Visit the Schedule at a Glance page for a comprehensive list of all Pre-AGM & AGM events and their locations.
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Description |
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Wednesday, |
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Workshop |
How to Tame Your Dragon: Learning to Befriend your Backlog through Efficient Processing Strategies |
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Workshop |
Get Hands On: Improving Descriptive Practices for Born-Digital Material in an Archival Context |
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9:00 am - 12:30 pm |
SCA Board meeting (Board members only). |
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4:00 pm - 5:00 pm |
SCA Leadership Meeting |
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6:00 p.m. – 9:30 pm |
Opening Reception, Tenaya Lodge |
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Thursday, |
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9:00 am - 10:00 am |
First Time Attendee Meet and Greet Please enjoy light refreshments and 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. |
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Session 1 |
Certified! A Discussion of the Certified Archivist Designation Session description: The Academy of Certified Archivists is an “independent, nonprofit certifying organization of professional archivists.” Archivists wishing to become certified must meet a number of educational/experience requirements and pass an exam. After initial certification, the archivist must renew every five years by retaking the exam or through a credit system that recognizes professional development and participation in the archival community. Certification’s role in the archival profession has been a continued topic of discussion since the Academy’s founding in 1989. In this moderated discussion, archivists with diverse backgrounds and at various points in their careers will share their personal reasons for joining the Academy of Certified Archivists, their path to receiving the designation, and their experience with the recertification process. Questions posed by the moderator will stimulate an open discussion about what the CA does – and doesn’t! – mean to us individually and to the profession as a whole. The audience is encouraged to present their own questions to the panel and participate in the discussion. Speakers: Stephanie Bayless, National Archives at San Francisco (Moderator) Gwen Granados, National Archives at Riverside Kim Hayden, Center for Sacramento History Andrew Hyslop, California State Archives Sebastian Nelson, California State Archives Laura O’Hara, Archivist Connection, LLC |
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Session 2 |
Transforming Knowledge, Transforming Archives: A Community-Centered Approach This panel addresses the intersection between ethnic studies theory and community archives practice. Our research project asks “What are the outcomes of undergraduate students applying what they learn in ethnic studies combined with their lived experience in contributing to community archives?” In taking a community-centered approach to archival work, we hope to enrich our regional history collections and potentially empower a new generation of archivists to transform the archival record. Panel participants will provide an overview of the project focusing on project design, implementation, and early results, as well as the potential application of this approach by California archives. Audra Eagle Yun, Special Collections & Archives, UC Irvine Dr. Thuy Vo Dang, Orange County & Southeast Asian Archive Center, UC Irvine Jimmy Zavala, Orange County & Southeast Asian Archive Center, UC Irvine Dr. Dorothy Fujita-Rony, Department of Asian American Studies, UC Irvine Jillian Cuellar, Library Special Collections, UCLA |
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Session 3 |
Documenting Wildland Fire: The 2013 Rim Fire - a Case Study Session description: The Rim Fire, which engulfed 248,000 acres of Stanislaus National Forest and Yosemite National Park in August and September of 2013, was the largest forest fire in Sierra Nevada history - emblematic of ever- more destructive wildland fires across the western United States. This fire, this series of human tragedies and catastrophic environmental impacts, was heavily documented by the management teams who organized and led the firefighting effort. Documentation was created according to a set of standards developed over many years by the cooperative efforts of many agencies led by the U.S. Forest Service. For the past two decades, the National Archives and Records Administration has assisted the wildland fire community in developing an interagency records schedule and records management tools to help make sure that tactical lessons learned and environmental impacts of major fires were preserved for posterity. This session looks at how well these tools and standards have achieved their purpose. With the help of our audience, we hope to identify gaps in our process and point to possible future work. Speakers: Richard Boyden, National Archives and Records Administration Louise Larson, Sierra National Forest (retired) Kelly Martin, Chief, Fire and Aviation, Yosemite National Park Paul Rogers, Park Archivist, Yosemite National Park Kent van Wagtendonk, Geographic Information Systems Specialist, Yosemite National Park |
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LUNCH 12:00 pm – 1:45 pm |
Lunch on your own/boxed lunch Attendees should order when registering |
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12:00 pm – 1:00 pm |
Open Lunch Meeting |
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Session 4 |
Processing “Already-Processed” Collections: A Conversation With the Ghosts of Past Archivists and Their Methods Session description: This session will explore the challenges of applying contemporary processing strategies to collections that have already been processed (and re-processed) under traditional methods over time. When contemporary archivists are tasked with quickly processing a collection that has already been worked on by various hands, archival processing becomes a balancing act between efficiency on the one hand and preserving legacy work on the other. The speakers of this session will share their experiences working with this balance -- discussing workflow issues, simulating past arrangements in a digital environment, and attempting to apply MPLP approaches to collections that have been arranged and/or described by our predecessors. Drawing from these experiences, the participants of this session will analyze each instance of past processing to compare the strengths and weaknesses of archival processing trends from different periods. Speakers: Bo Doub, University of Southern California Rachel Mandell, University of Southern California Dorothy Leung, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory Cyndi Shein, University of Nevada, Las Vegas |
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Session 5 |
Community Webs: Empowering Public Librarians to Create Community History Web Archives Session description: Californian and Nevada participants in the IMLS-funded national project Community Webs: Empowering Public Librarians to Create Community History Web Archives will explore project management, collaboration and outreach in the context of preserving 35 terabytes of community web archives. Representatives from the Internet Archive will share details related to their project management role, including providing a national cohort with training and technical support on the Archive-It web application. Panelists will discuss how they approached the curatorial and outreach challenges related to building localized special collections representative of the diverse urban populations they serve. Speakers: Mary Haberle, Internet Archive Joanna Kolosov, Sonoma County Library Mel Gooch, San Francisco Public Library Kelly Riddle, County of Los Angeles Public Library Dana Bullinger, Henderson District Public Library |
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Session 6 |
Researching the Redwoods: A New Approach to Archival Internships Session description: Humboldt State University (HSU) Library is reimagining student internships in Special Collections. This panel will discuss a service-learning, embedded librarian model that connects students from a variety of disciplines to local community archives. Over the the past year, Humboldt State University (HSU) Special Collections has developed an internship program in partnership with Redwood National Park (RNP) to encourage transformative social engagement for HSU students. Both HSU and RNP are preparing to celebrate RNP’s 50 year anniversary in August 2018. A team of HSU Library Scholar Interns are processing collections at both institutions, and creating a database of digitized material and a digital exhibit to highlight collections, research, and history of Redwood National Park. The panel will discuss the outcomes of the project, logistics of the agreement, the processing plan, intern training, and student perspective in designing a collaborative internship program. By examining this service-learning technique, the panelists will consider the changing boundaries of the academic archive and how undergraduate students can make an impact in the community. Speakers: Carly Marino, Special Collections Librarian, Humboldt State University Brianne Hagen, the Metadata and Catalog Librarian, Humboldt State University Humboldt State Library Scholar Interns Representative from Redwood National Park |
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3:45 pm - 5:00 pm |
SCA All Members Meeting & Committee Meetings |
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5:00 pm - 6:00 pm |
New Member Happy Hour |
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| Dinner and Plenary Address 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm |
The Kitchen Sisters Attendees should order when registering The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) are producers of the James Beard and duPont-Columbia Award-winning NPR series Hidden Kitchens, and two Peabody Award-winning NPR series, Lost & Found Sound and The Sonic Memorial Project. Their podcast, The Kitchen Sisters Present, was recently awarded a Webby Award for best documentary podcast. As independent producers, The Kitchen Sisters have created hundreds of stories for NPR and public broadcast about the lives, histories, art and rituals of people from all walks of life who have shaped our diverse cultural heritage. Their current project is a new NPR and podcast series, The Keepers — stories of activist archivists, rogue librarians, curators, collectors and historians. Keepers of the culture and the cultures and collections they keep. Guardians of history, large and small, protectors of the free flow of information and ideas, eccentric individuals who take it upon themselves to preserve some part of our cultural heritage. |
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| 8:30 pm - 9:30 pm |
LAAC Book Club Attendees should register (limit 15) Join the Los Angeles Archivist Collective for an SCA version of our Book Club. We’ll be discussing selected articles pertaining to social justice imperatives in archives. Attendees should read the selected articles ahead of time and be prepared to discuss. We have a table reserved for 15 in the Jackalope Lounge please register ahead of time! The articles are: -Mark Greene, “A Critique of Social Justice as an Archival Imperative: What Is It We’re Doing -That’s All That Important,” The American Archivist, Fall/Winter 2013. -Mario H. Ramirez, “Being Assumed Not to Be: A Critique of Whiteness as an Archival Imperative,” The American Archivist, Fall/Winter 2015. -Punzalan, Ricardo and Caswell, Michelle. "Critical Directions for Archival Approaches to Social Justice," Library Quarterly 86(1) (2016): 25-42. Anyone having trouble accessing the articles should contact Angel Diaz - madiaz@library.ucla.edu |
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| 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm |
Flashlight hike or other activity Attendees should order when registering |
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Friday, |
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Session 7 |
Yosemite and Beyond: Field notes, what they are and why are they important Field notes do not exist in natural history museum archives alone. They are also found in departmental papers, personal papers, and other collections centered around the humanities. Recognizing field notes for appropriate description and access is imperative for researchers who are studying changes in our planet’s biodiversity among other pressing questions surrounding evolutionary biology. This session is focused on advocating for item level description of field notes and helping archivists recognize these important volumes in their collections. We aim to provide archivists with resources for archiving and disseminating these invaluable documents. We’ll provide use cases for how field notes have assisted scientists in preserving Yosemite National Park across a century. We’ll also demonstrate how the intersection of archives and biodiversity informatics can promote access and help researchers recognize relationships across museum collections and agents. Finally, we’ll provide archivists with a framework of best practices in describing and preserving field notes. Our panel will share experiences with how scientists expect to access field notes in the context of how they access other information for their research. Yolanda Bustos, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Christina V. Fidler, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley Rebekah Kim, California Academy of Sciences Amy Kasameyer, University and Jepson Herbaria, University of California, Berkeley |
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Session 8 |
Work smarter, not harder: Re-purposing metadata and making it work for you! Session Description: As information professionals, archivists, cataloging/metadata librarians, and digital services librarians work with metadata in a variety of forms: legacy finding aids, donor inventories, and collection-level and item-level description of digital surrogates. Metadata is just as diverse in its formats as in its forms: typewritten documents, Word documents, text files, Excel spreadsheets, EAD finding aids, and digital asset management systems. This session is all about working smarter, not harder; repurposing metadata instead of reinventing the wheel; and understanding the quality of the metadata on-hand to determine when you might have to work harder or start from scratch. Four archivists and/or librarians share their experiences of taking metadata created for a specific use and manipulating that data for alternative, or entirely different, purposes such as converting analog finding aids into data exported for EADs, working with donor inventories to create standardized archival descriptions, displaying the organizational structure and intellectual order of archival arrangement for paper collections in the virtual realm, or just transforming finding aid data into item-level metadata for digital collections and vice-versa. Speakers: Sara Chetney, The Claremont Colleges Library Michelle Paquette, Stanford University Steve Kutay, Oviatt Library, California State University, Northridge Nadia Nasr, Santa Clara University Library Lisa Crane, The Claremont Colleges Library (moderator) |
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Session 9 |
Conquering Culture & Technology: Adapting Workflow Processes for Digital Collections Session Description: The workflow of every digital collection inevitably presents unusual difficulties to overcome. Does your analog collection have atypical digitization requirements? This group of archivists has tackled: metadata description for foreign languages, cultural calendar differences, translation versioning, cultural sensitivity and usage, scanning quality control, OCR problems, IP issues, and transcription complications, among others. Digital projects constantly provide unique challenges to the archivist. Each panelist will present a 15 minute session on their experiences. Together they will cover processes from initial preservation capture through providing access to patrons. Julie Thomas will present on her experiences with the 3-year Japanese American Internment digitization project. Liza Posas will present on digitizing images portraying Native American content and the management of access constraints. Melissa Stoner will present on the National Digitization Newspaper project at UNLV and the digitization lab for the Ethnic Studies Library. Rand Boyd will discuss challenges involved with the American War Letters Archive. Speakers: Mary-Ellen Petrich, LOCKSS at Stanford University (Chair) Melissa Stoner, University of California at Berkeley Julie A. Thomas, CSU Sacramento Liza Posas, Autry Museum of the American West Rand Boyd, Chapman University |
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Session 10 |
(Un)Restricted Access: Ethical Considerations to Removing Barriers Session Description: Trying to balance the widest possible access to our holdings while still protecting privacy rights and donor wishes can leave archivists feeling like they are walking a tightrope. During this session, panelists will discuss real world scenarios faced by their repositories in providing greater access to archival holdings. The panelists, who represent academic, local government, and corporate archives, will share how their institutions overcame various barriers to provide greater public and institutional access to collections along with strategies for success and lessons learned. The discussion will address issues including ethical conundrums, legacy decisions, deaccession procedures, donor relations, internal barriers, external expectations, questions of intellectual rights, and adherence to state and federal law. Speakers: Dylan McDonald, Center for Sacramento History Laura French, CSU Stanislaus Heather Lanctot, Yolo County Archives Susan Douglass Yates, City of Hope |
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Session 11 |
Interactive Instruction: strategy, curriculum, and evaluation Session Description: During the past twenty years a great deal of attention has been paid to the use of primary resources in the classroom. This is due in part to the Carnegie Foundation’s commissioned report published in the late 1990s entitled Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America’s Research Universities, which recommended creating opportunities for undergraduates to engage in research. In this report inquiry-based or interactive learning is articulated as an effective strategy for teaching students using primary resources early in their undergraduate careers. Within the realm of archival literature, as a response to this push towards increased inclusion of primary resources in the classroom, archivists transitioned from being viewed and perceiving themselves as solely facilitating access to primary resources, to educators with pedagogical strategies behind the instructional support they provide. This panel will explore the many facets of interactive instruction from: developing pedagogical strategies and curriculum for undergraduate and graduate students, formally developing an evaluation method to measure its affective impact, and challenges faced along the way. Speakers: Robin M. Katz, Special Collections & University Archives, UC Riverside Chris Marino, Environmental Design Archives, UC Berkeley Derek Quezada, Special Collections & Archives, UC Irvine Mattie Taormina, Sutro Library |
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Session 12 |
You Wanna Donate What? Collection Development through Community Donations and the Internet Marketplace Session Description: This panel will focus on developing collections using new strategies and sources to find and acquire archival materials—from the proven manner of working with potential donors, to encouraging community groups to partner with archives, to acquiring collections through Internet resources. The panelists will discuss cultivating donors, dos and don’ts when pursuing collections, and tips for understanding the needs and interests of donors. Information about how archivists embed themselves in community organizations—LGBTQ and tradeswomen groups as well as historical societies—will be provided, including techniques to build focused collections using exhibition and other budgets to purchase from AbeBooks, eBay and Craig’s List. Audience participation will be encouraged to learn more about: 1) methods archivists are using to attract donors and find archival materials; 2) ways we can embed ourselves in community organizations and other activities to build institutional archives; and, 3) how Internet tools/resources have changed the way we find donors and collections. The goal is to develop a greater understanding of methods to creatively cultivate, purchase, and generate new collections. Speakers: Peter Blodgett, Huntington Library Joseph Hawkins, ONE Archives, University of Southern California Libraries Greg Williams, California State University, Dominguez Hills Maureen Burns, IMAGinED Consulting (Moderator) |
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Luncheon |
Awards Luncheon speaker: Steve Bumgardner Attendees should order when registering Steve Bumgardner is a filmmaker who works in Yosemite and many other National Parks. He spends his time roaming the mountains looking for untold stories about the natural and human world. Steve is the producer of Yosemite Nature Notes for the National Park Service and the Yosemite Conservancy. This popular web series allows him to share discoveries that he’s made in his 20 years of exploring California’s Sierra Nevada, the Range of Light. Yosemite Nature Notes has covered a range of topics from the obvious-- “Yosemite Falls” and “Big Trees“-- to obscure phenomenon like “Moonbows” and “Frazil Ice“ and the history of the park including the story of the original Yosemite Nature Notes, a print newsletter produced by the park from 1922 to 1961. The SCA Awards Ceremony will follow our luncheon speaker |
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| Session 13 2:00 pm -3:15 pm |
Documenting the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in California Session description: In this session, panelists from 5 different California institutions, including the GLBT Historical Society, UCSF Archives and Special Collections, ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, San Francisco Public Library, and UC Irvine, will discuss documenting the HIV/AIDS epidemic in California. Each speaker will briefly describe their holdings and discuss a unique issue such as developing collections, managing privacy concerns and HIPAA regulations, building community relationships, and digitizing collections at scale. Several of the speakers have worked together to manage federally funded grants from NHPRC and NEH; they will examine how these collaborative projects have served to unite collections, facilitate research, and better document the complexity of a single topic. Audiences will learn how the diversity of these records—from people with AIDS to community groups to medical institutions and government agencies—is indicative of the complex issues surrounding the epidemic. The session will explore how privacy concerns, medical information, and the relatively current nature of these records impact decisions to digitize, publicize, and share the collections. Speakers: Joanna Black, GLBT Historical Society Kelsi Evans, University of California, San Francisco Archives and Special Collections Susan Goldstein, San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library Loni Shibuyama, ONE Archives at the USC Libraries Krystal Tribbett, University of California, Irvine |
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| Session 14 2:00 pm -3:15 pm |
Appraisal Outside the Box Session description: When archivists talk about appraisal, the conversation often turns to questions of how an acquisition fits an institution’s collecting scope and priorities. But the practice of appraisal is also dependent on an archivist’s ability to gain access to donors, collections, and, in many cases, the ultimate authority to acquire. Securing each of these elements requires varied, and sometimes creative, approaches for getting the job done. Using three case studies, this session will discuss non-traditional methodologies and resources the presenters have used to facilitate archival appraisal. Lisa Vallen will discuss creating scalable appraisal workflows, establishing working relationships with record creators who are unfamiliar with archives and records retention, and the challenges of off-site appraisal. Sara Seltzer will focus on optimizing institutional events for appraisal purposes and creating appraisal tools that assist record creators. Tammi Kim will talk about her experiences with conducting on-site appraisal before a collection arrives, educating donors on identifying collection materials of permanent historical value, and working with curators to establish appraisal guidelines. Speakers: Lisa Vallen, University of California Merced Sara Seltzer, J. Paul Getty Trust Tammi Kim, University of Nevada, Las Vegas |
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| Session 15 2:00 pm -3:15 pm |
Standard Time: Synchronizing Efforts to Establish UC-Wide Guidelines for Born-Digital Archival Description Session description: Currently there’s no descriptive standard or controlled vocabulary that adequately addresses born-digital archival material, and institutional practices for creating finding aids to these collections vary substantially. Digital archivists at four different UC Libraries (UCLA, UCSD, UCSF, UCB) recognized the need for standardization and began drafting best-practice recommendations for born-digital archival description, while a separate team of archivists at UCLA sought to build a robust controlled vocabulary for describing born-digital and audiovisual materials. As these independent efforts evolved it became clear that the resulting guidelines and controlled vocabulary for born-digital materials could be combined and leveraged to establish a UC-wide standard for born-digital description. Presenters will provide an overview of the two projects, explain our methodologies, discuss how the projects have contributed to the sustainability of our respective digital archive programs, and share lessons learned. Particular emphasis will be placed on the collaborative nature of this work, and on opportunities to seek the community’s help in moving the guidelines and controlled vocabulary forward for use in the UC system and beyond. Speakers: Courtney Dean, UCLA Library Special Collections Margaret Hughes, UCLA Library Special Collections Kelly Kress, UCLA Library Special Collections Charlie Macquarie, UCSF Archives & Special Collections Shira Peltzman, UCLA Library Special Collections Kate Tasker, The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley |
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3:30 pm -4:30 pm |
SCA Board meeting and AGM wrap-up (Board members only) |