News & announcements

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.

The Preservation Publication Award Committee welcomes nominations of outstanding preservation-related works of relevance to the North American archives community that were published in 2024. 

Nominated works may include articles, reports, chapters, or monographs in an audiovisual, digital, or print format. Works may cover topics related to analog or digital preservation, and the award includes a cash prize of $750.

To learn more about this award and to apply, please visithttps://www2.archivists.org/governance/handbook/section12-preservation.

Browse SAA's many opportunities for professional recognition and financial assistance. Then click on the award's application form for a preview and/or to create a profile, and follow the directions to complete your submission. The deadline is February 28.

MAC is soliciting applications for the 2025 Archie Motley Memorial Scholarship for Students of Color (http://www.midwestarchives.org/motley). The scholarship is designed to provide financial assistance to students of color pursuing graduate education in archival administration and to encourage ethnic diversification of the MAC membership and of the archival profession. Two $1,500 scholarships, accompanied by one-year memberships to MAC, will be awarded. 

To be eligible for a scholarship, the applicant must be of African, Arabic, Asian, Indigenous, Pacific Islander, or Latinx descent; must be a student currently enrolled in or accepted in a graduate, multicourse program in archival administration; and must have a grade point average of at least 3.0 (on a 4.0 scale) in their academic program. If the program is not listed in the SAA Directory of Archival Education, http://www2.archivists.org/dae, the applicant must provide proof of the multicourse standard by submitting copies of course descriptions from the institution’s current departmental catalog.

Applications are due March 1, 2025 and must include the following documents:

• Completed application form, available at http://www.midwestarchives.org/motley
• Current resume that includes education, work history, involvement in campus or community organizations, membership in professional organizations, and any honors or awards received
• Transcript from the applicant's most recent academic program (unofficial transcript is acceptable)
• Essay of not more than 500 words outlining the applicant's interests and future goals in archival administration
• One letter of recommendation  (may be submitted separately by recommender).

Please send all materials (application form, transcript, and essay) as one single file. Completed applications should be sent to:

Megan Keller Young
Senior Instructor and Special Collections Librarian
University of Illinois Chicago
megank@uic.edu

Applications must be emailed by March 1, 2025. 

Awards will be announced no later than June 3, 2025. 

The Scaling Community Through Archives project team is excited to announce that we are now accepting applications for the project learning cohort. Eight public library staff will be selected to participate in the cohort which will provide mentoring, resources, and funding for a community archives project in the selected participant’s community.

https://tascha.uw.edu/cohort-applications-now-open-for-scaling-community-archives-project/

The J. Franklin Jameson Archival Advocacy Award Subcommittee of the Society of American Archivists is asking you to submit a nomination for the J. Franklin Jameson Archival Advocacy Award!

Established in 1989, this award honors an individual, institution, or organization that promotes greater public awareness, appreciation, or support of archival activities or programs. The individual's or institution's contributions may take the form of advocacy, publicity, legislation, financial support, or a similar action that fosters archival work or raises public consciousness of the importance of archival work. Contributions should have broad, long-term impact at the regional level or beyond.

Eligibility: Nominees must be from outside the archives profession. Individuals directly involved in archival work, either as paid or volunteer staff, or institutions or organizations directly responsible for an archival program are not eligible for this award.

Nominations should be sent through the online submission system by February 28, 2025 at https://app.smarterselect.com/programs/45853-Society-Of-American-Archivists

Recent winners include:

·  2024: Dr. Elaine Carey

·  2023: The West Virginia Feminist Activist Collection Advisory Team

·  2020: Brad Pomerance, CJ Eastman AND Council of Independent Colleges' Humanities Research for the Public Good Program

·  2019: Tempestt Hazel AND The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva)

·  2018: Yvonne Lewis Holley AND Brad Meltzer

·  2017: Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI)

·  2016: Lin-Manuel Miranda and Ron Chernow