Wanted:Hot Topics and Cool Demos

The 2014 RAO Program Committee seeks Hot Topics and Cool Demonstrations for provocative conversation and deep thinking at the SAA Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.   On Thursday, August 14, 2014 from 3:30 pm to 5:30 pm, RAO will host its third annual Marketplace of Ideas and seeks purveyors of hot topics and cool demonstrations to sell their wares to a savvy audience of RAO archivists.

What is an RAO Hot Topic?
An RAO hot topic is an issue, a concern, an idea that has sparked recent attention in RAO circles.  It can be something that seems novel or cutting-edge; it can be an enduring issue that is garnering new attention or approaches. 

What Makes an RAO Hot Topic HOT?
An RAO hot topic can be provocative and even fractious; it can also be surprising and funny. Above all else, a hot topic should engender passion, engagement and excitement.   

What is an RAO Cool Demo?
An RAO Cool Demonstration is a presentation of an approach or technique that has enhanced services, simplified processes, or transformed workflows and approaches. It could be a simple fix or adaptation, or a reinvention of the wheel.

What Makes an RAO Cool Demo COOL?
An RAO Cool Demo should be widely applicable to RAO archivists and simple enough to explain in a low-tech manner in a short period of time.  Think of it as an app that works without a mobile device.

Make a Proposal…
Applying to purvey hotness and coolness is simple and easy:

1.       Draft a brief description of the demonstration or hot topic and explain how and/or why it relates to reference, access, or outreach archivists and their work. 

2.       Come up with a working title.

3.       Determine who will lead the demo or moderate the discussion (this may be you, so talk to yourself).

4.       Please go to this Google form [link] to complete the online proposal application.

5.    Deadline to apply is May 15, 2014.

 

 

 

Annual Meeting Recap: Roll with the Changes

Thank you to everyone who came to the Reference, Access, and Outreach Section meeting in Austin last week. There were a number of interesting competing section meetings and we hope those of you who attended found the meeting informative. A quick recap of the meeting for those who were not able to attend or for those like me for who the annual meeting can be a bit of blur.

The call for proposals for DC2010 was shared with the RAO members in attendance fully participating in the briefing. The only piece of information the crowd did not recall was the page number for more information in the program. Due date for proposals is September 24th and the Steering Committee looks forward to reviewing many for possible endorsement!

The report from SAA Council followed with a review of the advocacy agenda, strategic planning, increased transparency of Council meetings, and other news shared.

George Bain shared a call to compile a list of friends of the archives groups in the U.S. & Canada this year. Feel free to contact George directly or watch for his appeal coming in the near future.

Todd Kosmerick shared that an ARL Spec Kit on outreach has been approved. He and his co-author hope to utilize the section for feedback and other information. Expect announcements, drafts, etc. from the authors in the coming months!

Newsletter Editor Nancy Melley shared the results of the Newsletter Task Force and justification for amending the Section's by-laws (see pages 8-10 of the most recent RAO newsletter). The by-laws revisions were approved by the membership.

Past chair Lynn Eaton shared the slate of candidates with attendees and ran the election. Congratulations and welcome to new members of the RAO Steering Committee!

Vice-chair: Jim Gerencser, Dickinson College

Steering Committee Member (2009-2011): Beth Bensman, NARA
Steering Committee Member (2009-2011): Jill Severn, University of Georgia

Danna Bell-Russel provided an update on the section's National History Day efforts. Visit the RAO website for further updates and recent information.

Shannon Bowen Maier could not attend the meeting, but an update on the MPLP Task Force's continuing work was shared and will be distributed. An MPLP Best Practices Guide has been proposed (2008 report).

The remainder of the section meeting was spent in breakout sessions. Attendees chose from several topics including National History Day, MPLP, 2.0/Social Media, User Studies/Metrics, the Section's Mission, and the SAA Advocacy Agenda to share experiences with and discuss. The notes taken in these small groups will be shared on this blog and the Steering Committee hopes that those in attendance as well as those who could not attend will share further thoughts, suggestions, and reflections on these topics in the comments. This feedback will then be used by the Steering Committee in formulating the section's agenda and priorities as we move forward. If you have any thoughts on the small group discussion format or the annual meeting, feel free to share your thoughts here or with a member of RAO's Steering Committee.

If you were not able to attend the RAO meeting in Austin, we hope to see you in Washington, D.C. in August 2010.

Update: The notes from the discussion group of RAO's mission and metrics and user studies are now available with the others to follow.

Ideas for the Next Women's History Month

Are you like me and always so impressed by the outreach efforts of other repositories that inspire and motivate you to try something new at your institution? It may be that the "thing" won't happen at your repository for a while, but you know it provides a bit of excitement for a new project. This is how I felt in March during Women's History Month, so here are a few links to projects that I hope will provide a bit of inspiration for a future project for someone else as well.

The blog Women's Experiences at Dickinson College is documenting the experiences of the institution's female students in recognition of the 125th anniversary of women being permitted to enroll at the college for the first time. The about page summarizes the project's work so far and is a wonderful example of fruit interns and volunteers offer repositories.

The Ada Lovelace Day pledge to publish a blog post on March 24th about a woman in technology was an interesting and apparently successful endeavour to get 1,000 people to blog about women in technology. While not specific to archives or special collections, it is certainly example of the sort of opportunity we should join whenever practical.

The Bigger Picture: Photography and the Smithsonian blog did a series of posts highlighting women in science photographs from the institution's collections to mark Women's History Month and International Women's Day. And why not take a turn through Julia Child's Kitchen courtesy of the Smithsonia National Museum of American History.

The Nurse Romance Cover of the Week from the Special Collections Department at the UW-Milwaukee Library was begun in 2006 and has been presenting images and text from the over 400 novels in their collection that have nurses as central characters. The books were written for young and adult audiences from the 1950s to the 1970s and appeal to my appreciation of pop culture and pulp novels.

The Klondike Gold Rush-Seattle Unit of the National Park Service hosted a series of events from March through May as well as an interpretive exhibit about Catharine Paine Blaine, an early proponent of women's rights in Washington.

The Drexel University College of Medicine Archives and Special Collections' blog A Movable Archives provided the perspective of a repository which spends nearly every day sharing and talking women's history in Every Day is Ladies' Day for Me. You may also want to check out their IMLS-funded digital collection Women Physicians: 1850s-1970s.

The Jewish Women Archive not surprisingly marked Women's History Month with a number of announcements including releasing the release of Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia and continuing regular this day in history tweets.

The Vietnam Center & Archive at Texas Tech University released Not Just Pretty Faces: The Women of the Vietnam War an online exhibit that includes photographs, video, oral history interview audio and transcriptions, documents, and artifacts about the experiences of American women nurses, Red Cross personnel, and others who served during the Vietnam War.

So what did we do to mark Women's History Month at my repository this year? Well, we did a little coasting and I tried something new. First, the coasting: the 2008-2009 academic year is the 90th anniversary of the College of William and Mary going coed. Last year we began the blog Mary Comes to the College with William to "follow the first year women were admitted to the College of William and Mary 90 years later beginning with the endorsement of the proposed legislation by the College's Board of Visitors on February 12, 1918, through the end of the spring term in 1919." March was actually a slow month in 1919, so we wrote what we called "A Step out of 1918-1919" posts to write about the first group of African American women to attend the university and a lesson plan companion to the blog. A related exhibit "There's Something About the Marys" exploring the first three years of co-education at the College of William and Mary in two exhibit cases in the high-traffic read and relax area of the library. The something new we tried was sharing something related to women's history from our collections at least once each day via Twitter Mondays-Fridays starting March 3rd .

I mean no slight by not mentioning the amazing things you're doing at your repository and hope folks will share information and links to your projects or one you have an archives crush on in the comments (that is why they are there and hope we can use them).