New England Archivists

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Fall Meeting 1997: Meeting Program

October 23-25, 1997
Vermont College, Montpelier, Vermont

Overview

The 1997 New England Archivists Fall Meeting will be held on the campus of Vermont College in Montpelier, Vermont, overlooking the state's gold-domed State House. The meeting will start on Thursday with a two-day workshop sponsored by the Society of American Archivists. NEA will offer a day-long workshop on Friday. A reception at the Vermont State House Friday evening and dinner at one of Montpelier's good restaurants will welcome participants to the meeting. On Saturday the meeting will feature twelve sessions and lunch prepared by the students of the New England Culinary Institute.

Saturday, October 25, 1997

Registration & Coffee
Noble Hall
8:00 - 9:00

Members of the Education Committee will staff a "Dr. Archives" table to answer your archival questions.

Concurrent Sessions 9:00 - 10:30

A. How to Raise Money from Private Sources

This workshop will address concerns of those archivists who are responsible for fundraising for their repository as well as those who work with a staff development officer. The presenter will expound on the joys and frustrations of ferreting out potential donors and cajoling them to invest their money in your institution, while describing the fundamentals of development work. Types of donors will be identified, methods of fundraising described, and there will be information on how to match projects with funders. Establishing and maintaining long-term relationships will also be discussed.

Presenter:
Deborah A. Flateman, Vermont Food Bank
Introductions:
Theresa Percy, Emily Williston Memorial Library

B. Introduction to Preservation Management: Setting Priorities on a Limited Budget

Archives and other collections-holding institutions face shrinking budgets and administrators find themselves cutting programs to survive. Preservation and conservation efforts often suffer because they happen in a back room, out of the public eye. This session will provide an overview of the role and benefits of preservation planning. Strategies and techniques for identifying collections care priorities and carrying out a preservation needs assessment will be presented, as well as ideas for finding funds and getting started now, with limited resources.

Presenter:
Lori van Handel, Williamstown Art Conservation Center
Introductions:
Ann Lawless, Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium

C. EAD Introduction
Stone Hall

This session, designed for administrators as well as archivists in the trenches, presents detailed information about the components of an EAD project. It includes introductory information on SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) and on EAD (Encoded Archival Description), the specific document type definition (DTD) designed for archival finding aids. In addition, it will profile the tools necessary to complete an EAD project (markup and other software, access to the Web, search and display tools, etc.). To demonstrate the potential of EAD, there will be a demonstration of some sites on the WWW that have mounted encoded finding aids. The recommended readings will be available via the WWW; please check NEA's home page: http:// www.newenglandarchivist.org/. The intent of the session is to ensure that administrators and others are aware of the scope of an EAD project (financial, staff and time commitment, etc.).

Seating is limited to 30 participants; this session is a "prerequisite" to the related EAD Workshop, also a limited enrollment session.

Speakers:
Kim Brookes, Radcliffe College
Susan von Salis, Radcliffe College
Introductions:
Anne Ostendarp, Dartmouth College

D. Creating Successful Cooperative Projects

This session will discuss the attributes that lead to successful cooperative projects among library and archival programs and within wider professional organizations. Representatives will bring their experience from a project begun by the New England library community (Northeast Document Conservation Center), and a project begun by a college consortium (Five College Archives Digital Access Project). The session will conclude with a review of past efforts by the New England Archivists and the results of research by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission Fellow who is studying the issue of successful regional cooperative efforts.

Speakers:
Karen Brown, Northeast Document Conservation Center
Peter Nelson, Five Colleges, Inc.
John S. Weeren, NHPRC Fellow, University of Connecticut
Chair:
Thomas Wilsted, University of Connecticut

Concurrent Sessions 10:45 - 12:15

A. Negotiation and Communications: Getting What You Need in Your Workplace

For more than 15 years, people with business, community, and organizational conflicts have been practicing a new approach to negotiating, one that gets them what they need and leaves everyone feeling good about the results. This "win-win" approach relies on negotiation and communication skills that can work for everyone. This session will teach the basics of negotiating "win-win" solutions to the thorny problems that arise when shrinking resources and other challenges put cultural institutions under pressure.

Presenter:
Deena Frankel, Vermont Dept. of Public Service
Introductions:
Thersa Percy, Emily Williston Memorial Library

B. The NHPRC and New England

The NHPRC has recently revised its strategic plan, including granting priorities. Under the first NHPRC plan, the state historical records advisory boards have been conducting state-level strategic plans, surveying government and private repositories, regranting NHPRC funds to local repositories, and other efforts. The new plan places all of these efforts as a top funding priority of the Commission along with research and development on records in digital form and the completion of documentary editions relating to the founding era of our country. This session will outline the current efforts of the NHPRC and the New England State Boards and what these may mean for New England repositories, and provide opportunities for discussing these changes as well as the role of state archives and state boards in implementing them.

Panel:
Richard Cameron, NHPRC
New England State Historical Records; Advisory Board representatives:
Mark Jones (Connecticut)
Kathryn Hammond Baker (Massachusetts)
James Henderson (Maine)
Frank Mevers (New Hampshire)
Gwen Stearn (Rhode Island)
Gregory Sanford (Vermont)

Chair:
Gregory Sanford, Vermont State Archives

C. Show Them What You've Got

Exhibits can be a key form of archival outreach. In this session we will pool our knowledge about and experiences with simple archival exhibits: exhibiting on a shoestring, basic skills and equipment, concept development, and production and mounting techniques. The session will explore such issues as whether one should exhibit original or facsimile materials, whether "quick and dirty" is ever a workable approach, the value of spending time and money on exhibits when we have so many unmet needs, and other issues. The group will work together during the session to experience the creative method that underlies good exhibits. If you have ideas, products that have worked for you, or interesting problems, bring them to the session.

Presenter:
Maxine Trost, Massachusetts Archives
Introductions:
Eileen O'Brien, Manchester Historic Association

D. Curatorial Care of Paper: Preservation Treatment Techniques

Preservation of archival holdings can entail remedial preservation measures to correct physical or chemical deterioration. Conservation procedures will be introduced. Surface cleaning of paper, mending techniques, flattening of paper documents and encapsulation will be presented, with time for hands-on practice. This is a limited enrollment session (16).

Presenter:
Lori van Handel, Williamstown Art Conservation Center
Introductions:
Ann Lawless, Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium

Lunch

Dewey Cafeteria
12:15 - 1:45

Gather with meeting participants for lunch prepared by the students of the New England Culinary Institute. The meal will be served cafeteria style and includes at least one vegetarian entre. The cost of lunch is included in your meeting registration fee.

Participants will have the opportunity to continue their morning discussions over lunch at designated tables. Topics will include Fundraising, Preservation Management, EAD, Cooperative Projects, Negotiation, New Members/Board Members and "Dr. Archives," a table where Education Committee members will answer your archival questions. Please indicate your choice on the registration form.

Concurrent Sessions 1:45 - 3:45

A. Introduction to Appraisal

Archivists everywhere agree that the role of identifying and selecting records of enduring value goes to the heart of archival work. Most also agree that an ability to select wisely is their most intellectually demanding task. This session will be an opportunity to review the basic principles of archival appraisal, consider some of the newer approaches to appraisal developed in recent years, and understand how these principles and theories help inform appraisal decision making. It will also be your chance to ask questions regarding difficult appraisal decisions you may be facing at your repository. This session will consist of lecture, case study and open discussion.

Presenter:
Philip Eppard, SUNY-Albany School of Information Science and Policy
Introductions:
Peter Nelson, Five Colleges, Inc.

B. EAD Workshop
Stone Hall

This limited enrollment session provides attendees an opportunity to do some EAD markup. After a brief introduction to the tag library (the extensive list of tags allowed in EAD), participants will mark up a brief finding aid supplied by the instructors. Anyone attending the workshop may send a finding aid in ASCII to one of the instrutors ahead of time; a few of these will be chosen as in-class examples. There will also be a brief demonstration of the tools required for configuring the display of a marked up finding aid. Participants are required to read introductory readings; they are available via the WWW (please check NEA's home page: / ) or from one of the instructors. The intent of this session is to offer a basic introduction to the EAD tag set and to allow archivists the opportunity to get hands-on experience with markup and display of EAD documents. As this session is not intended to cover all the pieces that comprise an EAD project, it is expected that workshop attendees will be familiar with the concepts of SGML, DTDs, and the various tools required to launch an EAD project (search engines, stylesheets and other display tools, Internet access, etc.) Enrollment limited to 20; attendance at EAD Introduction is required.

Instructors:
Kim Brookes, Radcliffe College
Susan von Salis, Radcliffe College

C. Administration of Special Collections: Survival of the Fittest

Two special collections administrators with more than 40 years of collective experience in special collections will discuss major issues relating to the setting of priorities, fundraising, dealing with upper administration, budgets, politics, outreach, personnel, collection management from an administrative point of view, and the juggling of professional responsibilities like doing sessions for NEA. The session will be open and freewheeling. The presenters will offer lots of opinions, some supportable, some questionable. They will also attempt some psychological analysis on the ideal personality type to head a special collections unit.

Presenters:
Philip Cronenwett, Dartmouth College
Connell Gallagher, Universitry of Vermont
Introductions:
Tom Wilsted, University of Connecticut

D. Designing a Homepage for Archival Collections

This session will address issues faced by archivists interested in creating an online presence for their collections. It will help participants define the audience for their pages and the kinds of material they wish to display. The second part of the program will concentrate on ways to organize this information in an online environment and the kinds of graphic enhancements that can make internet services more informative and appealing. The session will concentrate on individual concerns and use examples of successful (and less successful) pages now on the Web. The emphasis will be on design, rather than hypertext coding and other technical concerns.

Presenter:
Ellen Thompson, University of Vermont
Introductions:
Elizabeth Dow, University of Vermont

Send-Off Snack

Noble Hall
3:45 - 4:30

Juice, brownies, and apples will be available to take with you as you leave for home.