The Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of ACRL and the Society of American Archivists recently created a task force to review and revise the Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy.
 
This Task Force would like your input. We need everyone who teaches with primary sources to complete this survey, whether you have ever used the Guidelines or not.
 
If you aren’t familiar with the Guidelines, please take a look at them and let us know if/how you would use them.
 
This 10 question survey will take approximately 15-20 minutes to complete. All answers will be anonymous and data will only be viewed and tabulated by members of the Task Force. Your answers will guide the taskforce during the revision process. The survey will be open through May 4, 2025.

There will also be a public comment period later in the process, so this is not your only chance to give feedback. The task force plans to finalize the revised guidelines by the summer of 2028.

Primary Source Literacy Guidelines Feedback Survey

Any and all feedback will be crucial in our work, so please pass this along to anyone who works with primary sources in their teaching, librarian or otherwise.

Thank you so much,

- Rachel Cohen

The Native American Collections Roundtable (NACR) is seeking items or packages for its silent auction fundraiser, taking place during this year's Northwest Archivists (NWA) annual conference. Donations of artwork, crafts/craft supplies, games, experiences, non-perishable treats (coffee, preserves, etc.), books/e-books by Native authors, downloadable art, subscriptions, and more are welcome, especially those that will directly support tribal and Indigenous entrepreneurs.

Funds raised will help NACR continue its mission to provide a local forum where tribal and non-tribal people working with Native American-related archival materials can engage in discussion and information sharing. This includes providing scholarships to individuals working with or aspiring to work with Native American collections to attend the NWA annual conference. 

This year’s conference theme is Redefining Resilience: Advocacy, Values, and Creative Solutions and we’d love for folks to get creative with donated item ideas for the silent fundraiser so NACR can continue to support giving voice to tribal interests across the Pacific Northwest region. If you have an item you would like to donate for inclusion in the Silent Auction, please fill out this form by end-of-day May 2, 2025!

SAA Privacy & Confidentiality section is hosting a panel discussion on protecting the privacy of trans people in the archives. Our panelists represent current work being done in academia, both in and out of the archives realm. 

Archivists have long followed ethical best practices that strive to protect individual privacy, but the profession lacks specific guidelines that address the unique and complex privacy vulnerabilities of trans individuals. The discussion will begin with short presentations from each panelist followed by prepared questions. We will end the discussion with 30 minutes of audience questions via chat, moderated by the hosts. This event will not be recorded. 

Event will be on May 5, 2025 at 1:00pm Eastern time.

Panelists:

TJ Billard is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication and, by courtesy, the Department of Sociology at Northwestern University. They are the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Applied Transgender Studies in Chicago and Editor-in-Chief of the Center’s flagship journal, the Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies. Dr Billard is the author of Voices for Transgender Equality: Making Change in the Networked Public Sphere (Oxford University Press, 2024) and editor (with Silvio Waisbord) of Public Scholarship in Communication Studies (University of Illinois Press, 2024).

K.J. Rawson is Professor of English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Northeastern University where he also serves as Director of the Humanities Center. He is the founder and director of the Digital Transgender Archive, an award-winning online repository of trans-related historical materials, and he is the chair of the editorial board of the Homosaurus, an international LGBTQ+ linked data vocabulary. His work is at the intersections of the Digital Humanities and Rhetoric, LGBTQ+, and Feminist Studies. Focusing on archives as key sites of cultural power, Rawson studies the rhetorical work of queer and transgender archival collections in both brick-and-mortar and digital spaces. He has co-edited special issues of Peitho and TSQ and he co-edited Rhetorica in Motion: Feminist Rhetorical Methods and Methodologies (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010). Rawson’s scholarship has appeared in The American Archivist, Archivaria, DHQ, Enculturation, Peitho, Present Tense, QED, RSQ, TSQ, and several edited collections.

Lara Wilson is Director of Special Collections and University Archivist at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, CA.  The University of Victoria’s Transgender Archives collections located in Special Collections & University Archives comprise the largest Trans + collection in the world of rare print and archival materials: over 530 linear feet dating back 120 + years, in 15 languages from 23 countries on six continents. Wilson’s scholarship has appeared in American Archivist, American Libraries, Archivaria, Archive Journal, and Canadian Issues. Wilson is President of the Friends of the British Columbia Archives, and is past chairperson of the Canadian Council of Archives.

Please share widely with your contacts! If you would like to submit an anonymous question of the panelists in advance please use this form.

Intent

One of the main goals for the Native American Collections Roundtable (NACR) is to bridge access for individuals working with or aspiring to work with Native American collections with the Northwest Archivists (NWA) Annual conference, as a participant or presenter. This year, the conference will be held virtually May 13th - 16th, with the theme of:

Redefining Resilience: Advocacy, Values, and Creative Solutions

To support this effort, the NACR is offering scholarships to cover conference registration and NWA membership for anyone who is not a current member as an opportunity for continued professional development of award recipients. 

Past scholarship winners are welcome to apply, but priority will be given to new applicants.

Guidelines

Eligible applicants will meet at least one of the following four criteria:

1.      Tribal member working with Native American collections;

2.      Individual working for tribal information programs;

3.      Individual working with Native American collections;

4.      Tribal member interested in working with Native American collections.

The scholarship awardees will be notified by April 30. Conference attendance is required.

Following the conference, all awardees are expected to fill out a brief survey, due Monday, June 2, 2025, about their conference experiences, answers to be published on the NWA and NWA-NACR blogs.

Selection

You may apply by filling out the application form by Friday, April 18.

Applicants will be evaluated based on the case made in addressing the required questions in their application. Considerations will also be made to provide geographic representation in the awards.

Please direct any questions about the scholarship and application process to nwanac@gmail.com, include “NACR Scholarship” in the subject line.

This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Library Services and Technology Act, administered by the State Library of Oregon.

Este proyecto ha sido posible en parte por el Instituto de Servicios de Museos y Bibliotecas a través de la Ley de Servicios de Biblioteca y Tecnológia (LSTA), administrada por la Biblioteca Estado de Oregón.

The  Visual Resources Association’s Annual Conference is in Portland this October, and we’d love to see PNW representation in our program. The submission deadline has been extended to April 7th.

Call for Proposals

Two positions are up for election this year in the Native American Collections Roundtable of Northwest Archivists (NACR): Secretary and Coordinator. These are each two year terms. 

The nomination form is here. Please feel free to nominate yourself, or a colleague! Submit as many nominations as you'd like. We need folks with good intentions to step up and fill these roles! Elections will take place around the annual meeting (May 13-16).

If anyone has questions about the roles or about anything else, feel free to reach out to River Freemont rfreemont@nabshc.org!

Through a collaborative effort of the Ivan Doig Center for the Study of the Lands & Peoples of the North American West, the Archives and Special Collections (ASC) department of the MSU Library, and the Friends of MSU Library , Montana State University offers a $3,000 annual award to facilitate research into collections held by ASC.  

The award is intended to defray the costs of either travel to Bozeman to conduct research; to facilitate digitization of portions of a collection to allow a researcher to work remotely; or a mix of the two. Recipients may be academics (including graduate students) or independent scholars who are residents of the United States. We are unable to pay for any costs above the award amount. 

For full details, see https://www.lib.montana.edu/archives/news-and-events/dcta-award.html

Send applications to the Head of Archives and Special Collections, Jodi Allison-Bunnell by April 14, 2025. 

Jodi Allison-Bunnell
Head of Archives and Special Collections
Senior Archivist
Assistant Professor
Montana State University Library
jodi.allisonbunnell@montana.edu
406-994-5297

Dear colleagues, 

The Society of American Archivists’ Committee on Research, Data, and Assessment (CORDA) will be hosting a virtual workshop on “Creating and Conducting Focus Groups for Archivist Researchers” on March 19, 2025, led by Elliott Kuecker (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Information and Library Science). Please see below for more details. 

Title: Creating and Conducting Focus Groups for Archivist Researchers

Start date: March 19^th 1pm Eastern

End date: March 19, 2:30 Eastern

Location: Virtual (Zoom)

Workshop description:

This workshop introduces how to design and conduct focus groups on topics relevant to archivists who are interested in conducting research. The workshop helps participants understand qualitative research basics with an emphasis on what kinds of research projects benefit from the focus group method. Participants will learn how to design a focus group, conduct it, and the basics of analyzing the results. There will also be time for participants to brainstorm the kinds of research questions that the focus group method can reasonably help answer, getting them started on their own paths of inquiry. 

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the purposes of the focus group method as a form of dialogic qualitative research

• Understand the process of designing a focus group in an archival or archive-adjacent setting

• Review tasks and skills needed to conduct an effective focus group

• Compose and brainstorm research questions that could inspire participants' future focus group research 

This virtual workshop will be limited to a total of 50 participants. Registration is free and SAA membership is not required. Please note that the lecture portions of this workshop will be recorded and made available for viewing through SAA's Committee on Research, Data, and Assessment's (CORDA) microsite. Auto-generated Zoom captions will be provided. 

You can register for CORDA’s Creating and Conducting Focus Groups for Archivist Researchers using this link: https://tulane.zoom.us/meeting/register/Ld9Jny_oRxi0nwSjMGYLxA

Please contact CORDASAA@gmail.com with any questions about the workshop or if you encounter difficulties when registering.

Instructor Bio:

Elliott Kuecker is a Teaching Assistant Professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he teaches in the Archives and Records Management Track and directs the Masters of Professional Science in Digital Curation and Management. He spent over a decade working in libraries and archives in preservation, digitization, stacks maintenance, instruction, and management. He publishes on topics in archival studies, academic librarianship, childhood studies, and qualitative research methods. He is a member of SAA's Committee on Research, Data, and Assessment (CORDA). 

MAC is soliciting applications for the 2025 Mark A. Greene Award for first-time meeting attendees (https://www.midwestarchives.org/mark-a-greene-award). The scholarship provides financial assistance for travel and conference expenses to individuals who have not previously attended a MAC meeting. One $500 scholarship or two $250 scholarships will be awarded. To be eligible for the scholarship, an applicant must be attending their first MAC meeting. It is not necessary to be a MAC member, or to reside in the thirteen state MAC region.

Information about the 2025 MAC Annual Meeting may be found here. The Schedule-at-a-Glance provides the most current information about the meeting program. 

Applications are due by February 28, 2025 (extended from the original deadline of February 14) and must include the following documents:

• Completed application form, available at https://www.midwestarchives.org/mark-a-greene-award
• Statement of intent, an essay of no more than 500 words briefly describing the importance
• of this opportunity for your professional development and summarizing the financial requirements of your attendance
• One letter of support

Completed applications should be sent to Colleen McFarland Rademaker, Senior Archivist, Disciples of Christ Historical Society colleen@discipleshistory.org. 

Applicants do not have to be MAC members or reside in a MAC state.

Are you in the early stages of an archives career (2-10 years of experience) and do you demonstrate excellence in leadership? Do you have an archives colleague that exhibits great leadership skills? Please consider nominating them or yourself for the Society of American Archivists' Mark A. Greene Emerging Leader Award.  

The nomination deadline is February 28, 2025.

Awarded for the first time in 2012 and renamed in 2017, the Mark A. Greene Emerging Leader Award celebrates and encourages early-career archivists who have completed archival work of broad merit, demonstrated significant promise of leadership, performed commendable service to the archives profession, or a combination of the above. Nominees must have more than two years and less than ten years of professional archives experience at the time of nomination. The award is given based on the total experience and contributions of the awardee, including knowledge, leadership, participation, and achievements in the profession.