WCRT Meeting Minutes - August 13, 2014, Washington DC

MEETING MINUTES 
Women’s Collections Roundtable 
August 13, 2014, 5pm-7pm Washington DC

Officers:
Helice Koffler | Co-Chair
Tali Beesley | Co-Chair (absent)
Stephanie Bayless | Vice Co-Chair
Leslie Fields | Vice Co-Chair (absent)
Rachel Appel | Incoming Vice Co-Chair
Rachel Grove Rohrburgh | Incoming Co-Chair

Welcome/Introductions/Installation of New Officers
• Officers began the meeting with a general welcome and asked all attendees to sign in. We went around the room for brief introductions and introduced the new officers during this process.
 • The meeting was well-attended - 41 attendees total, but only 26 signed-in as requested. Attendees hailed from institutions across the United States, including American Folklife Center, Rutgers University, National Archives and Records Administration, Tulane University, University of California Berkeley, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.

Presentation
Online Art Ephemera: Web Archiving at the National Museum of Women in the Arts and Beyond 
Heather Slania, National Museum of Women in the Arts
Artist archives usually contain important primary source materials such as brochures, catalogues, checklists, artist statements, and dairies—but what happens when this ephemera is only online? The National Museum of Women in the Arts has been web archiving art-related online ephemera using the Internet Archive's Archive-It since November 2011.
Heather Slania presented the considerations and challenges of archiving this material and discussed how arts institutions are beginning to work together for more collaborative web archiving. Slania’s presentation was well-received. During the questions and discussion period, attendees asked about tools to use for web-archiving, social media archiving, and coordinating with other institutions to avoid duplication of effort.

Old Business 

WCRT Bibliography
o We reminded members about the WCRT bibliography, which is a selection of published works that discuss archival theory and practice in relation to women’s archives/collections. We invited attendees to submit new additions to the blog whenever possible and asked for volunteers to read through the document and make sure all information was correct.

WCRT Blog
o We discussed the progress of growing the blog’s readership and the need for member post contributions. We discussed what has been posted and what the group would like to see posted in the future.
 o We encouraged attendees to send any press release or official news they wanted to share to the WCRT email address, even if the news had already been posted on their own social media sites.
 o We send around a sign-up sheet allowing members to volunteer to write a post of pick a specific month to search for women’s collections related news to share.

New Business 

Wiki-Edit-A-Thon
o We discussed the possibility of sponsoring or facilitating a nationwide Women’s History Month Wiki Edit-A-Thon in March 2015.
 o Attendees discussed the pros and cons of attempting this kind of event in their institutions. Those attendees who had held an event like this before shared their experiences.
 o Overall, attendees were unsure if they would hold an Edit-A-Thon, but were interested in the WCRT exploring the possibility of providing a “How to Host a Wiki-Edit-A-Thon” information packet.

Tumblr
o We discussed the possibility of starting a WCRT Tumblr. Attendees were very much in favor of Tumblr.
 o We discussed having leadership set up the Tumblr then having one or more members take over as admin to prevent confusion during turnover periods. Helice Koffler volunteered to be one of the admins. Mark Vassar from the Schlesinger expressed a desire to contribute many of their posts created for other media outlets.
 o WCRT will move forward with setting up a Tumblr page.

Program Committee Report
• The meeting concluded with a report from the SAA Program Committee about the 2015 meeting and call for presentations.
 • The 2015 meeting will be held in a convention center instead of a large hotel. Sections and roundtables will no longer be endorsing presentations, but are encouraged to facilitate coordination between members with possible related topics.
• The program committee is encouraging proposals in a number of new formats and is introducing free form pop-up sessions to encourage continued discussion of popular topics during the conference.

Sixteen attendees continued the discussion and networking at a scheduled dinner at the nearby Lebanese Taverna.

Categories: meeting minutes, SAA 2014

WCRT Meeting Minutes - August 16, 2013, New Orleans, LA

Society of American Archivists
Women’s Collections Roundtable
August 16, 2013, 4:00pm – 5:30pm
Grand Salon 19/22
New Orleans, LA
MEETING MINUTES

Officers:
Alexandra Krensky | Co-Chair
Elizabeth Novara | Co-Chair
Tali Beesley | Vice Co-Chair
Helice Koffler | Vice Co-Chair (absent)
Stephanie Bayless | Incoming Vice Co-Chair
Leslie Fields | Incoming Vice Co-Chair (absent)

Welcome and Introductions
We began with a welcome and brief introductions, asking everyone to sign in.

Introduction of New Officers
We then introduced our new officers, Stephanie Bayless (present) and Leslie Fields (absent).

Old Business

By-Laws Committee
We thanked our by-laws committee, Alexandra Krensky, Elizabeth Novara, Tali Beesley, Helice Koffler, Bethany Anderson, and Kate Colligan for drafting the by-laws, which were ratified by a unanimous vote before the meeting.

WCRT Bibliography
We reminded members about the WCRT bibliography, which is a selection of published works that discuss archival theory and practice in relation to women’s archives/collections. If anyone has anything to add to the bibliography, please send it to either Tali Beesley (tali.beesley@bep.gov) or Helice Koffler (hkoffler@u.washington.edu).

WCRT Social Media
We discussed the need for creating a LinkedIn group, which Beesley said she would be willing to create. We discussed whether it’s important to not be redundant by placing the same posts in numerous places and there seemed to be a consensus that it was okay to be redundant. There was a discussion about which social media platform is the most conducive for asking questions, as some members have not been getting responses to their questions on the list-serv. The idea was brought up that it may be useful if we see that someone is not getting a response on the list-serv to move the question to one of the other platforms. It was also mentioned that if people are not receiving the list-serv messages, that they may need to check their settings with SAA.

WCRT Blog
The leadership will be reaching out to members in the future and asking that they contribute to the blog during a certain month. Leadership sent around a sign-up sheet asking for volunteers.

New Business

Session proposals – due September 30th – The theme is Ensuring Access
We learned that the next SAA’s council is hoping to promote more innovation in session types, and that they encourage us to be creative in our types of proposals. The session blocks will be a maximum of 75 minutes.
Beth Ann Koelsch (UNC Greensboro) and Sherri Bowser (Virginia Tech) are considering creating a session on challenges and successes in processing/promoting women’s collections in traditionally male fields (e.g. women in the military, women architects). They are open to input and to people who would like to join the proposal.

The co-chairs asked for ideas for speakers for the next meeting.
Invite people from the area. A way to see the place that we're in: someone from the National Women's Museum; reach out to Associations in DC with large women’s membership; Gayle McCormick; DC Metro Library and their local history – also active in LGBT issues .

Report from SAA Council
Each section has an official liaison with the council, ours is Lisa Magiafico
This year, the council: adopted practices for improving the annual meeting; created an advocacy and public policy committee; encourages us to look at draft of the action items that are part of the strategic plan.

News and Updates from the group
Pacifica Radio Archives – digitizing recordings related to the women's movement, 1963-1982 Interviews with women who are leaders in the women's movement such as Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, as well as recordings of consciousness raising groups, authors, women's music/festivals, lesbian separatists, radical feminists, women in film, movies about women, documentaries about the suffragettes. Digitized folio collections; in touch with some historians; creating a long-term preservation plan; should get in contact with Tom Dublin @ Berkeley

Greensboro, November 9th – Annual Women's Veteran Event

Questions that came out of Women's Archive Symposium
How to encourage more women to submit proposals for technology sessions? Some attendees said when they saw the proposal they didn't know what the session would be about, or felt intimidated –especially by the word “innovative.” Attendees reflected that after they went to the symposium they realized they are doing work worth talking about, and that it’s nice to have a history of sessions to be able to look at to see if your idea would fall in line with the history of the symposium.
There seemed to be general consensus that attendees would be interested in going to and presenting at another symposium either in the coming year or in the following year. The leaders of the symposium were impressed with the turnout, and felt it was largely due to the fact that they didn’t charge.
For a future symposium, it would be helpful to have an institution willing to host in their space and provide funding. Some folks brought up the possibilities of corporate sponsorship and its benefits. If people who presented at the conference want to publicize their work, the WCRT is willing to post the materials to the blog and/or Facebook. Possible topics for another symposium include focusing on who the users of women’s collections are.

WCRT and WAR
We discussed the similarities and differences in mission between WCRT and WAR and whether there are ways to promote synergies between the two groups. Some attendees felt WAR should morph into more of an advocacy group. Some attendees felt that the two should remain distinct groups but that they should hold meetings together so as to not make attendees choose between meetings.

We also had a break where beignets were served and attendees were given a chance to network and discuss ideas for future proposals.

Attendees: Visit the Roundtable page for a full list of attendees.

Categories: conferences, meeting minutes, SAA 2013

WCRT Meeting Minutes - August 8, 2012, San Diego, CA

Women’s Collections Roundtable Annual Meeting 2012 

Meeting Minutes – August 8, 2012, San Diego, CA

Chair: Kathy Hertel-Baker (facilitator)

Vice Co-Chairs: Elizabeth Novara (notetaker), Alexandra Krensky (unable to attend)

1.    Presentation by Anne Hoiberg – President of the President of the Women’s Museum of California and the International Museum of Human Rights at San Diego

2.    Installation of New Officers

a.    New Co-Chairs - Liz Novara and Alex Krensky.

b.    July election results: Helice Koffler and Tali Beasley are the new co-vice chairs.

3.    By-laws for the WCRT

a.    SAA is requiring all roundtables to have formal bylaws, primarily so that there is more transparency and clarity, especially with the election of roundtable leadership.

b.    WCRT needs volunteers to form a by-laws committee to review the by-laws of sections and other roundtables to determine what would be most appropriate for the WCRT.

c.    There was some discussion about why this was necessary, since roundtables were originally determined to be very informal groups.

d.    A call for volunteers will be made after the annual conference is over.

4.     Women’s Collections Mini-conference, Pre-Conference in New Orleans

a.    Susan Tucker, Curator at Tulane University, requested that we discuss the possibility of having a mini-conference or a pre-conference at the next annual meeting in New Orleans that focused on women’s collections.   

b.    Members discussed this idea.  Some possible questions for the conference to focus on: What progress has been made in documenting women?  What changes in the way researchers conduct research have occurred?  Where do women’s collections currently fit in the archives profession?  What about in other professions, such as history and labor?  Could we focus on a timely issue within collections such as women’s reproductive rights, domestic violence, privacy concerns?  Finding women’s collections within institutions that aren’t necessarily focused on collecting materials related to women?

c.    What is the impact of the economy on women’s collections? Are there difficulties in bringing in collections especially without funding?  Are we not soliciting as strongly because we have too many other responsibilities?  Much of the funding for women’s archives come from second wave women’s movement and we need to interest other people in addition to this group of women.  We are starting to run out of storage space and electronic records are a new challenge since many women’s collections were established.

d.    Another idea was to focus on the new Women Archives Reader which will be published next year.  (A flyer with information about the reader was distributed.)

e.    The Big Berks conference was mentioned – could WCRT do something in collaboration with this conference?

f.      Honoring our foremothers in SAA.  Next year will be the 24^th year of the founding of the WCRT (1989).  Should we celebrate the 24^th or the 25^th year?

g.    There was agreement that it might be difficult for attendees to acquire funding to attend a day early if WCRT held a pre-conference.  It might make more sense to just extend the time of the regular WCRT meeting.  We should also extend invitations and information to other constituencies who may be interested, i.e. women’s religious communities, graduate students at local universities in Louisiana.

h.    Perhaps a morning session could focus on nuts and bolts and an afternoon session could have scholarly presentations??

i.      Mention of desire to update Andrea Hinding’s 1979 guide to archival and manuscript sources on women.   

5.    WCRT Bibliography

a.    Liz will be posting a bibliography of sources relating to women’s collections on the website.  This bibliography will focus primarily on archival. Manuscript, and special collections and will consist of scholarly research on the topic of these women’s collections (i.e. not necessarily research completed using women’s collections as sources.) 

b.    Links can be included to online resources such as LibGuides or other guides to finding women’s collections.  Also, sample instruction assignments on how to use women’s collections will be included. 

c.    A call will go out on the WCRT listserv to review the bibliography and to suggest additions to the bibliography. 

6.    Blog

a.    WCRT leadership will make a greater effort this year to keep the blog up-to-date. 

b.    Members are also encouraged to submit posts for the blog.  This would greatly assist in keeping the blog interesting and informative!

c.    WCRT will send out a once a month reminder to submit posts. 

7.    Session Proposals for the 2012 Conference

a.    Possibly a session on the new Women’s Archives Readers (if not used for the mini-conference)

b.    Topic ideas: Women religious archives? Material culture? 40^th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade anniversary? ERA? Public policy?  Planned Parenthood archives?  Women’s political collections?

8.    SAA Council – no questions to bring up

9.    News and Updates from the Group

a.    Make Your Own History: Documenting Feminist and Queer Activism in the 21st Century – Kelly Wooten has just published a new book!

b.    Women’s archives at Perdue University recently endowed by the outgoing president, who was the first woman president of the university (a possible blog entry?) 

Attendees:

Kathy Hertel-Baker, Sisters of Charity of Nazareth

Elizabeth Novara, University of Maryland

Lucinda Manning

Janice Ruth, Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Jessica Sedgwick, Harvard Medical School

Kelly Wooten, Duke University

Jolene Beiser, Pacifica Radio Archives

Kathleen Feeney, University of Chicago

Morna Gerrard, Georgia State University

Deborah Rice, Wayne State University

Anne Hoiberg, Women’s Museum of California

Fernanda Perone, Rutgers University

Sammie Morris, Purdue University

Danelle Moon, San Jose State University

Karen Mason, University of Iowa

Debbie Richards, Smith College

           

Categories: conferences, meeting minutes, SAA 2012