Disclaimer: This wiki is a supplemental venue for open discussion associated with the 2007 Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting; it IS NOT provided, hosted or officially endorsed by SAA as an organization.

Government Records Section Meeting

From Saa2007

Jump to: navigation, search

Government Records Section Web Site


[edit] Feelin' Stronger Every Day**: Government Records Archivists Tackling Hard Problems

  • Title of song by Chicago, available on The Very Best of Chicago: Only the beginning (Rhino Records, 2002)

Do you worry about: 1) Insufficient support for preserving “your” program. 2) Email – can you save it, should you save it, how to save it? 3) Somebody asking you: “when is everything going to be online?”

Three presentations will inspire you to stop worrying and start “feelin’ stronger.” Join us on Friday, August 31 at 8:00 am to learn from our presenters and other section members.

I look forward to seeing you there,

Lucy Barber, Section Chair.

Convincing a City to Support an Archives Program

The City of San Antonio in Texas has recently begun a formal archives program. There are many challenges and opportunities associated with building a program for such a large city from scratch. Amanda Carvell, the new city archivist, will discuss how the project got off the ground and the results of their efforts thus far. She then will ask section members for advice about strategies for moving the program forward.

Amanda Carvell, City Archivist for San Antonio, has a B.A and a Masters of Science in Information from the University of Michigan. She worked at the Bentley Historical Library and the Texana/Geneology Department at the San Antonio Public Library before being appointed as the first city archivist for San Antonio in January 2007.

Connecting the Archive to the Email

We all use it. It is becoming more and more like the letters that our grandparents wrote daily conveying both detailed information and simple updates. But every archivist is a bit daunted about preserving email. Kelly Eubank of the North Carolina State Archives and Mark Myers of the Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives will discuss their project to take advantage of the interoperability of Email in order to preserve state email records in a three-state project that includes Pennsylvania. They note that there are many different e-mail programs that run on many different types of computer systems, yet each can read what is sent by the other. The reason that e-mails messages can be sent from disparate systems and then read without fail is that all parties have agreed to use the Internet Message Format and the associated Mime-Type extensions for the exchange of e-mail. Using specialized tools, they hope to take advantage of this interoperatibility to work with offices within our respective governments such as the Governor’s office and the Office of Secretary of State to: • test the tool with different email programs • get user feedback regarding ease of use, and • to actively collect and preserve electronic mail. They are eager to hear from others about their approaches to the email challenge and share resources.

Kelly Eubank, Electronic Records Archivist at the North Carolina State Archives, received her BA in History from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and her Master in Public History from North Carolina State University. She worked at a variety of historic museums, then at GlaxoSmithKline as records manager before beginning work at the State Archives in 2001. Mary Myers, Resource Management Analyst at the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives, received his BA in Education from the University of Kentucky and studied history and archives at Auburn University. He worked for the Alabama Department for Archives and History before taking his position in Kentucky in 2001.


Digitizing with Partnerships: The National Archives Experience

Recently, the National Archives has begun partnering with companies to digitize large portions of their holdings. Of course, they can not digitize everything themselves nor does the Archives want to “sell” off their collections in a digital form. So Archives staff members have spent considerable time thinking about the values and standards that must inform these partnerships. James J. Hastings, Director of Access Programs, will discuss the results of these discussions and how they shaped some of the agreements they have made with other companies such as Google and Footnote. Section members are encouraged to share their own experiences and offer other considerations.

James J. Hastings, Director, Access Programs, National Archives of the United States, has A.B. and M.A. degrees in American History from Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio. He began his career at the National Archives in 1972 as an Archives Technician in the Records Declassification Division. Since then he has held archival staff and management positions in several offices. Some of his previous management positions were Director, Nixon Presidential Materials Project, 1979-88; Director, Non-textual Archives Division, 1996-98; and Director, Textual Archives Services Division, 1998-2004. He was appointed Director, Access Programs in 2004.

Personal tools
Wiki Main Page