2021 CIMA Annual Business Meeting

2021 CIMA Annual Business Meeting

We have an exciting two days planned with presentations, a poster session, vendors, a virtual transcription competition courtesy of FromThePage (great for those wanting to play around with the software, or just can't get enough of transcribing, or, are highly competitive!), and our Annual Business Meeting during which we will provide updates on CIMA's 501(c)(6) status, present awards, and announce our newly elected Council members, and scholarship recipients. The itinerary is listed below. 

In the meantime...Registration for the 2021 Annual Business Meeting and Conference is now open! We will be sending out a Zoom link for those who register for the Meeting, just prior to the event. 

We look forward to seeing you. 

2021 CIMA Program Committee,

Ellen M. Ryan, Program Committee Chair, Idaho State University

Kimberly Anderson, University of Nevada, Reno

Jennifer Barkdull, Church History Library

Ryan Lee, Brigham Young University

Molly Rose Steed, University of Utah

Conference Schedule

Thursday, April 29: 9:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.

8:30 – 9:00: check-in 

9:00 – 9:10: Welcome 

9:10 – 9:40: Creating a Virtual Community: Liaisons, Librarians & Archivists Working Together (Rayla Tokarz, Kim Anderson, University of Nevada, Reno)

To foster a community between departments and to develop new skill in teaching with primary sources, Liaison Librarians and Special Collections and University Archives staff participated in Learning Sessions over the course of six months. Special Collections staff developed sessions on topics including archival terminology, discipline specific primary resources, and evidential value. Each session consisted of a presentation and/or activity, targeted discussion, and accompanying resources. Liaison Librarians attended the virtual sessions and created their own plans for incorporating primary sources within their future library instruction sessions. They increased their confidence in their ability to search archives and Special Collections staff discovered how collections can be used in new ways and for multiple disciplines. This presentation will provide an overview of the curriculum we developed and an assessment of how well the series worked to build teams between divisions and to increase the research and instruction skills of participants when using primary sources. 

9:40 – 10:00: Vendor/ San José State University

10:00 – 10:15: break

10:15 – 10:45: The Outdoor Recreation Archive: Collecting through Cross-departmental Collaboration (Clint Pumphrey, Monique Davila, Chase Anderson, Utah State University)

Utah State University Special Collections' Outdoor Recreation Archive is a new and ongoing collecting project intended to document the history of the outdoor gear and clothing industry through catalogs, magazines, and a variety of primary source material. Developed in partnership with USU's Outdoor Product Design and Development (OPDD) program, the archive has attracted interest from researchers and design enthusiasts throughout the world as well as numerous outdoor and fashion publications. The presenters, which include an archivist, a history graduate student, and the OPDD Program Coordinator, will demonstrate how a great deal of this success is owed to this special cross-departmental cooperation, which has proved central to donor relations, collection development, and outreach efforts. 

10:45 – 11:30: Connecting a Community During a Pandemic (Anya Allsup, Church History Library)

Community is vital to all Library institutions. But how do you connect and engage during a pandemic? Join us in this discussion led by Anya Allsup of the Church History Library, that focuses on her work with volunteers during the pandemic. To keep them engaged and connected, she developed a Weekly Reader Club that met every other Friday via Zoom to discuss articles, books, videos, and topics that pertained to their line of work, and guest speakers were invited to the group meetings as well. Through this program, volunteers have been able to keep up with their knowledge and skills during this strange time. Attendees to this session are encouraged to share their own experiences of keeping those we work with engaged in a virtual, remote environment. 

11:30 – 12:15 (Lunch and learn session): Collecting Archival Materials During the Pandemic: Where Are We now? (Katy Klettinger, Tom Clareson, Leigh Grinstead, LYRASIS)

One of our essential functions as archivists is to collect materials to preserve the historical record, but the early stages of the pandemic brought many challenges. In this session, LYRASIS will share results from its 2020 Collecting Archival Materials During the COVID-19 Pandemic Report, detailing how cultural heritage institutions across the country focused on collecting materials. The discussion will also help identify other areas of need archivists faced during the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States, with guidance on how to address them. Research continues (Winter-Spring 2021) with a second phase of personal interviews to understand how collecting institutions have coped with the effects of the pandemic, their current challenges, solutions and where they are now will also be shared. The conclusion of the session will feature a live poll of attendees to identify obstacles the pandemic raised at their institutions, and what current priorities are. This will be used to generate discussion and determine new resources and guidelines needed to aid the profession. 

12:15 – 12:30: break

12:30 – 2:00: FromThePage: Transcription Competition

Feeling competitive? Interested in trying out some software? Join us for this session that includes an overview presented by FromThePage, and then get ready to split into teams for a transcribing competition! The Utah State Archives is generously providing materials from one of their current projects for the event.

CIMA Transcribathon

Gina Strack, Utah State Archives

Sara Brumfield, FromThePage

Lauren Katz, Utah State Archives

Agenda

12:30 - 12:45  Introduction, Create your FromThePage Account, Introduce Joe Hill Project

12:45-1:15  Round 1:  Choose your breakout group, share a screen, collaborate to transcribe

1:15-1:30  Discuss your experience; ask questions.  Lauren talks about outreach.  Gina introduces birth certificates project & transcribes an example.

1:30 - 1:55  Round 2:  Choose your breakout group, choose Joe Hill or Birth Certificates, collaborate to transcribe.

1:55 - 2:00 Share the most interesting thing you found

Resources:

Sign Up for a FromThePage Account:

https://fromthepage.com/users/sign_up

Choose Material:

Joe Hill

Birth Certificates

Friday, April 30: 9:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.

8:30 – 9:00: check-in

9:00 – 9:10: Welcome

9:10 – 9:40: The Best of Both Worlds?: Benefits and Complexities of Post-Custodial Digitization (Ryan Lee, Lindsey Memory, Brigham Young University; Emily Lapworth, University of Nevada, Las Vegas)  

Post-custodial digitization projects, also known as "scan and return" or "digitize and return" projects, seem to offer "the best of both worlds" for donors and archives: donors loan their materials to be digitized by an archive, the archive acquires and provides access to the digital surrogates, and the donor is able to retain possession of their original records. The flexibility of this approach can aid archives in providing access to a more diverse and representative variety of materials from community members who would not otherwise donate their records. While this method seems simple enough on the surface, these types of projects can have many complicated issues that are difficult to resolve. These include issues related to metadata creation, differing workflows, various rights issues, security, and long-term management of the digital asset. During this session, archivists and digitization managers ar Brigham Young University and UNLV will share how they are grappling with the myriad of issues surrounding these types of projects, many of which are still unresolved. Attendees will learn about workflows, policies, and procedures that are being attempted by these institutions, how they are working, and where there are roadblocks that are yet to be resolved. 

9:40 – 10:00: Vendor/Reclaim hosting

10:00 – 10:15: Who Knew We Had This Stuff? : Collaborating to Expose Decades of Hidden Collections Through Cataloging Before Processing (Rebecca A. Wiederhold, Matthew Leavitt, Brigham Young University)

Unprocessed collections are a barrier to access that many manuscript repositories face. Our goal is to provide at least basic access to collections that have been hidden for decades. Acknowledging that our current workflow might take as long as ten years to catch up on our backlog of unprocessed collections, BYU's Harold B. Lee Library is rethinking workflows to re-emphasize user needs as a top priority. In an effort to better share resources across the library to solve this problem, catalogers are taking the first stab at archival description for backlog collections. We have developed procedures to provide a collection-level MARC record for unprocessed collections prior to processing. This project exposes these collections to potential users, simultaneously helping to prioritize processing efforts toward those collections which our patrons request to use. 

With this poster, we want to share our workflow, procedures, and collection-level record cataloging specifications. We also hope to learn from others who have undertaken similar projects as we seek to improve procedures and increase efficiency throughout this ongoing project. 

10:15 – 10:45: Partnering for Access: The Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation Digital Archive at Utah State University (Darcy Pumphrey, Clint Pumphrey, Utah State University) 

The Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Digital Archive is the product of a 20-year project to collect materials produced by Tribal members and digitize relevant records found in archives across the state. In 2019, the members and friends of the Tribe who compiled the archive approached librarians and archivists at USU's Merrill-Cazier Library to make the archive accessible through the library's website, a process which is currently underway. Manuscript curator, Clint Pumphrey and Digital Assets Librarian, Darcy Pumphrey will discuss the history of the archive and what it contains; important considerations for the ownership, description, and access to these materials; and the unique technical challenges of transferring, describing, and preserving a digital archive compiled from a number of different sources in a variety of different formats. 

10:45 – 11:00: Vendor/Stacey Kelly, Paper Conservator

11:00 – 11:30: Getting to Know Us - Special Collections & Archives Videos as a Building Block for Virtual Instruction (Su Kim Chung, Aaron Mayes, University of Nevada, Las Vegas) 

Virtual instruction in Special Collections can be challenging when we can't physically show students our collection material. The need to discuss collection use protocols or how to use finding aids also takes up precious time in a one hour session. UNLV Libraries and Special Collections and Archives created four brief videos to address these challenges, but they also provide a way for instructors and other library staff to introduce their students to research in Special Collections. They can then decide if they want more advanced instruction from SCA staff. Learn about a collaborative effort between the Head of Public Services and the Visual Materials Curator at UNLV Special Collections and Archives to develop these instruction videos and some easy ways you might replicate them with a phone camera and images from your digital collections. 

11:30 – 11:35: break

11:35 – 1:00: Annual Business Meeting/Awards

1:00 – 2:00: CIMA Council virtual lunch with new Council members