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"Welcome to the website of the Simmons College Student Chapter of the Society of American Archivists (SCoSAA)! We hope this website provides the information you're looking for: classes, events, volunteer opportunities, job openings, or links to repositories. Keep checking for updates to our site. Comments and suggestions are always welcome."
—Stephanie Call & Melissa Gonzales, SCoSAA Co-chairs

SCoSAA Members' Papers from Housing Memory Conference Now Available!

Margaret Peachy and Katherine Dunn were selected to present their papers at the Housing Memory Graduate Student Conference at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. Their papers have now been published in the Faculty of Information Quaterly. View excerpts below or view the entire papers in the latest edition of the Quaterly.

In her paper, "Subject Headings (Mis)Informing Memory," Margaret writes:

"in recent years, the Library of Congress reclassified the subject heading for the World War I civilian detention camp in Ruhleben, Germany from an internment camp to a concentration camp. While etymological research supports this change, its impact both on an emotional level, and upon society's collective memory is profound. The camp records, housed by Harvard Law School Library's Special Collections [see finding aid], offer evidence against the implications of the term concentration camp and reveal a camp much different than one might expect. I argue that the Library of Congress's reclassification of Ruhleben from internment camp to concentration camp will influence how the camp is remembered by modern society."

Katherine's article is entitled "The people's papers? A U.S./Canada comparison of what happens to government leaders' records."

"U.S. presidents since Franklin Roosevelt have housed their papers in dedicated libraries, but it wasn't until Ronald Reagan left office that presidents were mandated by law to do so. The Presidential Records Act was enacted in 1978 in response to former president Richard Nixon's plan to destroy thousands of hours of taped conversations. Starting with Reagan, however, presidents have repeatedly attacked the law. The latest and most egregious access restrictions were made by George W. Bush in 2001; on President Barack Obama's first full day of office in January, he overturned Bush's order. The attacks have occurred, in part, because when it comes to ownership and access to presidential papers, history was long on the side of the donors: presidents and their families.

In Canada, the donors are still in control. There is no Canadian law that says Prime Ministers' papers belong to the public. To the contrary, PMs' papers are their own personal property, to do with what they choose.

Should government leaders' records belong to all of us? Are they important not only to hold our leaders accountable but also to strengthen our collective and cultural memory? And how are the differences between the U.S. and Canadian traditions reflected in the ways people view and remember the activities of their governments?"

The Housing Memory Conference was held on March 13-14 in Toronto. The interdisciplinary conference allows graduate students to share their work with peers and faculty in the library science profession. For more information about Ruhleben, check out the UK National Archives web2.0 collaboration.

News and Events

New Officers

At the final SCoSAA meeting, members elected new officers for Fall 2009 - Spring 2010. The results are as follows:

Co-Chairs: Marta Crilly and Marti Verso
Secretary: Christina Thompson
Treasurer: Shannon Struble
Webmaster: Kevin French
ARMA Representatives: Kate Boylan and David Scherer

Congratulations!

Prospective Students FAQ

Prof. Bastian asked SCoSAA to prepare an FAQ about the archives profession. Our goal was to help prospective students make an informed decision about becoming an archivist, from the perspective of current students. Thanks to everyone who helped us by filling out the evaluation form.

Syllabi

To help you select your classes, we have asked the archives faculty to let us post their syllabi on the SCoSAA website. This list will be updated as more syllabi are sent to us.

ARSC Conference

The Association for Recorded Sound Collections will be holding its annual conference in Washington, D.C. on May 27th-30th. All 2008 sessions can be downloaded in mp3 format.

SAA Annual Meeting: Sustainable Archives
AUSTIN 2009

"Joint Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists and the Council of State Archivists (CoSA)

Pre-conference Programs: August 9-11, 2009
Conference Dates: August 11-16, 2009
2009 Exposition Dates: August 13-14, 2009
Hilton Austin"

Check SAA's website for more details.

Also, the Student Chapter of SAA at the University of Texas at Austin is

"looking for ways both to encourage student attendance at the SAA annual meeting in Austin this August and to make the time student members spend here more enjoyable. To this end, we are conducting a brief survey on SAA Annual Meeting attendance by student members to see what we might do. We are not collecting any personal information and the survey should take less than five minutes to complete. Thank you, and please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions or comments."

-Elizabeth R. Garber
President, SAA-UT

News From Prof. Bastian

"In essence, if you are an Archives concentrator and have taken 438 and 440 (or if you will be taking 440 next semester), then you may take 442 (Establishing Archives Programs) as a substitute for 404 (Management)...." [More details]
Prof. Bastian has released a revised statement of the Archives and Records Management Curriculum.

SCoSAA Archives

Looking for older announcements that have been removed? Visit the SCoSAA archives.