WCRT Minutes from SAA Annual Meeting 2011

Women’s Collections Round Table

Annual Meeting 2011

Chicago, IL

August 24, 2011

1. Co-Chairs for 2011-2012 were installed:

   1. Virginia Corvid, University of Wisconsin-Madison

   2. Kathy Hertel-Baker, Sisters of Charity of Nazareth

2. Co-Vice Chairs for 2011-2012 were elected:

   1. Alex Krensky, Duke University

   2. Elizabeth Novara, University of Maryland

3. Report from 2012 Program Committee

   1. Theme is ‘Beyond Borders’, focusing on collaboration

   2. Session proposals are due October 3^rd

   3. WCRT can endorse two proposals

4. Discussion of WCRT Blog and website

   1. Will look into having e-mail sent to members when the blog is updated

   2. List of potential session topics

   3. “State of Women’s Collections” – discuss on the blog, at the meeting, session proposal?

   4. How do we get repositories to submit news for the website?

   5. Do we need a newsletter or just the blog?

   6. Agreement that e-mail notifications are needed for blog/website updates and as reminders to submit stories

   7. Question was asked about members posting directly to blog – Leadership will discuss.

5. Discussion of 2012 meeting and potential Session topics

   1. Audio/visual equipment requests for the WCRT meeting need to be submitted by April 1, 2012

   2. Possible session topics:

      1. Institutional Cooperation

         1. between Educational institutions and the orders that founded them – what happens when the records of Women Religious end up in institutions outside the Order?

      2. How Women’s collections are displayed online 9and in other media)

         1. Can we use traditional tools or do we have to be innovative?

         2. Is there a clearing house for information on Women’s Collections?

      3. Gender and Race

         1. Focus not just on white women

         2. Pull women’s stories/collections out of ethnographic collections and take an ethnographic look at Women’s Collections

      4. WCRT should work together with other Round Tables and Sections that deal with under-represented communities and look at the pros and cons of ‘identity specific archives’.

6. New Business

   1. Discussion of SAA trading cards and observation that there are ‘a lot of dead white guys’ represented, and very few women are represented in the collection

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