Issues and Advocacy Roundtable Meeting

Wednesday, August 27, 2008 - 3:15 PM-5:15 PM Room Golden Gate 2

The I&A Roundtable will be kicking off a new way of doing business at this year's annual meeting. Instead of identifying issues to forward to Council, the Roundtable will now be identifying one or two major issues facing archivists and making them the focus for the upcoming year. (Or we could work in two year cycles--need to see how people want to handle this.) The goals for the re-tooled I&A Roundtable are to provide a forum for discussion and actions on critical issues facing the archival profession which are not the primary focus of another SAA group, and to promote discourse and activity regarding issues requiring advocacy from archivists or SAA leadership. Possible activities for focus issues could include creating online resources (such as a wiki), organizing sessions for the next annual meeting or for regional conferences, or identifying suggestions for possible Council action. The I&A Roundtable hopes to partner with other roundtables and sections whenever possible to broaden interest in its focus topic. Interested, but can't make it to San Francisco? Not to worry. The I&A Roundtable wants to explore using new tools to keep its activity going between meetings and get everyone involved, not just those who can get to the annual meeting. Contact co-chairs Kate Theimer or Peter Gunther or add your comment here if you've got a suggestion for a topic or an activity you'd like to get involved with.

Tentative Meeting Agenda:
- Welcome and Introductions

- Overview of new direction for roundtable and goals for this meeting

- Discussion of possible topics for focus

- Selection of topic

- Discussion of activities for the upcoming year

- Discussion of organizational structure (if necessary)

- Review of work assignments

- Adjourn

Possible Topics:
If you've got a suggestion for a topic, an activity, or want to voice your support for a topic, please go ahead and edit this page. It would be great to get a lot of ideas out there and maybe even narrow down to one or two topics before the meeting!

- The environment and sustainability and what we can do in our archives to help promote the health of our planet. Note that sustainability is the topic for next year's annual meeting: http://www.archivists.org/conference/austin2009/AM09-call.asp

- Leadership (in the archival profession, our institutions, and the world) - possible activities could include developing/posting reading and resource lists, holding regular online discussions around different aspects of leadership or exercises, developing session proposals, identifying mentorship opportunities, etc.

-Professionalization/Education of archives programs: there's been a lot of talk about this recently on the listserv. Might be something to work with the Academy of Certified Archivists on, too.

- Access to health insurance--maybe not an issue for a majority of us, but for people on contracts or really small places, not having insurance provided by your employer is probably a big issue. Maybe we could put together some resources to help people and work up a proposal for SAA to offer access to coverage the way AASLH does.

Related Resources:
OUT OF DATE! New page in the works. SAA's Issues &amp; Advocacy Roundtable Page