Call for Member Comment on Draft SAA Code of Conduct

At its May 22-24 meeting, the SAA Council discussed a draft "code of conduct" for SAA meetings and online spaces. The ability of SAA members to participate fully in the various events hosted by SAA is a key component in the Society’s diversity and inclusion efforts. Members who feel unwelcome, unsafe, constrained, or silenced are not able to participate fully in SAA.  A Code of Conduct is intended to provide one way for members to report harassment. It does not guarantee a harassment-free environment in SAA events and online spaces. However, a Code of Conduct does let members know that SAA is creating a culture of concern and establishing a place where members can participate freely in professional and social interaction, knowing that harassment is not part of that culture and will be opposed by all members of the SAA community.

The Council seeks broad member comment on the draft "SAA Code of Conduct" available here. 

To comment on this draft: Log in and post comments publicly to the website, or send your comments via email with the subject line, "Code of Conduct," to saahq@archivists.org. 

Deadline: June 22, 2014, 5:00 pm Central time.

Categories: SAA, SAA official documents

Annual Report, 2008-2009

Greetings! Here is a copy of the WCRT Annual Report submitted to SAA following the annual meeting in August:

Co-Chairs: Danelle Moon and Kelly Wooten

Annual Meeting: 5:30-7:30, August 12, 2009, Austin, Texas

Annual Meeting Minutes:

The WCRT convened at 5:30 with 17 members and 10 additional panel attendees. WCRT and LAGAR co-sponsored a panel presentation that included Kelly Kerbow Hudson, Nikki Thomas, and English Professor Lisa Moore. The session provided collection highlights from the Benson Latin American Collection and from the UT San Antonio "Women & Gender Project," as well as a very interesting discussion on how scholars use archival resources.

The business meeting followed the panel. The Program Committee representative, Nancy Beaumont, gave a brief presentation on the 2010 conference. Following her talk, the members/attendees introduced themselves and we discussed the continuation of the currant co-chair leadership, which was approved. In addition, we passed a resolution to elect two vice-chairs, as a means to mentor new roundtable leaders for 2010-2011.

Leadership for 2009-2010:

• Danelle Moon, San Jose State University: Co-Chair
• Kelly Wooton, Duke University: Co-Chair
• Cassandra (Cassie) Schmitt, University of Oregon: Vice Chair
• Meghan Lyon, Duke University: Vice Chair

We also talked about developing a WCRT blog that we could use to publicize events, exhibits, new collections, lecture series, and so on. The Chairs/Vice Chairs will work on developing a blog platform, with basic rules that we can use to improve communication. In order to create a diverse blog, we talked about using the membership list to request individuals to write a brief summary of a specific collection, initiative, exhibit, etc. We need some feedback from the membership list to confirm interest in the blog and solicitation of contributors. In the meantime, we will begin to work on developing a blog for the roundtable, and will send out notification when it is complete (late September or early October).

2010 SAA Panels:

We discussed various panel presentation ideas for SAA 2010 (Washington, D.C.), and we heard from the program committee on the scope of the conference and deadlines. We have not received any proposals to endorse, but we are confident that we will have at least one panel if not two that we can endorse in October.

WCRT offers its sincere thanks to LAGAR for co-sponsoring the panel presentation.

Categories: SAA official documents