Agenda for 2010 RAO Meeting

The almost surely final agenda for the Reference, Access, and Outreach Section's (RAO) annual meeting on Friday, August 13th at 1pm is available on the section's SAA page. The major change is the addition of the small-group discussion topics and a call for suggestions either in advance in the comments section or at the meeting.

Discussion topics will include:

1. How do reference, access, and outreach relate? Further, how do they relate to their archival neighbors such as description and collection development?

2. What would you like to see the section doing in the short and long-term? Are there new initiatives, projects, or deliverables you believe the section should undertake?

3. RAO: Headed for divorce or stronger than ever? They've been together over 30 years! The Gore's have ended their relationship, should R, A, and O move on as well "following a process of long and careful consideration"?

4-5. Attendee choice(s). Taking inspiration from the THATCamp movement, and since we won't have another THATCamp Austin 2009 organized to coincide with this year's meeting, we're taking suggestions for small-group discussion topics. How this will work: To propose a topic in advance, suggest a discussion topic in the comments here by 11pm on Thursday, August 12th. Discussion topic suggestions will also be accepted at the meeting when anyone who has an area or topic of interest will have 1 minute to suggest a topic for discussion. After all suggestions are shared, the room will vote and the 1-2 discussion topics with the most support will break out for discussion groups of their own (along with #1-3 above). The only topical requirement is that your suggestion should relate to reference, access, and/or outreach in some way. Want to talk further about an interesting session from earlier in the meeting or begin brainstorming for a future session proposal? This is another place to have those conversations. We're looking forward to your suggestions!

Visit the RAO News blog for background on the 2010 discussion groups or to get a sense of the discussions at RAO's 2009 meeting when the topics were mission, MPLP, NHD, metrics/user studies, Web 2.0, and advocacy. Each discussion group will briefly report to the larger group and fuller notes will be shared after the meeting.