It is with great sadness that we announce that the SCA Board has decided to move the 2021 Annual General Meeting to an online-only environment.   A number of factors have led us to this decision, most importantly the health and well-being of our members. Given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the recent surge in cases across our state, and the expected wave of even more cases in the fall/winter we feel an in-person meeting would put our membership at undue risk. Recent news of California State University’s (CSU) extension on staff travel restrictions through June 30, 2021, which is likely to be adopted by the State and UC system as well, also factored into our decision as the majority of our members are employed by those systems and would be unable to attend an in-person meeting. By making this decision now, we can allow our Program and Local Arrangements Committees ample time to plan for the transition to a virtual meeting.  We hope that we will once again be able to meet with each other in person again in 2022, in Palm Springs.

For other recent SCA news, see the Summer 2020 SCA Newsletter.

During these months when we are unable to gather in person for the annual meeting and for member-initiated events, SCA is initiating a monthly virtual meeting for members (and anyone interested in joining us!) to discuss various topics of interest in an informal, online environment. We are envisioning these lunchtime meetings to be an informal space to read and discuss recent articles and guidelines, make action items, share achievements, advocate for our labor, and more. Each meeting will center around a general theme, and details will be shared in advance on the west_arch listserv.

Join us for our kick-off meeting on July 10th at 12pm, where we will talk about the direction of these meetings, the planning structure, and topics we may discuss. For our first official meeting in August, we are planning to discuss the Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia Anti-Racist Description Resources, create action items from these resources for our own archives, and share our progress on these action items during the next monthly meeting in September.

Please RSVP for this meeting on this page. 

SCA’s Education Committee is delighted to announce and invite you to subscribe to the official SCA YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEi9K46vrx7Vbu3jwjKOM0g. 

We are thrilled to debut with four excellent webinar presentations, each thoughtfully speaking to the wide breadth of archival practice, theory, and advocacy:

An Archivist Walks into a Backlog: Strategies for Efficient Processing

Presented by: Laura Uglean Jackson, University of Northern Colorado; and Kelly Spring, East Carolina University

Date of presentation: September 21, 2017

Applying Radical Empathy Framework in Archival Practice

Presented by: Elvia Arroyo-Ramirez, UC Irvine; and Jasmine Jones, UCLA

Date of presentation: September 17, 2018 

Successful Grant Writing for Archives

Presented by: Greg Williams, CSU Dominguez Hills

Date of presentation: February 27, 2019

ArchivesSpace and Airtable for Improved Workflow Management

Presented by: Weatherly Stephan and Rachel Searcy, New York University

Date of presentation: December 11, 2019

Special thanks to the SCA Online Education team for their work and dedication to develop a program to share these presentations widely: Christine Kim, Marlayna Christensen, April Feldman, Mallory Furnier, Martha Noble, Michelle Paquette, Marie Silva, and Adrienne Storey.

Please stay tuned for updates on upcoming webinars. If you have suggestions for future webinar topics, or are yourself interested in presenting a webinar, please feel free to contact the Education Committee at educationcommittee@calarchivists.org. And please share this news with your colleagues and friends!

SCA recently made two donations to organizations serving archival professionals. The first, We Here, is a supportive community for BIPOC library and archive workers. Learn more about We Here and ways to support their work at https://www.wehere.space/. The second was SAA's Archival Workers Emergency Fund. Learn more about the fund and ways to support your colleagues at https://www2.archivists.org/groups/saa-foundation-board-of-directors/archival-workers-emergency-fund.

The Society of California Archivists affirms Black Lives Matter and stands in solidarity with the protesters calling for the end of police brutality and violence against the Black community. 

We stand in opposition to the historic and present state of violence against Black lives. The murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor are a direct result of the structural racism that infiltrates every corner of our society, including the archival profession.

The Society of California Archivists acknowledges that our profession has supported and continues to support racist systems and practices that uphold systemic inequality and perpetuate white supremacy. The legacy and role of white supremacy in archives has led to a predominately white and male historical record, while Black communities and Black voices are silenced, distorted, or entirely excluded from the historical record. Anti-Blackness has infiltrated our collections, policies, and workforce. It is our responsibility as archivists to dismantle oppressive archival practices and work toward building a more accurate and representative historical record. This moment reminds us as archivists that our work is not only to preserve but to amplify those voices that have been, and continue to be, unheard and silenced. It is this work that we must prioritize at the present moment. Otherwise, we can be sure that the history that is told will be by those voices most carefully crafted to establish and maintain systems of dominance and control.

The SCA Board is stepping forward to acknowledge and work toward amending the inequities caused by systemic racism. We call on ourselves and our white and non-Black membership to think about the antiracist actions we can take both professionally and personally to support the Black Lives Matter movement and to eradicate anti-Blackness in all forms. Personally you can take action by: donating to bail funds; signing petitions advocating for police accountability; locally supporting policies that defund police/law enforcement; donating to organizations that advocate for an end to structural racism; and calling your local/state representatives. Professionally we can: consider the policing nature of the archives and review access/use policies; rewrite collection development policies; commit to ethical collecting practices and prioritize care for protesters if collecting on the protests; revise our descriptions to eliminate racist/biased language, distortion, and the erasure of Black lives; and support community archives by providing resources.

The Board recognizes that in order to make headway in dismantling structural inequity, SCA as an organization needs to change. The SCA Board is committed to taking specific actions to show our support and to dismantle white supremacy, and we will remain accountable to our membership through further communications.

-In Solidarity, The SCA Board