For archivists across the country, exhibits have long served as a tool for bringing collection materials out of the stacks and into conversation with the public. This session brings together insights from the efforts of the Faulkner Morgan Archive (FMA) and the University of Louisville Archives & Special Collections (ASC) to build spaces for queer historical literacy and possibility. The speakers will share their experiences from a range of community and student-guided displays staged in 2024, designed to center the stories, agency, and organizing tools of LGBTQ+ Kentuckians past, present, and future.
Josh Porter will present on three exhibitions from the FMA, an independent nonprofit devoted to sharing Kentucky’s LGBTQ history. Each exhibition will showcase a different method of curatorial possibilities, but all require an emphasis on collaboration. Cassidy Meurer will examine her efforts at ASC guiding students through the process of curating an exhibition of somewhat unprocessed traces of public and domestic queer life. The materials she will highlight come from the Williams-Nichols collection, one of the largest community-stewarded sets of LGBTQ+ materials at an American university. Chad Kamen will discuss a partnership between ASC and local activist organization the Fairness Campaign. The collaboration developed a display and programming about tools and practices for mobilizing intersectional organizing from the campaign's records.
You will learn more about emerging approaches to staging and describing queer materials for various audiences, as well as frameworks for highlighting queer joy and liberation amid increasing institutional repression of power-informed language.
Based on the mishmash of a hot dish, this roundtable will discuss the ingredients needed to create a tasty grant project. From the simplest dump-and-go hot dish to a complex casserole, every recipe still requires essential ingredients and time away from your core duties. Panelists will respond to questions and discuss the similarities and differences between their experiences managing different types of grants within the context of their varying institutions. Takeaways will include the success and failures of budgeting time and money; the morale of staff; working with student employees, project staff, and vendors; the dynamics of working with project partners from other institutions and advisory boards; balancing application commitments with project realities; and more.
Amy Bishop, rare books & manuscripts archivist for Iowa State University, will share her perspective on managing a CLIR grant, particularly working with project partners and an advisory board. Laura Sullivan, digital collections librarian for Iowa State University, will incorporate managing several grants such as CLIR, NHPRC, local grant, and indirect grant contributions. Heidi Pettitt, director of the Center for Dubuque History for Loras College, will share her perspective on managing multiple grants simultaneously, working with student employees, and managing your time. Kristina Warner, archivist for NAHA, will discuss managing NEH, state, and private grants at a small cultural heritage institution. Lynn Smith, av archivist for the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library-Museum, will address working with the National Film Preservation Foundation to restore rare Kodacolor film and dealing with the media interest that followed the release of the films.
How do you go from a pantry stocked with aspirations for a digital preservation program in a well-prepared plate with the necessary skill and assessment ingredients to get started? In this session, practicing archivists and librarians will discuss their experiences in the digital preservation test kitchen of the 2024 Digital POWRR Peer Assessment Program. This program through Digital POWRR, or “Preserving digital Objects With Restricted Resources,” provides intensive training and establishes a community of practice around digital preservation concepts and assessment procedures. With the support of their cohort facilitator and peers, participants completed multiple self-assessments and an in-depth peer assessment, set goals, and ultimately created case studies to be broadly disseminated.
In discussion with their cohort facilitator, panelists will reflect on their assessments and case studies, emphasizing lessons learned, tools and practices they implemented at their different institutions, and areas that still need to be addressed or improved. Given the particularities, strengths, and constraints of each panelist’s institution, participants will share a range of takeaways that may be helpful for professionals attempting to provide ongoing care for their digital collections at a variety of institutions across the Midwest. Takeaways include advice, successes, and failures in the following areas: specific self-assessment models; advocacy and communication strategies with administrators and IT colleagues; creative stretching of resources for software and digital storage; and exploring digital preservation workflows and policies for born-digital and digitized collections.
Digital Preservation Analyst, University of Minnesota Libraries
Carol Kussmann is the Digital Preservation Analyst at the University of Minnesota Libraries. In this role, she works across many departments within the Libraries, as well as outside the Libraries including through the statewide Minnesota Digital Library Program. She addresses current... Read More →
Poster sessions offer you the chance to see projects and research conducted by colleagues, from students to new archivists to career veterans. Poster presenters will be available to discuss their research during select breaks - look for Poster Presentations event. Check Sched for updated break times.
Finding and applying for an archives job can be difficult, confusing, and time-consuming, especially for new archivists or those wanting to make a change in their career. A panel of archivists with current experience in hiring for academic, government, non-profit, religious, and museum archives are here to help demystify the hiring process! Panelists will provide an honest and straightforward discussion of how candidates are selected, what to expect during the interview process, timelines, and application packets for different types of institutions.
The panel will also share hiring practices, including DEI practices to reduce bias and increase diversity, to ensure transparency with candidates, and to emphasize the importance of privacy in the search process. This is meant to be an open discussion where the panelists share their backgrounds and answer questions from you or prompts from the chair to encourage organic conversation. The audiences for this session include people looking for archives jobs, either new to the field or making a change, and people who are on search committees or have hiring responsibilities looking for advice and new ideas. By having a candid discussion about hiring practices, this panel hopes to empower the next generation of archivists in their job hunt and promote inclusive hiring practices for a more diverse workplace.
This session will introduce CROSS (Catholic Religious Organizations Studying Slavery). Established in 2021 by representatives of diocesan and religious archives the mission of CROSS is to promote open and honest access to the historical record to achieve a more comprehensive and truthful telling of enslavement within the Catholic Church in the United States.
CROSS aims to help Catholic organizations and those responsible for Catholic archives by providing guidelines on communication development, access policies, research methodology and working with descendants to foster reconciliation. The session will have three parts over the course of 90 minutes. Dr. Emilie Leumas will discuss her research efforts to broaden the narrative on the Catholic Church’s participation in slavery. She will reveal various sources found within Catholic archives that contain information about enslaved people and communities. Eric Fair will describe how the Archdiocese of St. Louis is acknowledging its past by exploring its involvement with slavery and the different ways this history is being presented to its community and the wider public. Dr. Stephanie Jacobe will introduce the CROSS: Best Practices Guide, which serves as a model for any organization hoping to identify records of the enslaved, promote open access, and work with leadership to build community support. The session will finish with audience discussion.
This session will consider how instructional spaces impact instruction and the specific challenges of planning and teaching class sessions that feature primary source materials. It will be structured in three parts, with opportunities for audience engagement during each. Part 1: What are the current challenges and opportunities with space in special collections? Carly Dearborn and Jolie Braun will share findings from their recent survey, which sought to understand the role space plays in teaching, the current trends in instruction spaces, and the strategies being used to address the shortcomings of these spaces. Part 2: How are you reimagining your space to better serve instruction activities? Jeremy Pekarek will discuss his experience in creating instructional space in the archives to accommodate a classroom, and how the archives become a component in all First Year Seminar courses for the College of Arts and Sciences at IUN. Meghan Courtney will share lessons learned during the process of updating technology in an existing archives instruction space with an eye for accessibility. Part 3: How can we begin to develop best practices for our instruction spaces? During the final segment of this panel, you will have the opportunity to reflect on and share your own experiences. Discussion questions will be provided to help guide the conversation and may include: “What strategies have you used to make the most of your space?,” “What is one thing you’d love to change about your space?,” and “What are the protocols for taking special collections materials to another location?”
Storing records offsite, especially those that aren’t frequently accessed, is a great way to reclaim precious space onsite. Yet, juggling multiple storage locations brings its own set of unique challenges for archivists and records managers. Much like the many ways to perfect a casserole, there are countless ways to master the art of offsite records storage. Hannah Pryor will discuss the challenges her team faced and share insights and strategies for those dealing with non-permanent records stored off-site, including access, records transfers, and the annual destruction of eligible, non-permanent records. Jenna Stout will share her work to refine retrieval and disposal procedures, establish perimeters for eligible materials for offsite storage, and revise records retention schedules at the Saint Louis Art Museum Archives. Michael Barera will discuss the Milwaukee County Historical Society’s off-site storage facility and its preservation conditions, retrieval practice and policy, and the process of searching for a new off-site storage facility. Each method offers a distinct recipe for success, crafted to meet the diverse needs of our institutions.
Archivists have been asked to do more with less for decades, while also being encouraged to advocate for additional resources. But what do you do when you find yourself as the proverbial dog who has finally caught the car? How do you ensure that you don't under-deliver? The Eastern Michigan University Archives (EMUA) team has systematically grown their archives program (both staffing and space) over the past 12 years, but it has come with numerous wins and countless complications. University archivist Alexis Braun Marks will talk about the advocacy efforts she has undertaken to get additional staff and a major gift to renovate space in the University Library, but also the politics that have surrounded the expansion of the archives. Amber Davis and Brooke Boyst will share how the newly constructed archives has provided long-dreamed-of geographic unity, but how this also threatens the familial culture that has defined the effectiveness of EMUA. They will talk about how they are creating systems and workflows that make sense and do not rely on the “way things have always been done.” Finally, Matt Jones will talk about how the shift from being the EMU Oral History Program (OHP) to a Center has been influenced by local and university politics, handshake agreements, and debates over who tells whose story. But also how they are working to maintain their vision for the OHP, and, by proxy, the University Archives as a whole. The session will provide time for an open dialogue between you and the panelists to understand the ups and downs of getting what you want, as well as inspiration to create a collaborative and effective team that can overcome potential ego pitfalls to create a cohesive work environment.
The Soomaal House Library & Archives Center, established in 2021 under the aegis of Soomaal House of Art, plays an imperative role in preserving and celebrating Somali art and culture. The center’s archival collections—organized into Contemporary Somali Art and Artists, the History of Somali Minnesotans, and the Historical Archive of Somalia & Somalis—invite critical engagement with the intersections of art, history, and identity.
This talk will further explore how the center's approach to archiving goes beyond traditional methods, using art as a lens to view personal narratives, community histories, and cultural memory. By combining the creative work of artists with historical materials, the center aims to generate archives that reflect not only the past but also the present-day experiences of Somali Minnesotans. As a result, these archives become living, evolving collections that inspire research, creativity, and knowledge production, prompting critical questions about identity, locality, and the connections that bind Somali artists and communities worldwide.
In addition to preserving the artistic and historical legacy of the Somali community, the center emphasizes the dynamic relationship between art and archives. This relationship fosters new forms of archiving that capture the lived experiences of the Somali community, contextualizing their stories through both historical documentation and contemporary artistic expression.
Do you oversee student workers or volunteers in your archives? Are you in charge of managing archival or other staff at your institution? Perhaps you’re responsible for the entire archives department. If you find value in connecting with fellow archivists who share similar management responsibilities, we invite you to join this forum. It will provide a casual and conversational space where archivists can pose questions, discuss challenges, share experiences, exchange ideas, and build connections with colleagues.
Head of Archives, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
I am a west Texan, former lone arranger, ALIer (class of 2017), certified archivist, current archives department head and records manager. I'm also, as it happens, the archivist for MAC! Talk to me about: management issues, oral histories, instruction and active learning, records... Read More →
Solo archivists can often feel alone navigating the tensions of long to-do lists and limited time and resources and balancing professional interests with institutional priorities. This Friday Forum session will provide an opportunity for you to network with colleagues about shared experiences and to engage in conversations about professional development, leadership, project management, and more.
Want to learn more about how to publish with MAC as a new author? Come talk with the editors of the MAC Newsletter and Archival Issues about their submission, peer-review, editing, and publishing process.
Led by the co-founders of the Free ‘Em All Radio Archive and two student collaborators, this session will provide a case study of a community oral history archives at Dominican University. Launched in 2016, Free ‘Em All Radio--a call-in podcast hosted by The Lady of Rage and Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. of the Black Panther Party Cubs--has become a historic record in its own right. Each week, the podcast broadcasts the voices of incarcerated people and political activists across diverse communities who report on current events and critical issues including racial injustice and prison abolition. Founded in 2021, the corresponding archive fosters the development of an equitable and inclusive cultural record.
In this session, presenters - including host Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. - will offer a live demonstration of the ArchivesSpace repository, describe the podcast cataloging process, and discuss relationship-building among student catalogers and community stakeholders. The presenters will introduce you to podcast preservation and give practical tips for archivists who wish to begin collecting this new but valuable digital medium. This collection and its collaborators will illustrate an achievable method of developing a community archive on an open-source digital platform, offering a blueprint for those who seek to preserve a more diverse collection of human voices.
Archival repositories don’t often hold materials created or authored by Indigenous peoples. Some archival repositories don’t even have many materials written by colonizers about Indigenous peoples. So how do archivists do outreach and programming to include Indigenous perspectives, if these perspectives aren’t in our archives? In this session, Jenny DeRocher and Henry Greengrass will tell the story of how they started working together, the projects they’ve collaborated on, and the lessons they’ve learned together, and give tips on how to conduct projects in your own institution that focus on Indigenous perspectives instead of the colonizers’ because our collections do that enough for us.
Since 2022, Jenny DeRcoher and Henry Greengrass have collaborated on various projects, including: two video podcast productions featuring Indigenous voices, research and presentations on the myths of community founders, a scavenger hunt featuring local Indigenous history, a circulating library collection of books by Indigenous authors, an Indigenous film series, and education outreach at community events like Indigenous Peoples’ Day and a Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women 5k. During these projects, they learned a number of lessons together and in this session will give examples of how they problem-solved, what allyship vs. co-conspiratorship looks like, and how they fought institutional systems that worked against their projects.
This is a session of advice for archivists who want to do similar projects with decolonized mindsets.
Having an active and accessible archive for PreK-12 schools provides a unique course offering for students. Archivists find challenges as well as wonderful opportunities to share their collections with children and teenagers. In many instances, little bites are served to these audiences in contrast to the bigger portions of archival research served to college students. Panelists will discuss programs they have initiated at their institutions, the successes and failures of those initiatives, and practical tips/advice for those looking to create archives-based programs for younger students in collaboration with faculty.
Poster sessions offer you the chance to see projects and research conducted by colleagues, from students to new archivists to career veterans.
Poster presenters will be available to discuss their research. Check Sched for updated break times.
Poster: Building a Community Table: The Illinois Wesleyan University Social Justice Tour Presenter: Liz Bloodworth, (Illinois Wesleyan University)
Poster: “More Than You Should Chew”: Approaches to processing large born-digital collections in under-resourced community Presenters: Camelia Furio, (University of Iowa), Murray L. Rice II (University of Iowa)
Poster: Felician Sisters: Thriving Through Embracing Community Participation Presenters: Sister Grace Marie Del Priore (Felician Sisters of North America), Alyssa Noch (Felician Sisters of North America)
Poster: Practicing Archival Activism: Collecting and Curating Reproductive Health in a Post-Dobbs World Presenter: Ann Holland (University of Iowa, Iowa Women’s Archive)
Poster: Content Notice Development at a Queer Community Archive Presenter: Liz Shuga (University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison LGBTQ+ Archive)
Poster: Managing Your Resources to “Serve Up” More: Using Item-Level “More Product, Less Process” to Efficiently and Effectively Presenters: Steven Gentry (University of Michigan, Bentley Historical Library), Kendall Scarborough (University of Michigan, Bentley Historical Library), Marc Tsuno (University of Michigan, Bentley Historical Library)
Poster: A Seat at the Table: Naming Women in the Johnson Publishing Company Archive Presenter: Jacob Wolf (Getty Research Institute)
Poster: Serving it Up: Social Work Theory and Archival Practice in Preserving and Empowering Marginalized Voices Presenter: Shulammite Olukayode (Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville)
Poster: Dishing Out Digital Learning: Transforming Archives Instruction with Asynchronous Modules Presenter: Nada Abdelrahim (Indiana University)
Poster: Becoming Communities that Include All: Documenting a Federal Lawsuit Presenters: Curt Hanson (University of North Dakota, Chester Fritz Library), Rosemary Pleva Flynn (University of North Dakota, Chester Fritz Library)
Poster: Collecting Everyone: Using Demographic Data to Build Representative Repositories Presenter: April Anderson-Zorn (Illinois State University)
Poster: Cultivating Connections: Serving History Through Digital Engagement and Community Outreach Presenter: Emily McDonald (University of Illinois)
Poster: This Won’t Hurt a Bit: Serving Up Solutions That Recordkeepers Can Swallow Presenter: Daria Labinsky
Poster: "We Are a Family:" Finding Community Through Collections Processing Presenter: Katherine Hacanyan (Eastern Michigan University Archives)
Poster: Bridging History and Nature: A Collaborative Effort to Design Historical Panels for County Parks Presenter: Marisa Campanaro (Wright County Historical Society)
Poster: Preserving LGBTQ+ Stories: Recent Changes to the UW-Madison LGBTQ+ Oral History Program Presenter: David Advent (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Poster: Cooking Up Success: Empowering Community Archives Through Partnership Presenter: Kierstin Wagner (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Poster: ‘Serving it Up with Ones and Zeroes:’ A Programmatic Workflow for Inserting Content Notices in Digital Collections Presenter: Theresa Burger (University of Minnesota), Scott Lawan (University of Minnesota)
The Members’ Meeting is open to all MAC members. Here you will learn about new MAC developments and activities, as well as recognize your MAC peers who are being presented with awards. President Jennie Thomas will present the State of MAC address and inform attendees about upcoming MAC meetings and events.
The Local Arrangements Committee will host several restaurant tours at some of our favorite restaurants around town. Sign-up sheets will be posted near the registration area Wednesday-Friday with details about each restaurant.
