It was wonderful to see so many of you in Portland OR for Archives 2017 – what a terrific meeting!
So glad to see all the tweets, Facebook updates, and highlights throughout the week for those of us who were there about sessions and events we couldn’t attend and for those who couldn’t be there in person.
Please do continue to share updates about what you’re doing throughout the year. We are working on more than we could possibly share in an Annual Meeting, no matter how chuck full of great updates and information it was. Here are a few resources to share that relate to my address and/or didn’t quite fit into a column.
One takeaway for me from the week and from portion of The Liberated Archive Forum I was able to attend was this:
If we refer to institutional policies that limit and discriminate as synonymous with archival practice, and then conclude that all archival practice is bad or ill-equipped for the hard work of social justice, we limit our tools and options, and do a disservice to the hard work of many archivists over many years. SAA and the broader archival community have developed tools and cumulative guidance – our code of ethics, our code of conduct, our principles and practice – that are essential for what we do. Institutional policies may discriminate or support systemic injustice – and many archivists are working to address them – but good archival practice does not. Good practice calls upon archivists to work to change unjust policies and to help communities and creators everywhere to preserve their history and memory.
Wonderful job Program Committee, Host Committee, SAA staff, and Event staff!
Thanks to all of you – see you next year, if not sooner! Best-
Nance
Data rescue efforts and related resources:
Data Refuge https://www.datarefuge.org/
Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) https://envirodatagov.org/
Endangered Data Week http://endangereddataweek.org/
Blog post by Alex Chassanoff about the data rescue event at MIT: https://drmaltman.wordpress.com/2017/03/02/guest-post-alex-chassanoff-on-datarescue-bostonmit-wrap-up/
Stronger together: the case for cross-sector collaboration in identifying and preserving at-risk data https://figshare.com/articles/Stronger_together_the_case_for_cross-sector_collaboration_in_identifying_and_preserving_at-risk_data/4816474/1
Data-related resources:
Interesting Smithsonian article: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/second-doomsday-vault-preserve-data-opening-svalbard-180962749/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=socialmedia
Data in the mainstream press – hot topic: http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/11/technology/government-open-data-life-decisions/index.html
AA and other Archival resources:
rchives in Libraries: What Librarians and Archivists Need to Know to Work Together. Jeannette A. Bastian, Megan Sniffin-Marinoff, and Donna Webber http://saa.archivists.org/store/archives-in-libraries-what-librarians-and-archivists-need-to-know-to-work-together/4700/
Article by Margaret Adams about punched cards, noting their addition in 1939 as a federal record format as an indicator that archivists have been involved with data for a long time: http://dx.doi.org/10.17723/aarc.58.2.d61078182725616j
Archives timeline (wonderful resource!) to put the Federal Records Act into context: https://www.archives.gov/about/history/milestones.html
Off the Record 