What I’m working on now is exploring ideas about what it means to build “participatory archives.” The concept draws upon the work our colleagues have done in defining concepts for the participatory library and the participatory museum, as well as on the general concept of participatory culture. I am excited about using this as a framework for examining many of the issues I am interested in, including (but not limited to):

I should say that really all the essays I’ve collected in the new book are an inspiration. What has always interested me about using Web 2.0 tools is not the technology, but how they enable, well, new connections between archives and our users. I feel as if I may be biting off more than I can chew, but part of the reason I’m posting this here is to force myself to really get to work on this. And, of course, because all of you may have great suggestions for what else to include in my research and thinking. I don’t know if the final product for this will be an article or another book or a website (or both, as in participatorymuseum.org), but I think this topic is broad enough and exciting enough that it can keep me occupied for quite a while to come.

NOTE: I should also mention an article by Isto Huvila, “Participatory archive: towards decentralised curation, radical user orientation, and broader contextualisation of records management” published in Archival Science in 2008 as something that I will consider in framing my own understanding of the term.

Winner: The Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, Rich Media: Conservation History Association of Texas, Texas Legacy Project Records

“It is innovative on all kinds of fronts– pulling together all these descriptive tools into one interface; embedding the Google Earth mash-up; using the creativity and tech savvy of students to build the tool; and last but not least, giving primacy to the voice and body language and not just the transcript, something not all archives do with oral history but I feel is very important.”

“This is a great use of technology to bring two resources together and provide access and searchability, the latter of which seems like an especially useful feature.”

“They should be applauded for their interface design, including its use of maps, time-coded transcripts, and other features.”

So said the judges in evaluating the Briscoe Center’s impressive multimedia site. Here’s a description of the project in the nominator’s own words: “Previous to undertaking the project of turning the Texas Legacy interviews into rich media, the Conservation History Association of Texas had created interview transcripts and time codes for each of the 150 Texas Legacy project interview videos. While these resources are substantial, they stood segregated from the video content itself, and the potential within them remained dormant.

Using a software called Glifos: Social Media, students from the University of Texas’ School of Information re-purposed the existing transcripts and time codes, and created three distinct research tools: 1) transcripts synchronized to the video content, 2) tables of contents and other indices, and 3) maps which display geographical information. All three of these tools were derived from the transcript-as-descriptive-data.

The first tool, the synchronized transcripts, brings together the source video and its transcript for the first time. Besides following the words of the interviewee as they watch the video, users have the ability to conduct keyword searches of the transcripts for topics of interest to them. Once a keyword is located, users can go directly to that location within the video. Users can search within a single video, or throughout the entire Texas Legacy Records collection.

The second tool allowed the School of Information students to create subject-based, non-linear indices of the videos’ contents. These indices, too, can be searched and are synchronized to the video content.

Additionally, students derived geographical information from the transcripts and created maps that display the locations which a given interviewee discussed. In these cases, students used Google Earth software in addition to Glifos: Social Media. The results give users an exact idea (plotted by latitude and longitude) of places mentioned in the transcripts, and, again, the places are synchronized to the point in the interview where it was mentioned.

An interview with H.C. Clark which features all three of these research tools can be found here.”

One of the aspects of this project that most impressed the judges was the degree of collaboration between the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History and the University of Texas School of Information. It appears that the participants succeeded in capitalizing on all their available resources, including people, materials, and software. Congratulations to everyone involved!

Honorable Mention: HerStory 360, The HerStory Scrapbook

The judges also wanted to recognize an unusual site from outside the traditional world of archives. While it had some shortcomings, the judges thought the HerStory Scrapbook:

“. . . was able to provide an alternative browse interface to New York Times stories related to women’s suffrage, and the creator of the site used a number of social marketing tools to make the content available, including Twitter and Facebook.”

“Interesting and dynamic use of mainly newspaper clippings and repackaging content from another source. Would be better if it drew on multiple types of archival sources for the scrapbook, but good within its limitations.”

Here’s the nominator’s description of the project: “For the first time, The New York Times Archive as been organized by subject matter into an easy-to-use website. From 1917 – 1920, The New York Times published over 3,000 articles, letters, and editorials about the women who were fighting for, and against, suffrage. The HerStory Scrapbook includes more than 900 of the most interesting pieces, as if someone had saved clippings of the original articles from The Times in a scrapbook.

Many of the books, written by the suffragists, about the final stages of the suffrage movement focus on either the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) led by Carrie Chapman Catt, or the National Woman’s Party founded by Alice Paul. The New York Times reported on both women. And, that makes our understanding so much richer.

The HerStory Scrapbook organizes the items from The Times in an easy-to-navigate format. The links to The New York Times open in a new browser window or a new browser tab, if your browser is set up for automatic tabbed browsing. The articles in The Times then open in another browser window or tab. To avoid opening too many windows, the next time you click on a New York Times link, the webpage will appear in the window or tab that is already open, behind the HerStory Scrapbook webpage.

In addition to an easy-to-use format, the HerStory Scrapbook provides a full-text search of the descriptions introducing each article. The advanced features on the search page include word stemming and case sensitive searching. There is also a link which allows searching of the entire New York Times’ archive. (However, full-text searching of articles is not provided by The New York Times.)

To celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, the HerStory 360° Challenge section includes 90 stories, published during the first 90 days of 2010, about 90 women who fought for suffrage. Each story includes links to rare source material to answer the question: “What’s Her Story?”

Congratulations to everyone who helped contribute to both these sites, and to all the winners of the Best Archives on the Web awards! Thanks again to everyone who nominated a site and to judges Christine Di Bella, Cory Nimer, Lance Stuchell, and Chela Weber.

Whether through Flickr, wikis, blogs or allowing users to comment on descriptions in their online catalogs, many archives are starting to harness the power of their regular researchers as well as experts around the world to help augment or create descriptions for their collections. This award will recognize crowdsourcing efforts that have resulted in a significant exchange of information for the institution.

The judges selected one winner and singled out one nominee to receive an Honorable Mention. And they are . . .

Winner: Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid (Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision)

The description of the project from the nomination statement:

“To explore the impact and success criteria of social tagging in the audiovisual heritage domain, a large-scale video labeling pilot, Waisda?, was launched in March 2009. The goal of Waisda? (which translates to “What’s That?”) is to collect user tags that can help bridge the semantic gap, to collect time-related metadata, and to offer people a new way of interacting with television programs, thus creating a connection with the television archive. Waisda? is the world’s first operational video labeling game in the cultural heritage field.

Waisda? invites players to tag what they see and hear. They receive points for a tag if it matches one their opponent has entered within a time frame of ten seconds. The underlying assumption, based on the ‘Games with a Purpose’ by Luis von Ahn, is that tags are most probably valid if there’s mutual agreement. Waisda? introduced three innovations: Using gaming as method to annotate television heritage, actively seeking collaboration with communities connected to the content, and using curated vocabularies as a means to integrate tags with professional annotations.

From the launch in March 2009 to November 2009 (period of the evaluation, the website is still operational, see the WebScience paper by Oomen et al. for more information), over 340,000 tags were added, of which 40.3% consists of matching tags (added by different players within the ten second time frame. In total, 42,068 unique tags have been added.

Waisda? was executed by the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and KRO Broadcasting (Dutch public broadcasting organization). The Business Web & Media Group of VU University Amsterdam performed additional research on topics such as game play and tag quality. (They carry out research in light of their involvement in the PrestoPRIME European research project.) The software company Q42 built the application.”

Waisada? received a lot of love from the panel of judges: “Looking through the site I just wished that I knew Dutch, so that I could play. In some ways it reminded me of the Google Image Labeler game, but its application to video content was novel. Based on the nomination form and the accompanying papers, it appears that the data gathered through the game has in some cases been very useful to enhance the description of the videos. I also appreciated the work that the project team had gone through to market the site to their desired audience, including their use of social tools such as Twitter.” The rigor of the evaluation and documentation, as well as the sheer fun of the project, were key in helping snag the win for Waisda?. Also, it’s not every nomination that gets this response from a judge: “I also very much enjoyed watching the Dutch reality show about the farmer.”

Resources in English:
- Background on the game and an English summary of the evaluation can be found on the Images for the Future blog.
– Also, two papers on Waisda? were presented at the WebScience conference this year in Raleigh, N.C..

Honorable Mention: PhotosNormandie on Flickr

Longtime readers may remember that I wrote about the PhotosNoramandie Flickr group back in April 2009. Then, as now, the group exists because of the volunteer efforts of two people with the talent and the interest to make it possible–Patrick Peccatte and Michel Le Querrec-and because of the flexible and popular platform that Flickr provides. The purpose of PhotosNormandie is simple–to make archival images of the Allied invasion of Normandy more easily discoverable by more users and to attempt to correct and supplement their existing metadata. The fact that this takes place entirely outside the archival context makes it both more interesting and perhaps more threatening. Patrick and Michel represent no archives, but rather the kind of passionate amateurs who choose to devote their time to advancing knowledge about archival materials. The lack of a connection back to the original archival collections troubled the judges, but they noted that “this project does a lot of things right– in particular harnesses an existing community and tech infrastructure rather than trying to reinvent the wheel or try to get people to a website where they wouldn’t regularly go.”

And so, congratulations to our two notable European examples of using crowdsourcing for description!

This award was inspired by the efforts of many archives to liberate their descriptive data and make it available for creative re-use. The winner of this award will be the person or organization who takes descriptive data (whether about collections or people) and does something new with it. This could be a complete creative re-imagining of the data for another purpose or creating a more usable interface for discovery.

And the two nominees who best met those criteria are:

City of Burnaby Archives, Charting Change: An Interactive Atlas of Burnaby’s Heritage

As described in their nomination statement: “Charting Change: An Interactive Atlas of Burnaby’s Heritage , allows users to see how historical events, ranging from First Nations settlement to European exploration, through pioneer land-clearing to the Depression, and through the Great War to post-war population boom have shaped the community of Burnaby [British Columbia, Canada]. These stories are graphically represented online by using existing archival databases in a new, unique manner to illustrate the evolution of the city. Four maps of Burnaby have been created – each representing a significant period in Burnaby’s development – and on each map, points of interest or historical significance have been plotted. Each map and each point of interest includes an historical overview and links to historic photographs and records related to that point or map. These points are all “clickable” and when clicked, they open a panel that contains a brief description/history of the point as well as hyperlinks to related records in our descriptive databases. Behind the scenes, the information shown on each map point is pulled from the existing Inmagic databases currently searchable from the Heritage Burnaby website. Heritage landmarks, historic buildings, and neighbourhoods are plotted and linked to the records for photographs, artifacts, textual records and bylaws. Tools and resources from all of Burnaby’s Heritage partners – the City Archives, the Burnaby Village Museum, the Burnaby Planning Department and the Burnaby Historical Society – are combined to provide a unique perspective of Burnaby. Coincidentally, Google Street Views became available in the Vancouver area the day of the kick off meeting for this project and as a result, we were able to include this new capability so that users can zoom into many of the heritage sites and historic buildings to view them in their present context. Over 1500 photographs from the Burnaby Village Museum collection were scanned and described specifically for this site, which added to an existing inventory of approximately 8000 photographs from the City Archives. Funding for this project was provided in part by the Department of Canadian Heritage through the Canadian Culture Online Program by way of an Archival Community Digitization Program grant.” [Note that in a comment on the previous post, people were advised to visit the Andornot web site to learn more details about the project: http://www.andornot.com/blog/post/Charting-Change.aspx.]

The judges praised Charting Change for “building an engaging, collaborative site celebrating the history of their community” and observed, “Mapping collections is a really powerful way to display and engage users with collections, particularly in a local history collection where patrons are very knowledgeable of and often have a relationship of their own to the location. This site is a great example of how to implement this technology.”

Winner: The Smithsonian Institution, Collections Search Center

As the home page for the Smithsonian Institution’s Collection Search Center states, behind the simple search box are “over 4.6 million records with 445,000 images, video and sound files, electronic journals and other resources from the Smithsonian’s museums, archives & libraries” waiting to be discovered. Everyone knows the Smithsonian is big, but you might not know that it’s comprised of 19 museums, 18 archives, and 20 libraries (not to mention various research centers and the National Zoo). The physical as well as digital assets across the Smithsonian are managed in an appropriately diverse array of systems using various metadata standards.

How did this jungle of systems become accessible through one search tool? I’ll let the nominator take it from here: “To leverage the metadata from this diverse set of databases, the Office of the Chief Information Officer authored custom extraction mechanisms for every system, which maps the data to a common metadata model (inspired by library, archive, museum standards) and allows it to be aggregated into a single database. To accommodate the diverse datasets, the extraction mechanism enables collection stewards to determine the display labels which most accurately represent the content. While all originally contributed data is retained for display, the extraction automatically processes the data to harmonize content for the various user-friendly browsing taxonomies the site offers. The taxonomies are also used for filtering existing search results. For example, a search on “james smithson” (3009 hits) can easily be narrowed down to “Smithson Bequest” (taxonomy: topic) to find documents related to the founding of the Smithsonian Institution in the Archives.
The Collection Search Center website is based on open source software Solr/Lucene. The underlying single database communicates through a set of webservices, which leaves the door open for future innovative services built on top of this data aggregation.”

The judges agreed that as visible (and highly usable) proof that we can break down walls between the “silos” of libraries, archives, and museums, SI’s Collections Search Center deserved to be recognized for greatly increasing the accessibility of descriptive data about archival collections. One judge wrote: “Federated search across disparate collections and collection databases is the “holy grail” for many institutions, and it is really well done here.” Another judge added: “The task of mapping and extracting all the data in this interface from the myriad of systems and schemas had to mind numbing, infuriating, and totally amazing when it actually worked. Beyond that, it sets a wonderful example of pulling data out of our silos and working together with libraries and museums in a way which complements and elevates all collections.”

Congratulations to both the City of Burnaby Archives and the Smithsonian Institution for your excellent work!

* Publish research or processing activity on a blog and create the exhibition book from blog posts.
* Pull together blog posts across institutional divisions to create a topically coherent publication.
* Edit the proceedings of a professional workshop or conference to share expertise with new audiences.
* Anthologize a behind-the-scenes blog to offer as a gift to donors.
* Collect and preserve online publications.
* Document social media outreach programs.

Anthologize is the product of the One Week, One Tool program, run by George Mason’s Center for History and New Media and supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The process by which Anthologize was developed is itself interesting and might serve as a model for the rapid development of tools for archives.

Here are some links to more information, please feel free to suggest others in the comments, and I look forward to hearing more about how archives are implementing Anthologize:

“Introducing Anthologize,” Dan Cohen’s Digtial Humanities Blog

Digital Campus podcast, Episode 58 – Anthologize LIVE

“Hello Anthologize,” Edwired

“Lessons from One Week | One Tool – Part 1, Project Management,” Found History blog [this is a three part series of excellent posts about the process]

Digital Humanists Unveil New Blog-to-Book Tool, Chronicle of Higher Education

Best re-purposing of descriptive data

Winner: The Smithsonian Institution, Collections Search Center

Winner: City of Burnaby Archives, Charting Change: An Interactive Atlas of Burnaby’s Heritage

Best use of crowdsourcing for description

Winner: Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid, Waisda?

Honorable Mention: PhotosNormandie on Flickr

Most innovative archives on the Web

Winner: The Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, Rich Media: Conservation History Association of Texas, Texas Legacy Project Records

Honorable Mention: HerStory 360, The HerStory Scrapbook

This week each of the winners in each category will be featured in a new post, so you can learn more about each of these terrific projects. For more information about this year’s categories, see the announcement post.

I’d like to thank everyone who submitted a nomination, as well as this year’s distinguished jury:

Did you create a web site or virtual exhibit that promotes the use of archives this year? If you work in the mid-Atlantic region you could be awarded $250 just for doing your job! That’s right. Act fast- submissions must be received by JULY 31, 2010. Check here to see if you qualify for the C. Herbert Finch Award and apply today! It’s free- what do you have to lose?

http://www.marac.info/mc/page.do?sitePageId=93982&orgId=marac

And:

Greetings colleagues,

The Reference, Access, and Outreach Section Steering Committee is developing a resource document that describes the core skills and competencies necessary to be effective as reference, access, or outreach archivists.

To build on the base of knowledge available in archival literature and other related professions, the committee has developed a brief survey for those practicing in any of these three spheres of archival work to share their perspectives and experience.

We appreciate your participation in and your patience with the survey. We are eager to have a rich range of input that isn’t predefined by us. This means we have asked a lot of open-ended questions and haven’t provided a lot of check boxes. To address potential survey fatigue we have set up the survey so that you can complete it over time as long as you use the same computer throughout. Also, it is perfectly reasonable to skip questions. All answers will remain confidential and will be used for the purposes of gathering information to develop this resource document. The survey will be available through October 2010.

Here is the link to the survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/referenceaccessoutreachskills

If you have questions/problems related to the survey, please contact Jill Severn at jsevern@uga.edu

Thanks for your participation,

RAO Survey Team

Jill Severn
Jessica Miller

However, as has been discussed on this blog in the past (and as SAA Membership Committee chair Tanya Zanish-Belcher pointed out in a comment on the previous post), the process for approving dues increases needs to change. (Well, I say it needs to change. Tanya said it needs to be discussed.) Right now, dues increases (and all changes to the SAA Constitution) are voted on at the annual business meeting by the members present. To me, it is obvious that all members should have the right to vote on whether or not their dues are raised, as well as any changes to the Constitution and other matters that affect the whole membership. We can have electronic voting for elections, why not for matters such as these?

It is my sincere hope that at its meeting prior to the start of the SAA annual meeting, SAA Council produces its own resolution to revise these processes. These changes would, of course, only be implemented after the current dues increase is voted on, and would themselves have to approved by the existing process by the members present next year in Chicago. My grasp of the bureaucratic logistics may not be accurate, but I hope you’ll agree with my point–that this needs to change and that it would be most appropriate for Council to lead that change.

While I have not heard anyone specifically criticize the dues increase, I have heard people ask questions about the value of what they get for their membership dollars. In light of the conversations here about the previous two posts (and many earlier ones), I think it would benefit both SAA and the members to engage in some form of regular online dialogue, maybe via a blog (and in-person, as possible) about how members value SAA’s services and activities. We may discover that SAA has an institutional commitment to something that the members really don’t care about, and perhaps, in this age of belt-tightening, some activities can be scaled back. Or we may find that SAA’s services map very well to what members want. I think there may also be many members, particularly newer ones, who have no idea where SAA’s revenue comes from or how it is spent, and learning about those matters would give them a better perspective on the level of service they receive. I don’t have anything specific in mind, but I do think that more of the kind of transparency displayed in the justification for the dues increase would be a good thing for everyone. I know that the membership was given an opportunity to comment on the Strategic Priorities, but I am not sure how many people responded to this kind of formal call for feedback to a policy document (supplemented by in-person calls for input at the previous annual meeting). How many of you read and commented on the Priorities document? Probably not very many. How many of you have opinions about what you’d like SAA to be doing for you? Probably a lot.

Two recent conversations on Terry Baxter’s blog inspired this, so I’ll be stealing, I mean referencing ideas liberally from his posts (see here and here). Yes, as Terry points out, this is about diversity, in the broadest sense. The annual meeting is one of the premier products produced by the staff and members of SAA; countless hours of work go into making it as intellectually stimulating and professionally rewarding as possible. Given its importance, it seems odd that SAA has not put more emphasis on making meeting content available to those who cannot attend. The American Association of Museums has a Virtual Conference option, as does ALA and AASLH. AASLH has podcasts of selected sessions available online for free downloads.

Here are the sections of SAA’s Strategic Priority Outcome and Activities FY2010-FY2014 that relate to this topic (Strategic Priority #1, Desired Outcome #3:

e. As a prototype/proof of concept, record and provide audio and video podcasts of appropriate 2009 Annual Meeting sessions (e.g., plenaries). (FY 2010)
[This activity was begun at Austin 2009 with videotaping and podcasting (via SAA’s Facebook page) of two plenary sessions, one education session, and several person-on-the-street interviews. Fiscal Impact: Direct costs of plenary and education session videotaping totaled $4,400. There were no direct expenses associated with podcasting.]

f. Pending CTWG recommendations, Finance Committee review, and Council approval, apply for IMLS funding to support virtual access to annual meeting. (FY 2012 – FY 2013)
- Conduct scan of associations to determine possible/likely impact of virtual meeting access on Annual Meeting revenue. (Felker, Jurczak; January – March 2012)
- If deemed appropriate, identify potential grant writers and hire a writer to prepare an IMLS grant. (Executive Committee, Beaumont, Jurczak; May – June 2012) [Fiscal Impact: FY12 Budget = $2,000 for grant writer]
- Following consultation with all appropriate parties (e.g., Communications Technology Working Group, meeting planners) and review by Executive Committee of key narratives, submit grant to IMLS (assuming no other, higher-priority grant proposal is being submitted during same cycle). (Executive Committee, Beaumont, Jurczak, Grant Writer; December 2012)

g. Based on evaluation of outcome of activities e. and f. (participant feedback, cost/benefit analysis), consider broadening opportunities to participate in the Annual Meeting via current and emerging technologies. (FY 2013 – FY 2014)

h. Investigate feasibility of virtual participation in traditional-format workshops and other educational offerings, including mechanisms for evaluating participant satisfaction. (FY 2013 – FY 2014)

After reading this, I found it curious that SAA was having to apply for a grant to fund “virtual access” to the annual meeting when so many other comparable organizations were doing it right now. So, I picked up the phone and called the people at Learning Times who seem to be supporting most of our peer organizations’ online conference options. They were very forthcoming about the costs and resources required to provide a virtual component for an annual meeting, and they stated that most organizations they work with make a profit on their online conference options.

I’m not suggesting that one phone call makes me an expert on what it would take to provide an online option for the SAA conference, but I do think that perhaps there may be other options to explore that would put us on a faster track to increased access to the meeting content. And that’s important for all the reasons that were discussed on Terry’s blog. (Really, go and read both those posts and the comments if you haven’t already.)

What I hear Terry and his readers saying is that SAA needs to find ways to make the annual meeting more open in every sense–more open for those who can’t be there and also more open for those who are, for example by providing more opportunities for informal information sharing, which many find more productive than the formal sessions. But I also took away from Terry’s discussion a sense that people had problems that went beyond the annual meeting, and I’ve heard this before, many times. Does SAA make it hard for interested members to get involved? If you don’t get to go the annual meeting every year, are you basically out of luck?

For me, this is really about how dedicated SAA is to providing services and opportunities to all its members. I think it’s great that Terry will get these issues on the agendas of the Membership and Diversity Committees at the annual meeting in August, but I agree with him that more is needed. An open “talk back” session at the meeting, to allow people to express their views might do some good, but again, only the voices of those present will be heard and it’s also possible people might refrain from publicly voicing their real opinions. How likely would it be that people would complain openly in front of potential future employers? Also, of course, it’s probably too late to get it on the schedule.

I can’t state it any better than Terry did, so I’ll close with his thoughts:

It might make sense for an organization like SAA to study this a little. My guess is that they really don’t know as much (and neither do I, for that matter) as they need to about what the membership really wants. Are members blocked from participation by conference costs? Does real participation require annual meeting attendance? What do members want from SAA? What do they want to give to SAA?

Of course, it might also be worth asking people who are not members about their reasons for not joining too. That said, I would hope that we don’t have to wait for the results of such a study to speed up the timeline for making the SAA annual meeting more accessible in the same ways that our museum, library, and history colleagues have done. But what do you think about making the meetings–and SAA in general–more accessible? Do you have anything to add to the thoughts shared on Terry’s blog?

The Jan/Feb 2010 issue of Archival Outlook contains an excellent article by SAA Executive Director, Nancy Beaumont, describing the process by which SAA determines its site selection for the annual meeting. The first thing I’d like to say is that this article offers terrific insight into a complicated process, and I applaud Nancy for providing this kind of transparency into a decision-making process that is, I know, always subject to criticism and second-guessing. I think SAA can truly benefit from more transparency of this kind, on every level.

In earlier discussions on this blog and elsewhere, people have complained that the annual meeting almost always takes place in very large cities which dictate very high room rates for the conference hotel (and for most hotels nearby as well). For many people, the cost of the hotel room is the biggest chunk of their expenses for attending the annual meeting. Why, they ask, can’t we meet in places like Portland, Pittsburgh, Nashville, Minneapolis, Cleveland . . .

Why not, indeed?

The article describes the current assumptions that dictate the criteria on which site selection is based. These assumptions are (note most of this text is verbatim from the article):

1) at least one major hotel with sufficient meeting space and sleeping rooms to accommodate member expectations for an annual meeting, preferably in a downtown location [Note that this dictates that the preference is for having all conference events in one location.]

2) a variety of cultural, educational, and recreational opportunities for archivists

3) a sufficient number of SAA members to serve on the Host Committee.

4) Geography is a principal factor in choosing potential cities. With a national membership, it is important for SAA to move systematically around the country, from region to region.

5) Council determined some time ago that SAA should meet in Washington, D.C. (historically the largest draw), every four years.

6) In 2008 Council decided that Chicago should host our annual meeting every other even-numbered year. (With the exception of 2011, when SAA will celebrate its 75th anniversary in its hometown.

7) We cannot meet in cities that are “gaming destinations,” which it was said made them off-limits for Federal employees.

8 ) It is desirable that the hotel be not more than an hour’s drive from a hub or secondary airport.

9) And, of course, if possible affordable sleeping room rates, preferably with free Internet access; relatively easy and affordable access by air or car; inexpensive food options; access to cultural venues; and good weather.

As you can read in the excellent article, based on Assumption #1, there are only 117 possible hotels in the country for the SAA meeting. Applying the other assumptions–particularly that we can’t meet anywhere near Washington or Chicago–rapidly narrows down the choices to a handful of options. Our next meeting locations are Washington (2010), Chicago (2011), San Diego (2012), New Orleans (2013), Washington (2014).

While I’m sure Washington, Chicago, San Diego and New Orleans will be lovely (although D.C. and New Orleans perhaps not so much in August), I wonder whether it isn’t time to ask the membership to assess how accurate these assumptions really are to them. The first three on the list are dictated by a 1991 Council Resolution. After nearly 20 years, it seems fair to ask the membership what is most important to them about the location in which the annual meeting takes place. I have a hunch that affordability would come out in first place. How important is it to you that all the events take place in the same location compared to how much your hotel room costs? If Orlando is affordable, how much do you care that it doesn’t have “cultural” opportunities? What are you willing to trade off for? Holding the meeting in the same cities (Washington and Chicago) allows for multi-year contracts that give SAA more power to negotiate and therefore keep costs down. But what do you think about having the meeting in Chicago and D.C. so often?

Are there other options we can consider? Must we have 8-10 concurrent sessions, or could we do with fewer? What about partnering with some other related organizations, like AASLH, AAM, or RBMS, for joint meetings to try to negotiate better deals? Should SAA or the Host Committee take a more active role in trying to help people find roommates or providing information about lower-cost housing?

I bring this up now because I know quite a few people who either won’t be able to come to DC this year or who are still trying to figure out how to afford it, and the prospect is even grimmer for next year. I’ll take up the topic of how to expand the annual meeting options to those who can’t attend in a future post, so for now, I’d like to hear your thoughts about whether or not things need to change in SAA’s current site selection process.