2016-06-16 Meeting notes

• Currently processing the EM Sinclair papers.
• Her colleague Amy is finishing up Ishiguru (?) collection.
• Daniella provided updates on other processing projects.

Round robin:

• Just had meeting with Virtual Machines team about managing HIPAA data for Dell Medical School
• Has been out of the office for several weeks and so is just getting started again on various projects

Round robin:

• Just wrapped up a transition to schema conversion for TARO finding aids. They had a test case in which they hired a GRA to fix any errors and to update EAD records. The GRA created documentation that AAA contributed to TARO best practices guidelines.
• Now, Stephanie is starting work on two from-scratch schema compliant finding aids. One is a provisional finding aid that was completed by a GRA. The other has an aspect of web-archiving, so they’ve been doing research on that and how to describe it in a finding aid. They are also trying to figure out how to do web archiving without having Archive-It.
  • [Discussion: UT Libraries has it, and the HRC is getting it. Briscoe was trying to use Heretrix. Archivists of Central Texas has a web archiving interest group, and SAA also had a webinar on Archive-It.]
• AAA also has renovations going on in processing space, storage space, and quarantine area so there’s been a lot of shifting and moving of materials.

• Update on the Archives Bazaar: It will be October 16^th at the Saengerrunde Hall (attached to Scholz Garten) and there are a lot of repositories signed up.
• Also starting a partnership with someone at University of Florida to build a union catalog for zines, which are often less catalogued in archives than they are in libraries.
• Doing inventory of special collections at Fine Arts Library, which has no existing list of their collections. She’s also doing preservation assessment and making notes about what needs to be processed.
• In the fall, she will look for student to do an EAD project for their 6 finding aids that are in PDF format. Jennifer is interested in Stephanie’s documentation for that so they can start off schema-compliant.
• She is also working on her personal archives project – Austin Fanzine Project – which is being filmed for a documentary.

Round robin:

• Colleague Dillon is going to Nicaragua to collect papers of poet Ernesto Cardenal. They will follow a post-custodial model and obtain digital surrogates of papers. The Benson is also getting papers of a newspaper printer through his grandson who went to UT.
• Supervisor Terese Polk is in Ireland presenting at Open Repositories conference on Latin American Digital Initiatives.
• David (and colleagues?) working on an inventory of server but not sure how to do it. At the moment, it’s just right-clicking and seeing what’s there. Tips from others appreciated!

Round robin:

• Has been working on investigating deeds of gift for digital materials. She checked in with other archives around area and on campus. They developed one and kind of tested it on a donor. They hope to move forward with formalizing a deed of gift for digital materials with UT libraries.
  • They were previously working under old deed of gift that was only for an individual to give materials, then they worked on an organizational deeds of gift. Worked with writers on copyright etc.
• In EAD conversion to schema, they did another cleanup during process. One of the things they’ve added to the schema are sponsorship elements so that they can acknowledge a donor if they paid to have materials processed.
• Also added sections on privacy and confidentiality in finding aids. This came out of SAA roundtable in which it was discussed that the duty of protecting info should fall on the donor, rather than putting it all on archivists.
• Doing lots related to Islandora – 3 projects. One is trying to work with preservation/digital curation services on copy work orders (for example, when there’s an order for an architectural drawing, they would like to have workflow to use Islandora and then have a record for that digitization). This led to project for metadata for architectural drawings. Also working on A/V projects. Example, centennial of Battle Hall.
• Hoping to hire permanent replacement for Donna Coates.

SAA-UT conference on Archives and Human Rights, Spring 2016:

David had news about an exciting conference for next spring to be put on by himself and other SAA-UT officers. There are many in the Austin area who are interested in archives, human rights, community archives, social justice etc. because there’s a lot of that going on in Austin.

• Group has only met “once and a half.”
• David said they are not necessarily looking for help but would appreciate insight about organizing, finding panel speakers, promotion, etc.
• Late Feb/early March next year.
• They also want to talk about diversity (or lack thereof) in the profession – so if it’s something people know about or are interested in, they definitely open to suggestions of who to talk to.
• Guests will mostly be from Austin area but they might be able to get funding to invite a keynote speaker from elsewhere.
• Jennifer suggested Burgis Jules at UC Riverside.
• Copwatch is a local group they were interested in.
• Conference will probably be a day and a half.
• Jennifer suggested they connect with the archives and human rights working group.

Update on calendar for group:

• In last meeting, we discussed topics to guide each one of our meetings. SAA came up – maybe folks could get together and debrief. Beth volunteered to populate calendar with conferences. The meeting that follows a conference could be a debriefing meeting. She will put SAA, SSA, Texas Conference on Digital Libraries and Digital Humanities. At the moment, she has only put future dates for SAA at the moment.
• Discussion about calendar of meetings and rooms – this room has been reserved through August 12^th.
• If there’s an open slot for a meeting because it’s a 5^th week, then we could have a brown bag lunch type of meeting.

Documentation repository work session:

• Stephanie talked Documentation Working Group, which is a group for documentation regarding digital asset management. So it’s similar to the documentation group going on here.
• Beth would like to have documentation regarding an exhibition loan policy. She looked at other campuses’ policies. She finds that it would be useful to have a date on documents, to know when it’s finished versus when it’s in development, which would give more context to document.

• Group decided that having a spreadsheet to share documentation (with links) would be more useful than having it in the Wiki.

• Beth pointed out that some documentation may not be linkable because it may not be in any kind electronic form anywhere.
• Jennifer – there’s a section of the Wiki called Resources where we can put a link to the spreadsheet, and make it public and editable. Is there anything we wouldn’t want to be public?
  • Draft policies – those we could just share amongst ourselves.

SPREADSHEETS

• Tools we use: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11o1nVVI-xMutEczD-YDbcCTMVoVBjoE_oeg0XWKnUQ8/edit?ts=5763091e#gid=0
• Documentation Repository: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12oiZMhXuXMyGnMEUbGIC6cQ2219ohBtu4dOtvTIcwlA/edit?ts=57630aac#gid=0 

• Clarification on what the documentation is for. Examples:
  • Documentation about collection management work
  • Collection development
  • Digitzation tracking – writing down what everybody is using, what systems they’re using (Filemaker, spreadsheets, etc.).
  • List of policies – deeds of gift, reproduction policies, reading room policies.
  • Any kind of documentation we’re creating that we think is shareable that others could use.

• Stephanie said what they’re putting together is what they’ll present in DocWorks – what they would like for documentation for digital asset management system. Digital assets they have are usually student reports of what they do for the semester.

• Stephanie – one of the issues at AAA is a very limited staff. Nobody has time to update policies – in the analog policies, there’s lots of pencil marks and notes. Accessions manual is from 1998 for example, so it doesn’t have a digital form that could be shared.
  • When we have documentation that is out of date, we can add a note in the spreadsheet that it might not reflect current practice.

• Beth said that they are required to assign monetary value to items they obtain. There are some things in manual are about how to come up with the dollar amount but it would be helpful for this group to get together to be consistent about monetary appraisal in any UT Austin repository.
• Common requirements is another good thing to have documentation on.

• Marianna – it would be helpful for RIM to have documentation about what university materials are desired by archives

• David said that the documentation that he uses is just for his use – another GRA who comes in can create their own documentation. Higher-level documentation for the Benson would be from Teresa that he might not have access to.

Brainstorming about what columns we need.

• Function – this is for things like appraisal, development, digital exhibits, method of delivery/access,

Beth asked if the spreadsheet could have a reference to the DAMS Documentation Working group? 

Next Meeting:

Next meeting will be pre-gaming SAA – so bring your schedule or other materials about the conference. Going forward, perhaps we can offer a chance for people who are speaking to give their presentation beforehand as a run through. Or we can also have them give the talk afterwards if they want, for anyone who may have missed the main event.