SAA Visual Materials Section 2004 Annual Mid-Winter Meeting, 09-10 January 2004, Boston, MA. Meeting Notes Now Offically Part of the SAA Calendar!

Most of the happy 2004 VM Section Midwinter Meeting attendees. Back row, left to right: James Eason, Sean Fisher, Shawn Waldron, Mark Martin, Stephen Cohen, Douglas Doe Middle row, left to right: Joy McNally, Martha Mahard, Ellen Doon, Ardys Kozbial, John Slate Front row, left to right: Robin McElheny, Megan Friedel, Laurie Baty, Miriam Meislik, Sue Kriegsman Not pictured: Liz Ruth

Attendees

Laurie Baty, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Stephen Cohen, Yale University

Douglas Doe, Rhode Island School of Design

Ellen Doon, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

James Eason, University of California, Berkeley

Sean Fisher, Mass. Department of Conservation & Recreation 

Megan Friedel, Massachusetts Historical Society

Ardys Kozbial, Harvard Design School

Sue Kriegsman, Harvard University Library, Office for Information Systems

Martha Mahard, Harvard University, Fine Arts Library

Mark Martin, Louisiana State University

Robin McElheny, Harvard University Archives

Joy McNally, Simmons College MLIS student and Eastern Nazarene College Archives

Miriam Meislik, University of Pittsburgh

Liz Ruth-Abramian, Harvard Real Estate Services, Property Information Resource Center

John Slate, Dallas Municipal Archives, City of Dallas, Texas

Shawn Waldron, Conde Nast Archive

N.B.: Names of attendees following headings below volunteered to perform tasks as defined in the minutes.

Standards – have descriptive standards on the VM web site

Organization of the VM Section

There are currently nine committees within the section:

• Advanced workshop
• Bibliography
• Elections and nominating
• Newsletter
• Web site
• Programs (annual meeting sessions)
• Publications
• Three-year plan
• Web site images, policies, and guidelines

There was a proposal to revise the organization of the section with only 3 primary committees and the other tasks should fall under them as working groups.

Administration

·        bylaws

·        3 year plan

·        annual meeting

·        elections and nominating

Publishing

·        newsletter

·        web site

·        bibliography

Outreach [probably needs a different name: Programs? Professional Support? Collegial Enrichment? Topical Focus Groups and Programs? Should be able to accommodate such things as Standards, Preservation, Digital Issues, etc., if members initiate such topic-based activities.]

·        standards

·        educational programs

·        advanced workshops

Advanced workshops – Ardys, Sean, Stephen, Megan

Preservation of color photographs

Prints

Selection for digitization

Digitization image projects

Preservation

·        freezing photographs – current practices

·        nitrate storage and laws

·        working with vendors and acquiring supplies

Approach regional meeting about hosting workshops

·        2005 Western regional meeting – James

Education resources that will meet basic needs will be compiled – Sean and Martha

·        Current programs such as NEDCC, AMIA (not formal masters programs)

·        Check the archivists daybook kept by Lee Miller at Tulane http://southwestarchivists.org/HTML/Daybook.htm

·        VRA – Visual Resources Association

·        MCN – Museum Computer Network

·        CHIN - Canadian Heritage information Network http://www.chin.gc.ca/

The group didn't feel there is a current need to offer additional basic training in addition to the programs that already exist at this time.

Request that the SAA office keep the section more informed about visual materials related offerings – Sue

Publications

There was a discussion about possibly starting a peer reviewed journal or publication so there would be a forum for academic VM archivists to submit articles that might help toward tenure as well as creating a focused, ongoing, body of work. The discussion and decision then instead turned to adding peer review publications to the Bibliography. The section is probably too small to take on the responsibility of its own juried journal at this time.

A basic visual materials reader will begin work after April 2004 – Laurie

• It will be a publication of favorite and classic articles that have already been published. It will not include works about digital materials because the information may become outdated more quickly than articles about traditional archival collections.
• An announcement will go out to Views and VisualMat asking for article suggestions.
• This will be a publication from the Section and presented to the Publications Board

Web site

• The Web site will try to be more content oriented over the next few years as well as reflect the new organization of the working groups
• The web site organization will be reviewed and revised – Mark and Martha
• Spreading around the work:
• In order to alleviate some pressure off of the Web Weaver, each person who submits information to the VM web site will be responsible for formatting the material in HTML before submitting it to the Web Weaver. Contact the Section Chair or Web Weaver is assistance is needed in creating HTML.
• Volunteers from the section will be asked to review new content before it is posted to the Section web site. This will assist the Web Weaver by not having the responsibility of editing material as well as the design, function, and format.
• Ellen
• Laurie
• Stephen
• This same group will assist in finding subject experts, as necessary, to review new content as it is submitted to the web site.
• If material needs specialty reviewers, then the material will be posted to the web site but not linked to any other content until after the review.
• This will help to disseminate information for reviewers and still keep a master copy of the material.
• A counter will be added on to the section web site to track the site usage. – Mark
• SAA is still offering to host Section and Roundtable web sites if they will follow the SAA style sheets. Although there are pros and cons to moving the site, at this point the VM Section has decided to continue to host its site on a member's server (currently at Louisiana State University and handled by Mark Martin).
• Images will be posted to the site each year from the city in which the next annual meeting will be held. – Joy and Andrea Still
• A project will begin to have a gallery of past VM T-shirts on the site. – Miriam and Laurie
• Work toward having the site be ADA compliant
• Bobby
• http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp

Bibliography

Richard Pearce-Moses, with the help of John Slate, worked on the bibliography that is currently posted in the VM site. Richard and John have turned over the bibliography to the section and new work will begin on it this year. – John and Doug

• New subject areas
• digital photography
• regional and state reference works
• women in photography
• cultural and ethnic groups in photography
• Add links to sections with on-line text
• Tools section
• "Top 10" reference books to have in a collection
• Reprint techniques
• identifying print techniques
• Disaster recovery for photos
• Include peer reviewed journals
• On the three-year plan, expand the bibliography to include non-photo information
• printmaking
• plans
• architectural drawings
• In the future, this bibliography should probably be moved to a database format.
• Updates to the bibliography will be made annually.

Ballot

If Views moves to electronic format as scheduled this year, a new balloting process will have to be introduced or a June paper mailing for the ballot will have to continue. Currently ballots are mailed only to VM Section members and when they are returned, they are verified by the original label on the back. There are currently no check measures in place for an on-line ballot unless it's hosted on the SAA site and only accessible by VM members using their member number.

Newsletter

• Indexing:

Nancy Dosch continues to head up the Views indexing project. There are a few issues which still need indexing and volunteers were sought:

Vol. 6, Issue 1 - Shawn

Vol. 5, Issues 1, 2, 3 - Shawn

Vol. 15, Issues 1, 2, 3 - Martha

If Vol 17 hasn't been done, Shawn will do it as well [Nancy informed me Vol. 17 is done – Sue]

Beginning with Volume 18, the Views editor will do the indexing as issues are completed. – Laurie

Once all of the issue indexes are complete, the next phase of the project is to clean up and consolidate the index. Nancy will be asked if she would like to head-up this next step of the project or if she would like to have someone else manage it. [I emailed with Nancy and she is interested in completing the indexing project and then continuing on to manage the next phase of consolidating and cleaning-up the index. – Sue 1/20/2004]

When it is compiled, reviewed, and edited, the cumulative index will be posted as a PDF file.

• Assistance
• A new copy editor for Views is needed immediately. An announcement will be posted to VisualMat asking for volunteers to take on the commitment for a minimum of 2 years. – Sue and Laurie
• The Editorial Policy guidelines were revised and will be posted to the web site – Mark will post
• The volunteer core for Views needs to be expanded
• Prepare for a new editor in the future
• Have assistant editors responsible for specific content
• monitor grants available and received
• committee reports
• new articles and call for papers
• exhibitions – Shawn
• book reviews
• artful dodging (gossip)
• Post a call for volunteers (with a 2 year minimum commitment) to VisualMat and then meet with people during VM office hours at the annual meeting – Laurie and Sue
• When the call for Views volunteers is posted to VisualMat, also ask for web site volunteers.
• Ask sessions that were endorsed by the section, but turned down by the SAA program committee to submit an article to Views on the topic. – Robin

Annual Meeting Speaker

Everyone was interested in having a speaker again at the Section annual meeting. Several suggestions were made and a speaker will be contacted.  – Sue

Visual Materials Section Tour

During the 2003 SAA Annual Conference a tour that was focused for visual materials archivists was arranged. A tour for 2004 will try to be arranged as well.

• Boston Public Library was the first choice – Sean
• Museum of Fine Arts was the second choice

The SAA Host Committee is organizing local repositories to host an "open house." Several sites of VM specific interest were suggested.

• There is limited time left before the open house information has to be in to the SAA office for the preliminary proposal but a best effort will be made to contact these organizations.
• Bostonian Society
• Boston Public Library
• Massachusetts Historical Society
• Boston Athenaeum
• Olmstead National Park
• Longfellow National Park/House
• Fidelity
• Polaroid
• Museum of Fine Arts – Southworth and Hawes
• JFK Museum

Book fair

The 2003 book fair at the VM annual meeting was a success and will be continued again for 2004. – Megan and Ellen

VM at the annual meeting

There was some discussion that the annual meeting might not offer enough opportunities for "junior" members of the profession to share their knowledge, projects, and work with the community. For the 2004 annual meeting, the VM section is having an "archivists on parade" session where members will be given a few minutes each to share information about a project. If this is a success it could be continued in the future, possibly at an off-site location during the annual meeting to keep the SAA costs down. – Martha and Sue

VMCAR

The Visual Materials Cataloging and Access Roundtable is a forum to discuss descriptive standards. The group is informal but there was a request to make it a little more focused and constructive.

• Try to increase communication with the Descriptive Standards Section
• Include more information in Views about descriptive standards
• Work to increase sessions at regional archives meetings about visual materials descriptive standards.
• If sessions on visual materials descriptive standards are held at regional meetings
• Request and article for Views
• Encourage the session to go to the SAA annual meeting

Finances

The VM Section has been selling T-shirts at the annual meeting for many years. Any profit (usually about $50-$75) was given to SAA to help offset the cost of extra pages for Views as well as the June mailing of the ballot. If Views is only distributed electronically, what can be done with T-shirt funds?

• Return funds to help with the up-front costs of T-shirts for the following year
• Help offset costs of the VM "reader" idea that was proposed
• help defray cost for image permissions
• Help develop workshops
• workshop in a box
• online training
• Could there be additional fundraising to start a scholarship fund?
• If there is a free VM section tour ask for a $5 donation?
• If the June ballot will continue to be a paper mailing, should the T-shirt money offset that cost?
• Joked about compiling a cookbook of food served at the VM mid-winter meetings titled "A Visual Feast"

Sessions at the Annual Meeting

The 2003 VM Section meeting was not used to discuss session ideas for the following meeting. Instead, the VisualMat listserv was utilized for discussion and ideas. A record number of 15 sessions were submitted to the Section for endorsement and 8 of those sessions were accepted for the SAA 2004 meeting. As a result, the Section will continue to use the listserv for session ideas and discussions. Some ideas were submitted during the mid-winter meeting:

• Ask endorsed sessions that were turned down for 2004 to revise and re-submit the sessions.
• Appraisal – Identifying visual materials for non visual material archivists – Stephen
• appraising modern collections
• Planning, budgeting, processing for visual materials – John
• arrangement and description
• Managing open and growing collections  – Joy
• MARC vs. EAD - decision making tree for descriptive standards – Laurie and James
• visual materials,  manuscript materials, digital
• data structure and content standards
• Identification of damages materials – John
• a "what to do" item level for damaged materials
• work with the Preservation Section
• Related organizations: National Film Preservation Foundation, National Television and Video Preservation Foundation, AMIA – Janice Simpson, AMIA

For this coming year, identify a person to write-up sessions at SAA for Views. The session chair should identify a person ahead of time.

Compile a list of accepted and rejected sessions.

• The current Chair should have a cumulative list

There was a lot of concern that the session concerning nitrate negatives was not accepted by the program committee, especially since a representative of the NFPF in Rochester had agreed to participate. The preservation section should be contacted to see if they would like the join the VM section in making a special appeal to the Program Committee to slot in a brief talk about nitrate. – James

VisualMat Listserv

There has been more activity on the listserv in the last year and the content continues to be appropriate. There are about 230 members on the list.

• A quarterly reminder will be sent to the list that replies should be sent to all – James
• Continue to forward appropriate postings from other lists
• The Scout Report – Martha

Bylaws

The Section Bylaws were reviewed and updated.  They will be posted on the web site for review. – Sue

3 Year Plan

The 3 year plan was reviewed and updated. It will be posted on the web site for review. – Mark

Meeting Review

• An anonymous online survey will be created to solicit feedback about the mid-winter meeting. – Sue
• The survey results will be posted to the web site
• The notes will be reviewed by everyone in attendance at the meeting, revised, and posted to the web site and submitted to Council. – Sue