The 2nd Annual Graduate Symposium took place on Saturday, March 30, 2013, as the result of collaborative work of the diverse Simmons GSLIS student organizations including: SCoSAA, PLG, ASA-SC, Panopticon, LISSA, ASIS&T, UXPA@Simmons, SLA, and support from GSLIS. The Symposium provided an opportunity for students to present on their research interests, prepare for future professional conferences, network with their peers, and explore how related professions such as archives, libraries, history, and museums are converging. Please read the following panel reports to learn more about the papers presented at the Symposium.
LISSA Party 4/26!
When: Friday, April 26th, 6pm-9pm
Where: SoM 501
Food, drinks, trivia, prizes, cotton candy, and a well-earned celebration of the end of the semester! The party will be well-attended by GSLIS students AND faculty–you don’t want to miss it!
LEADS Luncheon
When:?Monday, April 29th, 2013, 11:30-1pm
Where:?P206
Join SCoSAA in celebrating the LEADS Project as it closes out Phase I and its first year. The LEADS Project is?a collaborative effort between GSLIS and the Simmons College Archives to give student volunteers a chance to practice EAD encoding and see that all Simmons Archives finding aids are encoded in EAD. The Project has completed its first phase, which was to encode all Charities Collection finding aids. LEADS will be unveiling the encoded Charities Collection finding aids at the luncheon!
We will be providing a full lunch, and we invite you to?come before/after class and stay as long as you can!
Brown Bag Lunch: Kathy Wisser and the SmallWorld Project
When: Tuesday, April 23, 2013, 12-1pm
Where:?P206
It?is?a small world, after all… Now what?: Archivists’ perceptions on connections
This presentation will discuss the findings of a recent survey solicited by the IMLS-funded SmallWorld project that asked archivists to think about leveraging connections between people, corporate bodies, and families in archival description.
SCoSAA Reads: Quiet
Please join us on Thursday, April 18, from 4:30-6pm in P206?for a discussion of the book?Quiet: The Power of?Introverts in a World That Can?t Stop Talking?by Susan Cain. The entire book?Quiet?is?highly recommended, but for the purposes of the SCoSAA Reads?discussion we will point you to the Introduction and Chapter 9-?When Should?You Act More Extroverted than you Really Are?? These?excerpts will help us jump into a conversation about cultural biases associated with introversion, the importance of self-awareness, and the?wide variety of strengths a new professional can exhibit no matter his/her?personality type.
For last-minute preparation, please watch Susan Cain’s TED Talk.
We hope to see you at SCoSAA Reads!
Access to the readings is available to anyone in the Simmons GSLIS community?here. E-mail SCoSAA Webmaster Elise Dunham ([email protected])?from your simmons.edu address for the password.
Meet Claudia
[important]Claudia Willett is in her 4th semester of the dual-degree archives management and history program. She confesses to knowing in high school that she wanted to work in archives. She also admits that she participated in ‘Take Your Daughter to Work Day’ with her librarian mom, so it was probably?inevitable that she ended up in an information science field. Her passion for advocacy and outreach in the archival field drew her into volunteering for the Archivists without Borders U.S. Chapter Incorporation Committee. She lives in South Boston with her two cats and her favorite guilty pleasure is reading historical fiction .?[/important]
Real Talk: Incorporating Archivists without Borders U.S. Chapter Pt. II
The Incorporation Committee (AwB U.S. – IC) met on March 12 via Google Hangout, as the committee is spread across the Eastern seaboard–Boston to North Carolina! We congregated to commence the work and operations slated for the group. What exactly is the charge of the AwB U.S. – IC, you might wonder? The Incorporation Committee is charged with examining legal and financial aspects of the U.S. Chapter of Archivists without Borders, which includes finding pro bono legal and CPA (tax) assistance to establish 501(c)(3) status. Additionally, the committee is responsible for reviewing the chapter’s founding documents to ensure the materials are compliant with legal and tax requirements of a 501(c)(3). Sounds fun, right?
I was immediately overwhelmed and it was only five minutes into the inaugural meeting. How would I contribute to the success of these mandates? I am a graduate student, not a lawyer. I am a technical services assistant, not a tax preparer. As the meeting went on, everyone casually shared their experience, connections, and areas of general interest and expertise. When the AwB U.S. – IC chair said that 501(c)(3) would likely be established in Boston at Simmons College, it became obvious how I would contribute! I may not be a lawyer or a CPA but I do work in technical services at an AmLaw 100 firm (with a special committee on pro bono services for establishing 501(c)(3)s)! Additionally, I have two cousins who are CPAs in Boston. I felt a little nervous sharing this facts because no one wants to be THAT person on their volunteer committee. I got over my fear (read: myself) and piped up: “I might be able to help here.”
Everyone in the committee seemed ecstatic, not annoyed, so that was a relief and a moment of joy. The group was off to a great start. Everyone else volunteered for the areas in which they would help from reviewing the by-laws to recording and managing meeting minutes to share with the Core Working Group. We agreed to meet again in two weeks and we went off to start on our individual work.
The next day, I sent an E-mail off to my cousins. That was easy enough. I spent awhile on the firm’s intranet trying to ascertain who I should be contacting to get the AwB – U.S. Chapter accepted as a pro bono matter. Finally, I found the two women who head up the pro bono assistance for 501(c)(3) incorporation in Massachusetts. Sending the initial E-mail was as nerve-wracking as confessing that I work at a law firm and have CPA cousins, particularly because one of the women is a partner (eek!). My inquiry was received warmly and I was encouraged to share the Pro Bono Assistance Application and the workshop packet that outlines the major requirements for incorporating a 501(c)(3) in Massachusetts with the AwB U.S. – IC. As luck would have it, the woman I spoke with mentioned a suspicion I had: one of the pro bono approval committee members is on the Board at Simmons! She encouraged me to mention Simmons on the application.
I don’t want to make morals a habit at the end of my posts, but one seems important to mention directly here, too. The moral to this post is: you never know what experiences will be useful! It was chance that brought me to the committee and coincidence that I have connections to help move the major processes for successful incorporation forward. Be open to every opportunity and every experience, both professional and personal. Next week: meeting two!
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If you’re interested in getting involved with Archivists without Borders, please E-mail Joel Blanco-Rivera at [email protected].
2nd Annual Graduate Symposium Feedback
Did you attend the 2nd Annual Graduate Symposium either in person or via livestream? If you did, we want to hear from you! Please take a few minutes and let us know what you thought of the keynote speaker, the panels, the food, the livestream, the flow of the day, we want to know!
The survey is brief and the feedback is invaluable!
Livestream:?http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2ndsymplivestream
Thank you for your help!
Four Open SCoSAA Positions: Get Involved!
Four SCoSAA officers are graduating in May, and we need you to take our spots! Serving as a SCoSAA officer is a fantastic way to make connections within the archives community both within and outside of GSLIS, further develop your leadership skills, and provide your fellow students with excellent opportunities for professional growth.
The following positions are currently available. Go here to learn more about what each position entails. Listed also are the names/contact information of the individuals who held these positions for the 2012-2013 academic year. Please feel free to contact any of us with questions about the open positions!
- Two Co-Chairs (Aliza Leventhal [email protected] and Rosalie Gartner [email protected])
- Treasurer (Jan Day jan.day@simmons.edu)
- Webmaster/Social Media Manager (Elise Dunham [email protected])
To nominate yourself, E-mail Mariah Manley, LISSA President, at [email protected] with your name, the organization and position you are running for, and a 2-3 sentence blurb about why you are a great candidate for the position and why you want to be a student leader. She will be accepting nominations until Saturday, April 13.
In the Same Room: The Ethics and Politics of Space
When it came time for the last talk of the last panel of the Simmons GSLIS 2nd Annual Graduate Symposium, presenter Eva Rios-Alvarado took a moment to acknowledge her presence: “It’s hard to be a librarian in a roomful of archivists,” she quipped. The statement served to lighten the late-afternoon mood and also set the tone for the talk that followed.
I was not in the room when this happened. I was 3,000 miles away in my San Francisco apartment, watching the Symposium via livestream as part of my ongoing efforts as an online student to remain connected to a campus that happens to be on the other side of the country.
As I have been processing my thoughts about and reactions to the Symposium over the past week, this particular moment stands out to me for several reasons: Rios-Alvarado’s spontaneous remark encapsulates a number of themes that emerged from the panels; it pinpoints what I understand to be a complicated distinction in LIS programs between different types of students, and it at once confuses and clarifies my own experience as someone new to these fields who interacts with them from a distance.
These thoughts can be expressed with a single question:?what does it mean to be in the same room together??For several of the panelists, this question might take different forms: for Elizabeth McGorty, these means building bridges between the archival and performing arts communities, whereas for Jessica Bennett, it could be the potential opportunities in exploring new ways to cultivate the public’s engagement with art. Astrid Drew’s talk on cultural identity among the Swedish-American community in Rhode Island outlined the particular contours of an in-between territory in which the distinctions are blurred between subject and scholarship. Kristen Schuster extended this idea of the “third space” to the architectural history of public libraries, explaining how the spatial orientation of libraries has evolved relative to librarians’ relationships with patrons as well as changing practices and priorities of information organization.
The conversation took a more theoretical turn with the final panel of the day. Genna Duplisea challenged fellow archivists to think critically about the idea of activism–to identify their own positionality and recognize that the archival process never occurs in a neutral space. Rios-Alvarado and colleague?Ren?e Elizabeth Neely sought to move the conversation beyond activism, focusing on the complex dynamic between memory, history, and archives.
As these panelists demonstrated (and I should note here that I’ve only highlighted a portion of the day’s talks–my West Cost time zone got in the way of my participation in the first half of the Symposium), it certainly does mean something to be in the “same room,” although what this means is constantly in flux and contingent on local conditions. What remains the same, however, is the idea that both archivists and librarians are always operating within and among a community–or communities. We must understand the shapes that these communities take, the inherent promises and challenges the contain, and the unique but overlapping?responsibilities?of each person in the room. From my room in San Francisco, I thought about my own space and my own role and about the memory and positionality I will bring with me as I make the transition from a student into what comes next.
Review the Symposium program here.
Panel broadcasts are available here.