Society of American Archivists - UT Student Chapter

Society of American Archivists
University of Texas at Austin Student Chapter

9 JUNE 2001 MEETING MINUTES

Next meeting TBA

Present: Carol Mead, Becky Romanchuk, Amy Braitsch, Jennifer Hecker, Heather Arnold

I. Meeting called to order by Carol Mead, president, at 11:15 am

II. Committee Reports

Carol handed out copies of the committee reports from Archives Week 2000 so we could study the planning and organizing strategies used last year and benefit from the recommendations included in the reports.

III. Speakers and Panels for Archives Week

Carol reported that Sue from the Colorado Digitization Project (http://coloradodigital.coalliance.org) is excited about coming to speak at Archives Week at UT. We discussed the needs of financing travel and lodging for out of town speakers. Dr. Gracy has told us that there are resources that may be available to us to sponsor speakers.

Our two "speaker" events may be organized as a panel of speakers for one evening and a demonstration panel for the other. The speakers' panel line-up is tentatively: Sue from CDP, Karl Miller on sound archives technologies, and the Bush Presidential Librarian on digitizing email communications. The demonstration panel line-up is tentatively: Kris Kiesling on EAD or the Texas Digital Library, Hannah Frost on environmental monitoring software, and a speaker on video cataloging software. We have set ourselves the deadline of 31 July 2001 for confirming speakers for Archives Week. Other possibilities for speakers include a representative from Cuadra, an information management software manufacturer, and Sematech, which has a records management division.

We discovered the aptness of the term "symposium" as it could apply to our mixer. A symposium is "1. in ancient Greece, an entertainment characterized by drinking, music, and intellectual discussion; hence, 2. any meeting or social gathering at which ideas are freely exchanged." (Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, College Edition, 1960). The possibilities for clever use of this term in our publicity are obvious. The locale for the mixer is as yet undecided, but we think a drinking establishment may be too informal a venue and would not encourage "on-task" mixing behavior that a room reserved specially for the event would. It may be possible to share responsibility for the mixer by combining efforts with the annual Austin area archivists mixer, thereby economizing on expenditure and increasing archivist attendance. Dr. Gracy and Margaret Schlankey of the Austin History Center will be approached about this possibility.

IV. Fundraising

There are sources that can be tapped to help finance our Archives Week activities. We will create a formal "pitch" describing the ambitions and worthiness of our Archives Week efforts. Each officer can use this document to approach archive-related vendors and other likely entities that have the archival profession at heart to ask for sponsorship.

V. Giveaways

Carol reported on her findings from pencil and paper pad vendors. Several companies will soon be emailing estimates for our proposed order of printed pencils and paper pads. We have set ourselves the deadline of 1 September 2001 to finalize our giveaway orders.

VI. Meeting adjourned at 1:00 pm

Minutes submitted by Becky Romanchuk on 11 June 2001.

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2001 Minutes

Society of American Archivists - University of Texas at Austin Student Chapter
E-mail: saa@ischool.utexas.edu