At our last Steering Committee meeting, we discussed several ideas for section projects that we can make progress on in the next several months before our section meeting in August (thanks to those of you who responded to our request for input). We’ve narrowed it down to three broad ideas:
- Encourage folks who successfully manage student workers, or who have recently completed an interested project as a student worker, to write blog posts or Campus Case Studies. (Steering Committee members are happy to review Campus Case Studies in advance for authors who are current or recent student workers.)
- Create a bibliography of readings for orienting student workers to archival work.
- Create a literature review on topics related to student workers in archives.
There was interest from the Steering Committee, and from the membership, in sharing policy and procedure documents. However, many sections have already created individual sites for these types of documents, and we’ve contacted SAA about the possibility of creating an organization-wide site for these materials.
We are hoping to start on our section projects in the near future, but we welcome additional project ideas from members. Please share them with us soon!
During our same meeting, we also discussed options for programming during our section meeting time at SAA. Although we didn’t come up with any specific recommendations, we see two possible directions:
- Invite section members who have done innovative work around the topic of student workers in college and university archives
- Invite speakers who can offer a different perspective on student workers in college and university archives, such as:
- Current or recently graduated student workers
- K-12 archivists, who see our students before they get to college
- Career Services and HR staff, who have expertise in hiring and career readiness
We welcome your feedback on which direction to go in for our section meeting–or even a totally different direction!–as well as nominations for specific speakers to invite.
Please join in the discussion in one of the following ways:
- Comment on this post
- Reply to the discussion on the C&UA listserv
- Email the Steering Committee
- Email me directly
Rebecca Goldman is the College Archivist at Wellesley College. She holds a MSLIS from Drexel University and a BA in linguistics from Swarthmore College, and recently earned her MA in Public History from La Salle University. She currently serves as chair of the College and University Archives Section.
The Academic Archivist 