For this Saturday's blog post, some of us wanted to share our experiences from our amazing road trip to SAA New Orleans 2013! This was a few months ago, but the beginning of the semester has been so busy! Laurel will speak to her experience presenting a poster, and Lotus will talk about some interesting sessions she attended. Read on!
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| Laurel showing off her poster. Ask her more about it next time you see her! |
Laurel Gildersleeve - Student Poster Presenter/Boss at Life
The opportunity to present my poster on project management was for me the highlight at this year’s SAA conference. I was overwhelmed with the support and interest I received from conference attendees. The encouragement from SAA council members to pursue my topic further, and expand the poster into articles for different SAA listservs gave me confidence that what I had presented was valued in my chosen profession. These personal reactions to my work as a student have empowered me to delve further into current archival issues and practices. I value the connections I was able to make with colleagues at the Society of American Archivists. |
| Laurel's poster up close. |
Lotus Norton-Wisla - Attendee
This was my first SAA conference, so I was very excited and a little intimidated going into it. I did not have a poster or a paper to present this time around (Ellen and Laurel did!), so it took some pressure off and left me free to explore different sessions and opportunities. I also signed up with a Navigator, who helped me meet archivists and talked with me about his experiences at SAA. I will share some highlights from the conference that really sparked my interest and made me value the SAA experience.
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| Attempting to leave the touristy part of New Orleans, failing. |
SAA Student Leaders Discussion
A section that I attended was the Student Leaders Discussion. Many students in SAA Student Chapters from around the country gathered to discuss ideas and share projects. This was the first student leaders meeting in a few years, and the attendance was really impressive. We filled the entire tiny room! We discussed what our groups do for professional development, social events, elections, structure, fundraising, and many other areas. There were so many new ideas, but the section got me most excited about thinking of new fundraising strategies and planning repository tours for the next year. Another issue that was raised is the lack of communication between student groups. We should support other student groups as well as our own members. There is a SAA Student listserv, as well as the Students and New Professionals listserv, but this Facebook group was also created to facilitate discussion.
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| Cafe Adelaide |
Crowdsourcing Lightning Round and Iowa’s DIY History
At the last session I attended, there were at least a dozen speakers, who each got about 7 minutes to speak about crowdsourcing in archives. This is all about using a dedicated base of volunteers to help work on collections. Not just to get the work done, but to build a network of people who care about your archive and projects. This is a really interesting approach to outreach, and it seems to work very well for some institutions. One project that was especially inspiring came from the Iowa Historical Society. Their project is called DIY History. They use crowdsourcing to transcribe, correct, and add metadata to items. The original response was overwhelming (partially in thanks to Reddit??), and they had to come up with more projects to add to the DIY History idea. Some current projects that users can access and contribute to are diaries, letters, and cookbooks.
Some other really interesting sessions were "Native Americans and Route 66: Hidden Stories of the Mother Road" and "Archiving Hip-Hop Culture: Collaborating Across Institutions." Read about these sessions and the people behind them to learn more!
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| Thanks my ladies! Brunch at Ruby Slipper Cafe |
I really enjoyed the conference - meeting new people, sharing ideas, and hearing about inspirational projects from around the country was so valuable. After a three day conference (not to mention the the 15 hour drive each way), I was pretty exhausted, but it was worth it for the great food and company. It was absolutely necessary to rely on Ellen, Laurel, and Jamie for moral support and fun times!
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