Your faithful 2016-2017 SAASC officers Rebecca Leung, Tiana Trutna, and Amanda Mellinger attended the SAA Annual Meeting in the midst of a heat wave in Portland. The best way to escape the heat was to jump into the intellectual fire of #SAA17! The theme of this year’s meeting was Alike/Different. Many of the sessions were centered around the theme of diversity, inclusion, and community engagement. This theme is important to us at SJSU SAASC as well, especially considering that our members represent a diverse community from all over the globe.
Some sessions attended by SAASC officers included:
It was a particular pleasure to attend Social Media vs. Open Government: Similarities, Differences, and Impact on Records Management Practices, where the iSchool’s own Dr. Pat Franks and Dr. Michelle Chen were presenters. SAASC officers spread out to cover many different Section Meetings, including the Manuscript Repositories Section, the Archival History Section, the Oral History Section, the Women Archivists Section, the Students and New Professionals Section (SNAP), and the Archivists and Archives of Color Section.
In addition to the sessions and section meetings, Amanda took the test onsite to become a certified archivist by the Academy of Certified Archivists. We are very proud to announce that both Amanda and 2015-2017 Web Team member, Melissa Rupp, passed the test and are now provisionally certified archivists! (Melissa took the test at the Salt Lake City test site. The exam can be taken in any city that has been selected by enough applicants, and is always held in the city of the SAA meeting.) Amanda reports that taking the test is “like taking a short version of the SATs again: cold room, number 2 pencils, and nothing allowed on your desk”. For those of you curious about possibly taking the test yourselves someday, it consists of 100 multiple choice questions from seven different domains. After the test, Amanda was provided with a breakdown of how she scored in each domain, which could be used for continuing study and professional development. Thank you, Amanda, for giving us the inside scoop, and congratulations to everyone who passed!
The SAA Annual Meeting is a great place to not only learn from others about the latest in the archival profession, but join the conversation by contributing your own work. For example, Rebecca presented a graduate student poster entitled Learning about Media Preservation: From Legacy to Next Generation about her Spring 2017 internship at the Bay Area Video Coalition. She also wrote a recap of the Graduate Student Poster Session for the SNAP blog. Amanda is also active with the SNAP section, where she serves as Junior Social Media Coordinator, and wrote two session recaps for the SNAP blog.
Rebecca, Tiana, and Amanda would like to sincerely thank Dr. Hirsh and the iSchool for making it possible for them to attend the meeting with a generous travel award! It’s great to know that our school supports development through professional associations! If you weren’t able to make it to SAA this year, you can always check out the recordings or search the hashtag #SAAleftbehind or #SAA17 on Twitter! We hope to see you at next year’s Annual Meeting, which will take place in Washington, D.C.
Rebecca Leung is a recent iSchool graduate and former Chair of the SAA Student Chapter. In addition to receiving her MLIS with a concentration in Archives and Preservation this last Spring 2017 semester, Rebecca has had two internships during her time at the iSchool. The first involved migrating legacy finding aids to ArchivesSpace at UC Berkeley's Environmental Design Archives, and for the second, she learned about transferring video tape to digital format at the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC). Rebecca is currently starting her third internship, helping SAA's Archival History Section launch their newsletter, while also working at the Bancroft Library and the Archives in the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
Some sessions attended by SAASC officers included:
- Immigration Archival Collections: Difference, Transnationality, Relevance
- #ArchivesForBlackLives: Archivists respond to Black Lives Matter
- Between You and Me: Policy and Procedure in Navigating Sensitive Information in Oral Histories
- Documenting Sorrow: Collecting and Archiving in Digital and Physical Formats Memorials from School shootings
- Liberation: A Hip Hop Place of State and Mind
- And many others!
It was a particular pleasure to attend Social Media vs. Open Government: Similarities, Differences, and Impact on Records Management Practices, where the iSchool’s own Dr. Pat Franks and Dr. Michelle Chen were presenters. SAASC officers spread out to cover many different Section Meetings, including the Manuscript Repositories Section, the Archival History Section, the Oral History Section, the Women Archivists Section, the Students and New Professionals Section (SNAP), and the Archivists and Archives of Color Section.
In addition to the sessions and section meetings, Amanda took the test onsite to become a certified archivist by the Academy of Certified Archivists. We are very proud to announce that both Amanda and 2015-2017 Web Team member, Melissa Rupp, passed the test and are now provisionally certified archivists! (Melissa took the test at the Salt Lake City test site. The exam can be taken in any city that has been selected by enough applicants, and is always held in the city of the SAA meeting.) Amanda reports that taking the test is “like taking a short version of the SATs again: cold room, number 2 pencils, and nothing allowed on your desk”. For those of you curious about possibly taking the test yourselves someday, it consists of 100 multiple choice questions from seven different domains. After the test, Amanda was provided with a breakdown of how she scored in each domain, which could be used for continuing study and professional development. Thank you, Amanda, for giving us the inside scoop, and congratulations to everyone who passed!
The SAA Annual Meeting is a great place to not only learn from others about the latest in the archival profession, but join the conversation by contributing your own work. For example, Rebecca presented a graduate student poster entitled Learning about Media Preservation: From Legacy to Next Generation about her Spring 2017 internship at the Bay Area Video Coalition. She also wrote a recap of the Graduate Student Poster Session for the SNAP blog. Amanda is also active with the SNAP section, where she serves as Junior Social Media Coordinator, and wrote two session recaps for the SNAP blog.
Rebecca, Tiana, and Amanda would like to sincerely thank Dr. Hirsh and the iSchool for making it possible for them to attend the meeting with a generous travel award! It’s great to know that our school supports development through professional associations! If you weren’t able to make it to SAA this year, you can always check out the recordings or search the hashtag #SAAleftbehind or #SAA17 on Twitter! We hope to see you at next year’s Annual Meeting, which will take place in Washington, D.C.
Rebecca Leung is a recent iSchool graduate and former Chair of the SAA Student Chapter. In addition to receiving her MLIS with a concentration in Archives and Preservation this last Spring 2017 semester, Rebecca has had two internships during her time at the iSchool. The first involved migrating legacy finding aids to ArchivesSpace at UC Berkeley's Environmental Design Archives, and for the second, she learned about transferring video tape to digital format at the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC). Rebecca is currently starting her third internship, helping SAA's Archival History Section launch their newsletter, while also working at the Bancroft Library and the Archives in the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
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