Workshop One
8:00 am - 5:00 pm

To Boldly Go:  Digitization, Preservation and Social Media for the Fearless Lone Arranger

New Member Meet & Greet

Please join the Membership Committee at this informal gathering to meet your new colleagues. All new members are welcome, as are returning or veteran members who'd like to welcome those new to SCA.

Welcome & Plenary Address

Words of Welcome:

Lisa Miller, President, Society of California Archivists
James Eason, Program Committee Chair and Vice President, Society of California Archivists
Jackie Dooley, President, Society of American Archivists

Plenary Address:

Dr. Michael Cohen

Culture Wars: Engaging Undergraduates in Documenting the Crisis in California Through the Historian's Eye Project

The Historian’s Eye team at UC Berkeley is a collective of American Studies undergraduate seniors, recent graduates, and faculty advisor Professor Michael Cohen. The team spent the Spring of 2012 working together to produce a digital archive of photographs, oral histories, and associated curriculum focused on the first six months of the Occupy movement in the San Francisco Bay Area. Part of a larger web-based project initiated by Professor Matthew Jacobson of Yale University, UC Berkeley’s Historian’s Eye is intended as both a "crowd-sourced digital archive" devoted to the current moment and a pedagogical tool for helping students to think historically about the present. The work required student teams to look deeply into their own processes for what it means to document the contemporary moment; how to represent the political present; how history is made and accessed; and which pieces of our otherwise mundane, vernacular experience might resonate for later historians, and why. In addition to student-driven documentary efforts focusing on current events, Cohen's course, subtitled “Culture Wars,” is a survey of post-Civil War US history centering on how culture serves as a critical site of conflict, power and dissent. Throughout the semester, students are asked to write papers in which they perform close readings of cultural documents they find in the past (photographs, poems, essays, films, short stories, paintings, songs, performances), asking how such documents are waging the culture war, and for which side.

Teaching Old Stuff New Tricks: Use of Primary Sources in Digital Humanities and Social Sciences Computing

• Mary Elings, The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley (Moderator)
• Cathryn Carson, Department of History; Social Sciences Data Laboratory, UC Berkeley
• Marti Hearst, WordSeer Project, School of Information, UC Berkeley
• Quinn Dombrowski, Project Bamboo, UC Berkeley

Digital humanities and social sciences computing (now being referred to as Digital Scholarship) are rapidly expanding fields of endeavor for today's researchers. What kind of intellectual work are these digital researchers doing and where are they doing it? What types of tools are they using and how are they using them? How do they incorporate digitized primary source collections into those tools, and what can archives do to support work with these new tools and this new form of scholarship? Our distinguished panelists include Cathryn Carson, Associate Dean in Social Sciences, who will discuss her role as Acting Director of the newly launched Social Sciences Data Laboratory (D-Lab) at UC Berkeley; Quinn Dombrowski, a Research Applications Developer at UC Berkeley, who will discuss Bamboo Dirt, a clearinghouse of digital research and visualization tools to work with digital content; and Marti Hearst, professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information, who will talk about her current project to expand WordSeer, a text analysis environment for exploring literary collections.

World Wide Web Overload: Archiving a Messy Web

• Scott Reed, Internet Archive (Moderator)
• Claude Zachary, University of Southern California
• James Jacobs, Stanford University
• Henry Lowood, Stanford University

What web content should be archived? How do we know if web content is "at risk"? What does prioritization look like when there is so much content to capture? Archivists at Stanford University and the University of Southern California, in partnership with the Internet Archive's Archive-It service, have grappled with these questions in managing collections of web-based materials that include political/social movement websites, government publications, university domains, and online gaming worlds. Through diverse case studies, a panel of archivists from Stanford and USC, along with a representative from the Internet Archive, will discuss best practices for discovering and selecting content online to be archived. Topics covered will include developing the scope of a collection, the workflows involved in successfully managing a web archival collection, and how the Internet Archive can support broader curatorial work.

Art and Artists in the Archives

• Jessica Gambling, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Moderator)
• Annette Doss, The Getty Research Institute
• Rebecca Fenning Marschall, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA
• Benjamin Handler, Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills
• Katharine Lawrie, UCLA University Archives and Fiber Artist (http://katharinelawrie.com)

Archivists working with artists, art institutions, and their records sometimes encounter unique challenges. These include the conflation of the roles of archivist, file clerk, librarian, and historian as well as variable ideas of the nature and function of the archive. These environments can be highly focused on self-contained objects or works, prestige,and even exclusivity, perhaps coupled with an unfamiliarity with the ideas of context, evidence, and access. Other art spaces and communities are defined by their lack of associations with galleries and museums as well as by their ephemeral and temporary nature, attributes that often resist record creation and keeping. Panelists will briefly describe their experiences and then participate in a guided discussion on how they promote the value of the archival record to potential creators and users.

Moderators:

• Sherri Berger, California Digital Library
• Adrian Turner, California Digital Library

Are you a current contributor to the Online Archive of California (OAC)? Are you thinking about becoming a new member? Join us to meet fellow contributors, ask questions of OAC staff, and learn more about new tools and developments.

Strategic Planning Task Force of SCA

What is on the horizon for archivists in California and the West?  Over 200 of you contributed your responses and ideas to the Strategic Planning Task Force.  Now is the time to discover just how you match up with the other 199 respondents.  The results of the survey, as well as the results of the Task Force Focus Groups which developed from the survey will be discussed in detail at this box lunch session.  Bring your lunch, your questions and your suggestions.  The Task Force report to the Board will serve as a planning document for the Society for the next decade.  The winners of the Survey prizes - free AGM registration, free membership for a year,  and a $50 gift certificate - will be announced and the prizes presented.  Some lucky attendee will also win a gift of Hollinger Metal Edge supplies.

The Allure of Archives: How LA as Subject Celebrates Regional History

LA as Subject is an association of 230 plus members collectively preserving, sharing, and archiving the history and culture of the Los Angeles region.  Members and nonmembers alike are welcome to attend and learn more about LA as Subject's community-based, innovative, and collaborative projects that are meant to celebrate and bring awareness to archives through the telling of LA's dynamic history.

Primary Source Research in the Digital Realm

• Mattie Taormina, Stanford University   
• Danelle Moon, San Jose State University
• Julie Thomas, Sacramento State
• Liza Posas, Autry National Center of the American West
• Hailey Jures, Occidental College student and Autry intern
• Greg Williams, CSU Dominguez Hills   
• Letty Kraus, UC Davis

This panel will share case studies focused on teaching historical research and primary source literacy using digital and print sources and will open up a dialogue with the audience on the rewards and challenges of teaching from digital resources. Four of the speakers will focus on specific experiences teaching history students the art of primary source research (digital and print) and historical analysis, and present on student project outcomes in the university environment. The fifth speaker will talk about the work of the History Project at UC Davis and the challenges that K-12 teachers face in conducting age appropriate research and development of historical investigation drawing from digital archives.

A Marriage of Convenience: Partnering for Digital Access

• Paula Jabloner, Computer History Museum (Moderator)
• Susan Goldstein, San Francisco Public Library
• Gary Kurutz, California State Library
• Cara J. Randall, California State Railroad Museum
• Brian Peterson, Ancestry.com

The digital age is here and researchers expect almost all content online.  For archives and archivists, it can be a daunting prospect to digitize collections.  This session will highlight digitization and access partnerships of California archival repositories and online content providers, such as Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org and the Internet Archive. Archivists will discuss the reasons their institution entered into the partnerships including the pros and cons, and access implications to the archival material.  An individual from Ancestry.com will discuss their role in helping to preserve documented history so the stories can be told through content development, outreach to archives, and reasons for entering into partnerships.

The California Audiovisual Preservation Project: Discovering the State’s Rich Audiovisual Heritage

• Pamela Vadakan, California Preservation Program (Moderator)
• Lisa Miller, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University
• Kelly Zackman, Ontario City Public Library
• Mary Morganti,  California Historical Society

The California Audiovisual Preservation Project (CAVPP) is the first statewide initiative in the country to collaboratively facilitate access and accomplish audiovisual preservation work most individual archives are unable to undertake. Based on best archival practices for moving image and sound preservation, the CAVPP establishes practical standards to guide 22 partner institutions through the preservation planning process, from collection assessment to selection to description to digitization to metadata management to quality control to long-term storage and online access, and brings to light hidden media collections via the Internet Archive (IA), a repository that is freely available for the purposes of non-profit, educational use. The panel will discuss the preservation and access challenges of media preservation facing institutions across California, represented by three participating partners, with a focus on the CAVPP as a working, but preliminary, example of how a collaborative model can work as one proactive solution.

Who, What, Where: Gathering and Interpreting User Data

• Sherri Berger, California Digital Library (Moderator)
• Cristela Garcia-Spitz, University of California, San Diego
• Ellen Eckert, OCLC Research

This session will explore processes for gathering and interpreting information about archival users in order to better understand and ultimately serve them. Each speaker will present a unique project undertaken to uncover data about users: who they are, what they need, how they discover collections, and how they are using them (with an emphasis on online discovery/access systems). The panelists will touch on a range of data gathering techniques -- including user studies, surveys, online polls, and web analytics -- and will discuss findings and implications. The panel will leave ample time for discussion, with the aims of both answering questions and engaging attendees with key issues related to this topic.

Everything You Need to Know About Grants: Beginning, Middle, and End

• Katie Richardson , Pepperdine University  (Moderator)
• Gabriele Carey, History Associates Incorporated
• Jamie Henricks, Pepperdine University
• Holly Larson, Autry National Center of the American West (2010-2012)
• Greg Williams, CSU Dominguez Hills   
• Melissa Nykanen, Pepperdine University

Grants are a great way to reduce backlogs or accomplish projects we don't have the resources to tackle. However, what many of us may not know is how much work goes into successfully implementing and completing a grant. Our panel of two project directors, two project archivists, and one grant reviewer will share their experiences. Following brief project overviews, panelists will discuss identifying funders and applying for grants, implementing the work plan, and conclusions from grant experiences. The moderator will ask the panel a series of questions, such as: How did you identify funding institutions? How did you define project goals? What tools did you use to stay on track? Did you encounter any processing challenges? Is there anything you would do differently? What were the greatest rewards?

Voyages of Discovery: Processing, Reference, and Outreach for Scientific Records

• Aimee Morgan, Stanford University (Moderator)
• Yolanda Bustos, California Academy of Sciences
• Laura O'Hara, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
• Jenny Johnson, Stanford University

Documentation of twentieth-century scientists and scientific organizations is collected in a wide variety of repositories, including academic institutions, government archives, and museums. Yet processing and providing reference services for these complex collections can be challenging, especially for archivists whose academic background is in other fields. In this session, three archivists who have worked extensively with collections related to twentieth-century science will share their experiences and provide insights on how to promote use of these collections. Through discussion of diverse collections (including the records of twentieth-century physics and the personal papers of Stephen Jay Gould) and initiatives (including a project to link materials on Galapagos expeditions in multiple formats among several institutions), panelists will provide fresh ideas for processing specialized collections and making them available to a wider audience.

Working Notes as an Archival Challenge

• Michael Buckland, School of Information, UC Berkeley (Moderator)
• Barry Pateman, Emma Goldman Papers, UC Berkeley
• Patrick Golden, School of Information, UC Berkeley
• Andrew Hyslop, California State Archives

Modern scholarship unfolds in an increasingly electronic environment. Research notes in electronic form constitute a new genre of document that poses challenges and opportunities for scholars and archivists. Editorial projects that prepare documentary editions of historical records offer an excellent case in point; such projects involve far more background research than can be accommodated in the published footnotes of print editions. Such notes need to be preserved and kept accessible, but also allowed to “hibernate” until later scholars have the resources to expand and modify them. The Editorial Practices and the Web Project provides an openly accessible, open-source, and collaborative website (editorsnotes.org) for recording, organizing, preserving, and accessing research notes and queries generated by editorial projects. The effort has been extended to encompass curatorial notes made within a special collections library and will now be extended to archival practice through a partnership with the California State Archives. The Project’s framework will be tested as a means of creating richer finding aids, linking and enriching information through collaboratively-recorded metadata and invoking visualization technologies, within a More Product, Less Process workflow.

A Win-Win-Win Situation: Working with Communities and New Technologies to Preserve Local History

• Liza Posas, LA as Subject, hosted by the USC Libraries (Moderator)
• Kevin C. Miller, Pepperdine University
• Michaela Ullmann, USC Libraries
• Kenn Bicknell, Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority Library & Archive
• Dale Ann Stieber, Occidental College Library

This panel discussion will include presentations from four different LA as Subject members and the individual preservation and history projects implemented in their institutions. These projects utilize new web technologies and/or social media technologies to create a wide reach of communication, awareness, and participation from their local communities.

The presentations will be followed by a discussion with the audience and presenters about the opportunities network organizations, like LA as Subject, can provide to create wider collaboration and partnerships. Examples of opportunities include the development of a post MLIS residency program focused on community outreach and archives; building on annual events such as the LA as Subject Archives Bazaar and Archives Month; and creating "crowd sourcing" projects that bring different collections together through the likes of exhibits, wiki pages, and the digital humanities.

Moving Backlogs to the Forefront: Revamping Archival Processing Across the UC Libraries

• Adrian Turner, California Digital Library  (Moderator)
• Michelle Light, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Special Collections Division.  “The UC Guidelines for Processing Efficiently: A Streamlined Approach for Managing All of Your Archival Collections”
• Audra Eagle Yun, UC Irvine Libraries, Special Collections & Archives. "State of the Art: Methods and Tools for Archival Processing Metrics"
• Jillian Cuellar, UCLA Library, Special Collections. “Are We ‘Good Enough’ Yet?: UC Guidelines in Practice”

Like many other repositories throughout the US, special collections and archives units across the University of California (UC) Libraries are grappling with existing physical and born-digital backlogs.  Based on an initial assessment of UC holdings, over 71,600 linear feet of materials are unprocessed.  In response to this, the UC Libraries has been undertaking a systemwide approach to formalizing processing practices across multiple, heterogeneous repositories.  The speakers will highlight work undertaken across the 10 campus system, as part of the Next-Generation Technical Services initiative.  Light will feature work to develop a cross-campus approach to processing efficiently that formalizes MPLP-based approaches to arranging and describing materials, and aims to expose all UC collections quickly for use (http://tinyurl.com/uc-processing-guidelines). Yun will highlight metrics for archival processing rates that have been established as part of the initiative, and methods and tools for tracking rates systemwide.  Cuellar will discuss how guidelines and methodologies born out of the initiative translate into real-world scenarios in UCLA Library Special Collections and the Center for Primary Research and Training.

Awards Luncheon with Speaker 

Dr. Gray Brechin

Excavating the New Deal -- In Archives and in the Field

The Living New Deal began inventorying and then mapping the vast legacy of New Deal public works eight years ago. It focused first on California and then expanded to the entire United States. Project founder and scholar Dr. Gray Brechin will describe the unprecedented team effort to locate the innumerable artifacts left by the WPA, PWA, and other alphabet soup agencies that helped lift the nation out of the last depression as well as the invaluable role that archivists and librarians have played in exhuming a lost civilization built by our forebears.

The SCA Awards Ceremony will follow our luncheon speaker.

Software Tools for Digital Collections Management

• Heather Yager, California Academy of Sciences (Moderator)
• Jackie Dooley, OCLC Research
• Lauren Sorensen, Bay Area Video Coalition
• Jenny Brice, Bay Area Video Coalition
• Adrian Turner, California Digital Library
• Susan Chesley Perry, UCSC

This lightning session will focus on open source software tools used for digital collections management.  Lightning talks will focus on implementing specific tools, from high-level archives management software (archivematica, Omeka, ArchivesSpace) to function-specific software (FFMPEG, DRAMBORA).

Sacramento Archives Crawl: A Model for Outreach and Collaboration

• Amanda Graham, Sacramento Public Library (Moderator)
• Patricia J. Johnson, Center for Sacramento History
• Nancy Zimmelman Lenoil, California State Archives
• Jim Kay, Little People of America

To kick off Archives Month for the past two years, Sacramento-area archives have put on a wildly successful outreach event called Sacramento Archives Crawl.  Participants are issued passports and "crawl" among four host locations, gathering stamps as they view displays from dozens of repositories, speak with archivists, and go on behind-the-scenes tours. The Crawl draws in hundreds of participants of all ages and backgrounds each year and has significantly boosted the visibility of archives in the region. In addition, the Archives Crawl committee's monthly planning meetings have facilitated ongoing communication and collaboration among the participating institutions.

In this panel discussion, representatives from the California State Archives, Center for Sacramento History, Sacramento Public Library and Little People of America Archives will discuss their experiences as both planners and participants, presenting a model for archival outreach programs that can be adapted for a variety of institutions.

From VHS to ProRes files: Getting a Handle on Audiovisual Collections

• Mahnaz Ghaznavi, Loyola Marymount University (Moderator)
• Taz Morgan, Loyola Marymount University
• Genevieve Maxwell, San Jose State University
• Dale Ann Stieber, Occidental College
• Anne Mar, Occidental College

Participants will present on three very different dimensions of caring for audiovisual collections in smaller repositories from the perspective of two of the oldest educational institutions in southern California.  Archivists from Loyola Marymount University and Occidental College will discuss analog and born digital media collections in their holdings and the challenges they present to the archival functions of appraisal, acquisition, description, and preservation. Taz Morgan will share lessons learned from the processing of the first large-scale acquisition of audiovisual materials at LMU. Mahnaz Ghaznavi and Genevieve Maxwell will discuss their implementation of a Mellon funded preservation assessment database designed to measure and prioritize collections for remediation and reformatting. Dale Ann Stieber and Anne Mar will report on tools and methodologies employed to preserve and create access to digital video interviews using Occidental College’s “OxyCorps” student-alumni interviews as an example