mac2025minneapolis

Cost: You must register through SAA to attend this workshop at https://mysaa.archivists.org/nc__event?id=a0lUV0000024zgTYAQ. A $25 discount off the non-SAA member rate is available for all MAC members (who are not SAA members) who register using the required code. Contact Education Committee co-chair Scott Brouwer at sbrouwer@lacrosselibrary.org for the code
Location: Hilton Minneapolis 
Enrollment: 35

The field of digital forensics often evokes imagery of prime-time television crime dramas. But what is it, and how can archivists put digital forensics tools and processes to use in their home institutions? Archivists are more likely than ever to be confronted with collections containing removable storage media (e.g., floppy disks, hard drives, thumb drives, memory sticks, and CDs). These media provide limited accessibility and may endanger the electronic records housed within, due to obsolescence and loss over time. Caring for these records requires archivists to extract whatever useful information resides on the medium while avoiding the accidental alteration of data or metadata. You’ll explore the layers of hardware and software that allow bitstreams on digital media to be read as files, the roles and relationships of these layers, and tools and techniques for ensuring the completeness and evidential value of data.  

This course is specifically designed as a precursor and prerequisite to the two-day Digital Forensics for Archivists: Advanced DAS course.

Upon completion of this course, you'll be able to

• Demonstrate an understanding of the principles, tools, and technologies behind the practical field of digital forensics
• Explore how digital forensics tools and techniques can apply to an archival setting
• Consider a range of digital forensics tools, and use some of them to create disk images and analyze their content for different types of information

Who should attend?
Archivists, manuscript curators, librarians, and others who are responsible for acquiring or transferring collections of digital materials—particularly those that are received on removable media.

What should you know already?
Basic computer literacy; you should understand how to install and use software tools listed in the syllabus and be able to read and comprehend basic (though detailed) technical concepts

Instructor
Joshua Kitchens, Director of Archival Services and Digital Initiatives, Georgia Public Library Service

Cost: Free
Location: Hilton Minneapolis
Enrollment: 40

This free event will feature conversations exploring how we, as archival professionals, have successfully and unsuccessfully integrated diversity, equity, and inclusion into our individual and collective/institutional work. Topics may include collection priorities and management, outreach, conservation, donor relations, hiring practices, and more. Together, we will examine how to move beyond well-meaning but insufficient efforts to create meaningful and lasting change, and how to navigate challenges such as resistance and backlash. Participants will collectively decide how our conversations will reflect the priorities and experiences of the community.

What should you know already?
No prior experience is necessary.

Cost: $50
Location: Hilton Minneapolis 
Enrollment: 20

This workshop for oral historians of all levels of experience will focus not only on what oral history is, but also on how and why the oral history field has emerged as one of the most flexible and dynamic methods of historical account collection. Over the course of the four-hour workshop, the instructors will empower you to come face-to-face with the history you are documenting, and demonstrate how to navigate thorny issues of empathy vs. exploitation, trauma-based accounts, and who has the right to tell whose story in the archives. The nuts and bolts of oral history will be covered extensively, offering you the opportunity to submit your own projects for feedback and development in project design, interviewing, transcription, preservation, and access.

Who should attend?
Anyone interested in learning more about how to design and execute successful oral history projects.

What should you know already?
No prior knowledge or experience needed

This informal meet up is for connecting LGBTQ archivists in the Midwest, whether working directly with queer archival materials or not. How do we want to support and celebrate Midwestern LGBTQ archival work? Do we need to develop a more formalized network? These are a couple of the topics we hope to discuss during this time. This meet up is hosted by Aiden Bettine, Curator of the Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies at the University of Minnesota. Please email abettine@umn.edu with any questions.

The era of Indian boarding schools remains a profound and complex chapter in history, marked by intergenerational trauma, cultural erasure, and resilience. Fallon Carey’s work focuses on the curation of Fallon Carey’s work focuses on the curation of boarding school records to support truth-telling, promote healing, and empower Indigenous communities. Through initiatives such as the National Indian Boarding School Document Access project (NIBSDA) and collaborations with institutions like the National Archives, she engages in digitizing and preserving archival materials that document the operations and impacts of these institutions.

This talk will highlight the multifaceted nature of this work, including the technical and ethical challenges of managing sensitive historical data, ensuring cultural protocols are respected, and addressing the dual responsibilities of providing public access and safeguarding Indigenous Perspectives. By collaborating with tribal nations, researchers, and policymakers, this effort not only preserves history but also creates pathways for community-driven storytelling, education, and advocacy. Through this plenary, Carey aims to illuminate the significance of boarding school record curation as a means of confronting historical injustices, fostering understanding, and contributing to the ongoing pursuit of restorative justice. By bridging archival preservation with community needs, this work seeks to honor the past while supporting a more just and equitable future.

Carey joined the team at NABS in fall of 2022 as the digital archives assistant and took on the role of digital archives manager in the summer of 2024. She is passionate about advocating for tribal sovereignty in archival collections and has worked to facilitate relationships between tribal and nontribal institutions. Since graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a master’s in library science in 2020, she has worked at the University of Utah cataloging oral histories from individuals from 90 different Tribal Nations for the Native American Oral History project funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

In addition to her archival projects, Carey has partnered with Franklin Library staff to promote indigenous collections and library services in Hennepin County. Her past projects include a position as a contributor to the Hennepin County Library Native Advisory Council and the Minnesota Department of Education’s Indigenous Representations Project. Before moving to Minneapolis, she lived on the Cherokee Nation reservation and got her BFA in ceramics with a minor in art history from the University of Tulsa. Carey is a descendent of a boarding school survivor who attended Chilocco Indian Training School.