Hate Crime, authored by the We Here community

Rethinking “Intellectual Freedom”, Carrie Wade

We Oppose Welcoming Hate into the Library: An Open Letter to ALA, Concerned Archivists Alliance

July 24, 2018June 23, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: ICYMITags: ALA, Concerned Archivists Alliance, Google Workspace, racial diversity, racial oppression, short blogs, Whiteness Leave a comment

End-of-Year Steering Share: Accomplishments and What’s Next

Steering Shares provide an opportunity to learn more about the I&A Steering Committee and the issues that the committee members care about. This post comes from soon-to-be-outgoing (but still current!) I&A Chair Rachel Mandell, Metadata Librarian at the University of Southern California Digital Library.

Though we are not quite down to the final moments of the year (in terms of the SAA leadership schedule), we are indeed approaching the final push and thus, as I&A Chair, it is my final Steering Share. First of all, I want to thank everyone on the Steering Committee for being such a great team. You were all vital components of the work that we accomplished this year and working with you all was such a treat! I can’t wait to see/meet all of you in August!

I wanted to take this opportunity to briefly recap everything that we worked on this year and what we hope to continue next year.

Projects accomplished this year:

Blog series: Probably our most focused project. We really tried to add valuable content to each of our 3 blog series.
- Steering Shares: Each Steering Committee member writes 3 posts throughout the year
- Archivists on the Issues: 3 contributors each writes 3 posts about a topic of their choice.
- Research Teams: Two research teams each write 3 posts.
  - News Monitoring Team: This year, the News Monitoring Research team, led by our very own Steve Duckworth, created monthly updates as well as more focused posts.
  - Legis* Team: We revamped the Legislative Research teams this year. We encouraged each member on the team to monitor topics of interest relating to legislation, legislators, and/or resources relating to discovering information.
  - Also had some additional guest contributors like Eira Tansey and international blog follower François Dansereau
#AskanArchivist Day: Our Steering Committee participated by taking turns monitoring our Twitter feed. It was great fun!
Social Media: Our amazing I&A Intern, Samantha Brown, took on handling our social media—and she rocked it! Thanks, Samantha! See us on Facebook and/or Twitter!
Archives Design Share Portal in collaboration with the Regional Archival Associations Consortium (RAAC): Just getting started with collaborators at RAAC—hoping to get more going soon!
Collaboration with DLF’s Labor Working Group: Two phone calls to touch base and a possible project on the horizon!
SAA Advocacy groups quarterly calls. Keep each other informed, run ideas by each other. Also helped CoPP edit /update SAA’s public policy agenda
Developing program for section meeting at Annual Meeting

Projects to continue next year:

Continue the blog series tradition!
Collaboration with DLF
Temporary labor in libraries/archives survey/study
Archives Design Share Portal

While in many ways it seems like I wasn’t able to accomplish as much as I wanted, I also definitely feel proud of what we did work on this year and the new projects that we got started on. I look forward to watching Courtney Dean, our esteemed Vice-Chair, who was really more of a co-chair, take over next year.

April 27, 2018November 29, 2023 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Steering ShareTags: COPP, Eira Tansey, legislation, RAAC, Research Teams, short blogs, social media, temporary labor 1 Comment

Steering Share: University Archivists and advocacy

Steering Shares provide an opportunity to learn more about the I&A Steering Committee and the issues that the committee members care about. This mid-year post comes courtesy of committee member Alison Stankrauff, the University Archivist at Wayne State University

I’ve been on the Issues and Advocacy Section’s Steering Committee since 2009 (a long time!) and I was chair of I&A from 2010 to 2012. There are a lot of things that drive me as a professional.

Here at Wayne State I’m fairly new as a professional – I began here this past September – so I’ve been here six months. That being said I’m coming back to Wayne State after receiving my archives degree here in 2002. I went away and served in two great positions between then and now – first as a Reference Archivist at the American Jewish Archives and then as Archivist and Associate Librarian at Indiana University South Bend.

Coming back to Wayne State – the university that I feel so deeply for – that I feel has given me the profession that I love – is a real honor, and an opportunity. I’m coming back in Wayne State’s sesquicentennial year – so there’s been a lot of celebration of this great urban university in the heart of the wonderful city of Detroit.

Coming back to Wayne State as a full-blown professional with some great experience under my belt has enabled me to have the perspective and scope to connect with people all over the world who love Wayne State just as much as I do. These include the immediate campus community – university schools, departments, offices – and their faculty, students, staff, administrators. It also includes a lot of people who feel very connected to the university for many reasons: alumni as well as the community beyond.

I feel that being a University Archivist – first for 13 good years at Indiana University South Bend and now at my alma mater of Wayne State – means advocating for your repositories and always, always reaching out. It’s critical that we are actively connecting with all the – varied – communities that we serve.

We must let people know who we are, why we’re important, and show our value. We cannot wait for people to come to us. This underlines the fact that advocacy for our collections, our repositories, and our institutions has to be sewn into what we do.

I feel honored to serve this role at Wayne State University – and in a similar role with SAA’s Issues and Advocacy Section: that of advocate, ambassador, and communicator. Thank you for the opportunity to serve you – the membership of the Issues and Advocacy Section!

March 26, 2018June 22, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Steering ShareTags: archives profession, new professionals, professionalism, SAA, short blogs, students, urban areas Leave a comment

Steering Share: Lisa Calahan

The Steering Shares series provides an opportunity to learn more about the I&A Steering Committee and the issues that committee members care about. This introduction post comes courtesy of Steering Committee member Lisa Calahan, Head of Archival Processing at the University of Minnesota.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOUR JOB OR THE ARCHIVES PROFESSION?

My favorite thing about my job is that every collection is different and I can never get bored. As Head of Archival Processing, I lead a lot of processing projects and there are never two collections that are the same. For example, I am currently managing processing projects for a collection of comic books, a social welfare organization, a civil rights activist’s papers, a theater company, two rare book collections, a collection on youth work, a historic architect’s records, and a partridge in a pear tree. I love assessing each collection, discovering (or attempting to discover) what clues the material and original order convey and piecing the information together in a cohesive way that can be useful to researchers. I also like seeing history “in the raw.” When I’m appraising new archival collections, very few others have peaked into the boxes and the collections have yet to be subjected to interpretations. It’s an incredible opportunity to be reminded how powerful and sneaky bias can be and try to remember to check my own before creating processing plans.

WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO JOIN THE I&A STEERING COMMITTEE?

I’m a long-time member and listserv lurker. I&A is one of the most active sections I’ve been involved with; I wanted to be a part of the activity and help keep the section successful!

WHAT IS AN ARCHIVAL ISSUE THAT MEANS A LOT TO YOU?

An issue that means a lot to me is valuing the concept of “shared authority” and how our profession can better collaborate with communities. The professional model that archivists are taught, at least I was taught, involve removing the historical record from the community and keeping the records in a “safe” place. By doing so, we also alter the ability for communities, especially historically disenfranchised communities, to retain ownership and power over their histories. I think a lot about how we as archivists can use our knowledge to support community based archival efforts to build relationships rather than building collections.

December 22, 2017November 24, 2023 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Interviews, Steering ShareTags: archival processing, archives profession, biases, historical interpretation, Interviews, professionalism, short blogs Leave a comment

So SAA’s Going to Austin. Now What?

This post was written by Stephanie Bennett and the Issues & Advocacy Section’s Steering Committee, in light of the recent news that SAA was keeping its commitment to hold 2019’s annual meeting in Austin, Texas.

With the announcement from SAA president Tanya Zanish-Belcher that SAA’s 2019 will be in Austin, despite a Council discussion about moving it, SAA members – and all archivists and humans who move about the world – have some thinking to do. And some work to do. Some of us – though not the Californian archivists among us – will attend the meeting. The I&A Steering Committee once more poses questions that we’ve been asking amongst ourselves:

How can we, as an organization and as individuals, support the activists of Texas?
Is it a betrayal of our personal beliefs or heteronormative myopia if we do attend, in part because we “pass” the Texas legislature’s guide of acceptable personhood?
As Eira Tansey points out, the battles between more liberal cities and restrictive, conservative legislatures are happening across the U.S.; where will our harassed queer colleagues find safe harbor?
Should we, how can we, support our professional organization(s) in the long run so that these choices between financial precarity or personal harm are no longer required? Does SAA need (as writer Paulette Perhach called it) a F*ck Off Fund?
How can we work within the profession to change foundational systems of oppression? (And all of the questions we posed previously, really)

As an institution, SAA and its component groups, including the sections, have the responsibility to be mindful of how we spend our time and money – especially in Austin. We’ve been watching and listening as Representative John Lewis models the ethics and actions of “good trouble.” At Issues & Advocacy, we are committed to spending our money at LGBTQ-owned and -friendly businesses and establishments that recognize that black lives matter. We will seek opportunities to collaborate with queer archivists to do service and/or fundraising to benefit Texan activists and organizations fighting against the state’s restrictive and occasionally unconstitutional or overturned laws. And we welcome your ideas! If there is an event or organization that you would like to see supported or a topic that you would like to be discussed but do not have the bandwidth to undertake, let us know.

That said, the Society of American Archivists, as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is not permitted to engage in “political campaign activities“ as defined by the IRS. We are not lawyers, but we do understand that limits to SAA’s work exist, and, as a body within SAA, the limits for Issues & Advocacy’s work as well. But as individuals, we have the right to political activity and related speech. For those of us who will attend the meeting, we look forward to working in Austin, as both individuals and professional archivists.

August 28, 2017November 29, 2023 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Archivists on the Issues, News from I&ATags: archives profession, Eira Tansey, Google Workspace, internet, lobbying, non-profits, SAA, short blogs 1 Comment

Announcing Advocacy Toolkit Updates

Thanks to our steering committee member Laurel Bowen, we have successfully updated the I&A Advocacy Toolkit to include several new features! We now have a section specifically dedicated to historic preservation initiatives, including archives and the physical structures that accompany them.

In addition to historical preservation resources, the new material provides substantive ideas on how to think about the value and impact of archives, ways to craft value statements about archives, and advice on how to lobby or energize the support of decision-makers and funders.

In addition to new items, broken links have been fixed and new links have been created to provide more direct connections to relevant websites and resources!

Appropriately related to the update, please check our newest Archivists on the Issues Blog Post written by Heidi Bamford of the Western New York Regional Library Council on creating a local advocacy campaign: Library Advocacy or Climbing Mount Everest: Which Would You Choose?

February 24, 2017June 22, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: News from I&ATags: Advocacy Toolkit, lobbying, preservation, short blogs Leave a comment

Mid-Year Steering Share: Bringing It In – To The Blog

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post is from Steering Committee member Stephanie Bennett, Collections Archivist at Wake Forest University.

Since it’s already been almost 6 months since the annual meeting, the Steering Committee members will be checking in about work we’re doing with the Issues & Advocacy Section and in our daily work. I’m gearing up for a very active year at work, but I’ve been kicking off the year thinking more about my contributions to the I&A Steering Committee and specifically this here blog.

Blogging is a really useful exercise for me personally and professionally. I am a lifelong journaller and blogged through college and beyond, and though I drift away from dedicated writing at times, I always come back. Putting my thoughts down and then editing to organize more coherently and concisely is a great way to make sense of issues, myself, and the wider world’s many dynamics.

I value providing the information and also am grateful for colleagues who are involved in the labor of blogging: research, writing, editing, choosing photos, double-checking links, etc. I hope y’all enjoy and employ the information shared here, and I hope the writers get value from the exercise of writing and publishing through more connections, more conversations and views on vital issues, and other opportunities that enrich their work and our profession.

Many other sections (formerly known as roundtables) have blogs, plus individual archivists too. How can we as a profession bound together through the Society of American Archivists make use of this work and not duplicate our efforts? I don’t have any true solutions except improved communication and open doors. Personally and through my work with I&A and the Collections Management Tools Section, I aim to boost the work of colleagues so that we’re all operating with as much information as our brains can stand.

A reminder – I&A has an open blogging policy: if there is an issue you are passionate about and want to write about, we are here. If you’ve attended a conference and you’d like to encourage more opportunities like it, we are here. If you have another idea entirely related to archivists and archives, email us – we are here to support archivists and our work. Many issues intersect in and with archives, which means many roads lead to and through professional conversations.

Our Research Teams are currently getting off the ground, so I look forward to reading the fruits of their labor on issues that we all wish we had more time to dig deep and research. Steering Shares will continue our committee’s reflections on a variety of issues and tasks. I would love to hear more about useful conferences and themes in ICYMI (In Case You Missed It) posts. And the Steering Committee is stirring up some great Archivists on the Issues posts about things we’ve heard about and fielding posts sent in to us.

Maybe one of you is currently pondering how to connect all these Section and SAA blogs (I have counted 12?) so that we see and talk to each other more often, not just at each other. When lightning strikes, I am ready and waiting to hear about the epiphany! In the meantime, I am optimistic about the work we can do together and separately in 2017.

January 5, 2017June 22, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Steering ShareTags: archives profession, professionalism, Research Teams, SAA, short blogs Leave a comment

Call for Candidates!

Want to be part of an engaged and rewarding SAA leadership team and advocate for archives and archivists? I&A is seeking candidates for Roundtable leadership positions, and we want YOU to run!

The open positions:

Vice-Chair (two-year term: first year as Vice-Chair and second year as Chair):

Description:
The Chair and the Vice-Chair serve as joint officers of the Roundtable. Only individual members of SAA and the Issues and Advocacy Roundtable may hold these positions. The Chair and the Vice-Chair direct and report the activities of the Roundtable, organize and conduct the annual meeting of the Roundtable, chair the Steering Committee, act as liaisons for the Roundtable to other bodies, appoint Roundtable committees as needed, and handle administrative matters, including, but not limited to, annual reports to the SAA. As officers, the Chair and the Vice-Chair serve terms that total two years each. Upon completion of his/her term as Vice-Chair, that officer succeeds to the office of Chair for the next term.

Steering Committee Member – two openings for ONE-year terms (because we are implementing the staggered terms approved in our bylaws revision in 2015)

Steering Committee Member – two openings for TWO-year terms (because we are implementing the staggered terms approved in our bylaws revision in 2015)

Description:
The Steering Committee comprises six members, including the Chair and Vice-Chair. The Steering Committee directs and coordinates the activities of the Roundtable and approves appointments made by the Chair and the Vice-Chair if vacancies occur. Committee members establish projects to work on through the year and help to plan the annual business meeting.

Additional details about I&A leadership roles and responsibilities can be found in the bylaws.

To run, submit your contact info, desired position, bio, and brief statement of interest via this web form by Monday, June 6.

Voting will be conducted in early July and candidates will be notified towards the end of July.

May 27, 2016June 22, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: News from I&ATags: candidates, SAA, short blogs Leave a comment