October 01, 2002 — Meeting Minutes
Attendees: Mike Eisenberg, Allyson Carlyle, J.P. Brigham, Kathleen Crosman, Beth Lahickey, Amy Mihelich, Gene Polhamus, Scott Rawlings, Jen Wolfe (note-taker)
- Kathleen explained some of our reasons for wanting to form a group, including:
• as a forum to share our common interest in archives through discussion and other activities
• as a way to network and learn from archivists in the local academic and professional communities
- To explore further: becoming a part of the Western Washington University student SAA chapter (or alternately, investigate creating a Pacific Northwest student chapter of SAA with other schools). This would have added benefit of strengthening ties between the UW and WWU, which might make it easier for iSchool students to enroll in WWU archives classes, and vice versa. We will make contact with this group. If a visit to WWU is planned, Mike and Allyson would be interested in attending.
- One representative from our group may attend Mike’s regular meetings with iSchool student officers – we should get details from Danielle.
- Mike would like us to schedule another meeting towards the end of the quarter to discuss our progress on these issues.
Issues raised by Mike were addressed:
• Advisor: Mike would want a member of the iSchool faculty to act as advisor to the group, in addition to proposed advisor John Bolcer of UW's Manuscripts, Special Collections, University Archives. Possibilities include Allyson, David Levy or Scott Klein (part-time faculty and instructor of the iSchool’s Archives and Manuscript Services course).
• Funding: Mike would like us to look into drawing up a reasonable annual budget for this group, and possible fundraising ideas to meet this need (e.g., ALISS holds annual booksale.)
• Sustainability: before moving forward with this project, Mike wants us to demonstrate an indication of demand to suggest we can be a long-term organization. Areas to explore: recruiting students from other iSchool programs (first year MLIS day & evening, Ph.D., undergraduate Infomatics, distance MLIS) as well as UW-wide (Museology, School of Communications, History
department, etc.); partnering with WWU student SAA chapter (see below).
• Curriculum: a major concern is that such a group might eventually try to rally for changes in the iSchool curriculum to include more archival coursework. Mike and Allyson feel that adding such classes at the iSchool would be very low priority, since there is a graduate program for archives and records management located nearby at Western Washington University. Mike suggested that we include a statement in our proposed group’s constitution recognizing the current status of archives coursework, explaining that the iSchool does not currently have nor does it plan to create an archival studies program, and our group will not advocate such a program.