Membership Committee
Minutes
August 20, 2003
Los Angeles, California
Participants: Roiann Baird, John Wright, Jane Rosario, Joel Wurl, Gerri Schaad,
Mary Margaret Bell, Meg Phillips, Gabrielle Blais, Stephen Cohen for Diane
Kaplan, Nancy Beaumont, Dennis Harrison, Jennifer Gunter, Jeanette Spears,
Tad Hershorn, Daniel Alanzo and Scott Schwartz
President Peter Hirtle’s Remarks
He thanked the Membership Committee for their efforts. Number one priority
on council is increasing benefits to SAA members. SAA got together with other
associations to submit an IMLS grant to do a census of the archival profession.
Announcements
Meetings
Meetings that would further the committee’s agenda include the student
mixer, education forum, breakfast with President, student forum, career development
center, Getty reception, key contact breakfast, the mentoring coffee.
House Keeping
Membership Committee website and listserv
Ed Galvin and Syracuse University have agreed to continue the maintenance of
the MC site. SAA has also asked the Committee to consider moving the site
back under SAA’s management. There are advantages and dis-advantages
that need to be addressed during the 2003-04 year. Scott needs comments about
the website by COB September 5.
Key Contact Program
Suggestions for e-mailing: Including E-mail addresses in quarterly KC reports
is preferable over physical addresses. This can be done with the proviso that
people keep their e-mails up to date. Next mailing goes out in October. The
question was raised, “Is the database membership directory up to date?” In
a word, “yes.” In more words, the changes have to still be made
manually, but the turn around is about 48 hours. Getting better at keeping
track of members, past, present, deceased. There was some discussion regarding
allowing members to make their own real time changes to personal information
someday in the future, but not right now. It is critical to get members e-mail
addresses into reports. SAA is pushing to make privacy and confidentiality
a formal policy. This policy would obviously affect access to membership directory
online. No uses talked about thus far would likely be affected by the policy.
New members to the committee need to know how to identify, select, and maintain
key contact representatives for their districts when taking over for members
that are stepping down from the committee.
Membership Trends
Membership is up, but not as much as last year. Bottom line: Membership growth
is occurring consistently among students. The bad news is middle managers (i.e.,
ID3 memberships) are leaving at a higher rate. Biggest complaint is that the
dues are too high, even though dues increases aren’t keeping up with
inflation. Middle managers are leaving at a higher rate than six years ago.
This suggests that SAA is not keeping up with the needs of middle managers.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that management issues are not being adequately
addressed by SAA. Continuing education forum may offer some solutions this
year. It was suggested that these individuals would most likely be interested
in such topics as fund development, strategic planning, and personnel management.
Non-renewals by length of membership by SAA
The past several reports hold that members leaving after 1-2 years, but did
not necessarily point to only middle managers. Three distinct membership categories
have been the focus of the Membership Committee: middle management types, students,
and retirees. Students were focused on first. As the committee has met the
needs of students, the committee now needs to focus actively on middle-career
archivists and retirees. Jennifer indicated that she sees problems in the transition
from student to professional memberships particularly in terms of individuals’ participation
for SAA conference. Statistical evidence suggests that if they stay for more
than 3 years, they are not likely to leave. Scott indicated membership has
increased ¼ percent this year (based on the first 6 months of 2003).
He would like to see membership reach the high of 1996. At this point the total
membership is deficient by only 75 members. Currently SAA has surpassed the
1997 figures and we are inching closer to 1996.
Mentoring Program
The new mentoring brochure was ready for the conference. The new brochure
no longer contains the text “Mentors help mentees create a realistic
career plan.” Gerri indicated that all applications this year’s
mentorships were done. 73 pairs were put together this year. Mentors like to
be paired by subject area and typically are repository specific. Mentees prefer
to be near their mentors. Both want more guidelines and more structure. More
contact and more communication is desirable from the coordinator. Daniel appointed
Gerri’s helper in the Mentoring program. According to Gerri 18 mentors
and 11 mentees responded to her informal survey.
The navigator program continues to operate out of the Women’s Archivist
Roundtable. They would like the membership committee to take over the Navigator
program. However they would like to keep a hand in it, but would like help.
It was agreed that if they wish to remain responsible for it, the Membership
Committee would try to help out as needed.
Career Develop Center
Meg reported the topic of the career development session involves an archivists
guide to job hunting, constructing good resumes, and identifying what happens
behind the scenes. In addition there will be a discussion of the general job
hunting environment and a paper entitled, “Repositories of knowledge:
talking about knowledge gained from experiences, and what people do when they
leave the profession.” We need to recommend this session to all interested
parties.
The career center consists of two rooms, one for the resume and job binders,
and a room for archival programs. A schedule of representatives from a variety
of archival institutions will man the desks during the center’s operation
to talk about getting hired by their organizations. Meg also reported that
all volunteer positions for the Center have been filled. It was suggested that
SAA’s council may consider paying a professional to run the career center
for next year depending how the career center does this year. She also wanted
people to be aware that going to the career center doesn’t necessarily
mean that you want to leave their job. Joel said that he urged those on Council
to visit the career center. Nancy said that she would speak to Peter about
making an announcement at the Presidents address during the meeting’s
plenary session.
SAA Student Scholarship and 2003 Scholarship Raffle
Scott urged people to contribute to the scholarship fund. Can’t give
out scholarship till the endowment of $20,000 is fulfilled. Scholarship is
currently at $8,832.80. Raffle tickets will sell for $2 for 1 ticket and 3
tickets for $5. (|NOTE: The 2003 raffle raise $2,225.00 bringing the total
endowment to $11,057.80.)
SAA Student Chapter Survey Follow-up
Membership Committee will continue to work with Council to send representatives
to SAA student chapter meetings this fall. What is required is a list of chapters
that council members can and cannot visit so Scott can pull together people
from the Committee to do these visits. Scott also urged all to visit the student
poster sessions.
Information Discussion
Native American Initiative
Tim Ericson plans to assign every committee a Native American archivist to
help get them involved more actively with SAA. There is also an effort to raise
money to help fund memberships for native America archivists. John Wright,
Marsha Maguire, and Jennifer Gunter volunteered to help with this fund raising
initiative. It was also suggested Bert Altman, from Florida, may be another
person to help with this effort.
Retention of Mid-Career Archivists
It was suggested this initiative could be a possible venue for Meg and Jennifers’ proposal
on getting 1-3 year members more involved in the organization to keep them
as lifelong SAA members. Not middle-managers, but new members (or relatively
new). It was also recommended that we possibly try to fold into this initiative
some opportunities for middle manager career development with a focus on Native
Americans archivists.
The need for retaining mid-career archivists is supported by both anecdotal
and statistical evidence. However Joel indicated that he was not sure that
the ID3 membership category, based on a particular salary range, and middle
manager correspond with one another through the statistical evidence. A working
definition of what a middle manager is has not been establish, so it is difficult
to determine a whether memberships at the ID3 level accurately represent a
specific groups of mid-career archivists. In one substantive letter written
to SAA the author addressed the lack of SAA’s ability to deliver services
beyond the introductory processing archivist level.
Currently SAA does not provide services that address such middle management
issues as capitol development, strategic planning, budgets, networking. It
may also be possible that the needs of middle manager’s may exceed the
archival boundaries and may be more management that archival. The archival
profession is too large and varies to come up with one middle management profile.
Defining this type of profession is more elusive to define than one may offer
for a student. The question was raised whether SAA should broaden its services
to meet management needs. Should it recommend other services, other agencies,
kind of out source these issues? Much more discussion must follow.
Special Archival Discounts from Vendors
Light Impressions, during conversations this spring regarding their offer
of raffle prizes, asked Scott if they offered a discount to SAA members on
supplies, would SAA be interested. The group agreed that this discussion goes
beyond the responsibilities of the Membership Committee. Such a decision should
be made at a much higher level. Nancy referred to these as affinity programs
where the “return” for this benefit is that SAA would endorse those
companies. MAC members already have a similar arrangement Light Impressions
that supports their scholarship fund. MBNA has an extensive affinity program.
Scott suggested approaching Council with the idea to get their approval for
more investigation. Council needs to understand that the membership committee
feels that affinity programs are a good idea. Council will then solicit suggestions
from this committee and other committees. Joel and Nancy contend that they
have enough notes to take the idea of affinity programs to the council, with
the proviso that SAA may not be ready for endorsements. All agreed with this
recommendation.
Membership Development
Nancy told the group that her number one priority for SAA is Membership development,
to find new constituencies and create a new system for finding these constituencies.
She reminded the group that this committee should define its relationship with
her and Council before things get too far going. This can be achieved through
thoughtful strategic planning. Council has approved reconstitution of the survey
fund for general development. Nancy has the specific wording of it. Council
has formally approved the establishment of the diversity committee. This will
clearly have an impact on other committees and members.
John presented Scott with a Hawaiian nose flute near the end of the meeting.
Scott thanked everyone for their hard work. He then passed out raffle tickets
at the end of the meeting.
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