And
the 2000 SAA Awards Go To...
The Society
of American Archivists recognized and celebrated outstanding archival
achievements for calendar year 1999 at an awards ceremony on August 31,
2000, during its 64th annual meeting at the Adam's Mark in Denver. Recipients
of SAA-sponsored awards were selected by subcommittees of the Awards Committee,
which was co-chaired by Nancy Boothe and Roland Baumann. SAA heartily
congratulates all of the award winners.
Preservation
Publication Award
Philip M. Hamer and Elizabeth Hamer-Kegan Award
Waldo Gifford Leland Award
Fellows' Posner Award
Oliver Wendell Holmes Award
Theodore Calvin Pease Award
Colonial Dames Scholarship Award
See also SAA Names Seven New Fellows
(Aug 2000)
Back to SAA Recognitions home page
Preservation
Publication Award
The SAA
Preservation Publication Award went to Architectural Photoreproductions:
A Manual for Identification and Care, by Eléonore Kissel and
Erin Vigneau and the co-published by the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of
the New York Botanical Library.
This monograph
allows nonspecialists to identify architectural drawing reproduction methods
without access to chemical analysis, based on visual examination and a
helpful flow chart. Identification of drawing media is often difficult
but important for holdings management, proper cataloging, dating, and
to make sure the drawings survive with appropriate maintenance and housing
techniques.
Both authors
are experienced professional conservators that have, with the support
and advice of the Mertz Library, brought together a large body of information
on architectural drawings that is critically important for the archivist
and the conservator.
This 128-page
manual covers commonly used architectural reproduction processes from
1860-1990. The forward by Lois Olcott Price puts the creation and need
for architectural photoreproductions into an historical context. This
is followed by a flowchart developed by Kissel and Vigneau to help the
user identify individual print types using visual clues. Once tentatively
identified, the flow chart directs the user to specific sections where
each process is described. In addition, the appendices are rich in supplementary
information.
The authors
along with the Mertz Library have developed an innovative methodology
that is easy to understand. This monograph is a major contribution to
archival and preservation literature where there has been little published
in this subject area. Judith Reed, conservator/librarian at the Mertz
Library, received the award on behalf of the winners.
Philip
M. Hamer and Elizabeth Hamer-Kegan Award
Honoring
two SAA Fellows and former SAA presidents, the Philip M. Hamer and Elizabeth
Hamer-Kegan Award recognizes an archivist, editor, group of individuals,
or institution that has increased public awareness of a specific body
of documents through compilation, transcription, exhibition, or public
presentation of archives or manuscript materials for educational, instructional,
or other public purpose. The award was established in 1973.
JEFFREY
D. MARSHALL is the winner of the 2000 Hamer-Kegan Award for his publication,
A War of the People: Vermont Civil War Letters, published by University
Press of New England, which documents the lives and attitudes of rank-and-file
Vermont soldiers. It portrays the concerns--large and small--of the men
who fought that war and the time that served simultaneously as a backdrop
to and chief participant in their affairs. A War of the People
stands as an example of today's best historiography--one that presents
history in the context of real human lives. This book is also extraordinary
because, throughout its pages, it alludes to a secondary cast of characters--the
archival material Marshall labored over for four years. His exhaustive
treatment of a vast amount of primary records, including over 9,000 letters,
photographs, and artifacts, cannot but impress upon the reader the eloquence
found in archival evidence. A noted archivist, Marshall provides extensive
information about the record groups and repositories he consulted.
In the
true spirit of the Hamer-Kegan Award, A War of the People engagingly
draws attention to information available in archival materials and presents
a public forum to celebrate history.
Waldo
Gifford Leland Award
The Waldo
Gifford Leland Award recognizes "writing of superior excellence and usefulness
in the field of archival history, theory, or practice." Established in
1959, the Leland Award is named for one of America's archival pioneers
and SAA's second president. The 2000 Leland Award goes to Charles Dollar
for his fine monograph, Authentic Electronic Records: Strategies for
Long-Term Access, published by Cohasset Associates, Inc. The work
offers a clear and comprehensive look at the complex issues involved in
providing continued access to archival electronic records.
Authentic
Electronic Records succeeds on three important counts. First, its
enlightened delineation of the concepts involved includes a first-rate "Technology Primer for Archivists and Records Managers." Second,
it offers real solutions in the form of access strategies, best practices,
and recommended
guidelines that can be employed in a variety of institutional settings.
And finally, it sets a research agenda for the future that will help
strengthen
our ability to manage the preservation of these records over time. Authentic
Electronic Records is a timely work. Charles Dollar has moved this
urgent conversation into the twenty-first century.
Certificate
of Commendation
Members
of the Leland Award subcommittee this year have taken the unusual step
of awarding a special certificate of commendation to Patricia Kennedy
Grimsted of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute for her extraordinary
achievement in bringing to publication the monumental two-volume work,
Archives of Russia: A Directory and Bibliographic Guide to Holdings
in Moscow and St. Petersburg. As editor of this English language edition,
published by M.E. Sharpe, Grimsted has produced a comprehensive guide
to the holdings of hundreds of repositories, public and private, in Russia's
two great cities.
With its
exhaustive entries providing repository histories, narrative descriptions
of holdings, indications of working conditions for researchers, and
listings
and descriptions of all available finding aids, the guide will serve
scholars of Russia and her history for years to come. As one member
of the Leland
Award subcommittee noted: "It is almost superhuman to have collected this
information about an archival system as large and as complex as Russia's." And
so for her superhuman achievement, we honor Patricia Grimsted with an
SAA certificate of commendation.
Fellows'
Posner Award
In 1982,
the Fellows of the Society of American Archivists established the Fellows'
Posner Award to recognize outstanding work dealing with some facet of
archival administration, history, theory and/or methodology published
in the latest volume of the American Archivist. The award is named
for SAA Fellow and former president Ernst Posner. In evaluating volume
61 of the journal, this year's awards subcommittee has selected Peter
J. Wosh's review essay, "Going Postal," as the award winner.
The witty
and wise essay places the contemporary information revolution in the
historical context of the political wrangling, the public debate, the
consumer controversy
and the corporate rivalry displayed in the growth of mail service in
the United States. He draws a variety of provocative parallels between
the
postal service and the Internet. The postal delivery of mail order catalogs
in the post-Civil War era created a "a virtual marketplace without walls."
The nineteenth century Comstock Laws to eliminate obscene materials from
the mails are not unlike the current Congressional efforts to curb pornographic
Web sites. Perhaps the most attention-grabbing analogy is the comparison
of the antebellum white woman and "the lush roundness and ornate letters
of [her] Spencerian script" with the contemporary listserv lurkers and
chatroom addicts. Both the postal service and the Internet have provoked
debates over equal access to information, the relationship between private
enterprise and public policy, the free flow of information, and the creation
of "virtual communities." As he examines the information policy issues
for the nineteenth century communication systems with the similarities
to those of the twenty-first century, for Peter, the past is indeed prologue.
Oliver
Wendell Holmes Award
The 2000
Oliver Wendell Holmes Award is presented to Professor ZHOU XIAOMU
from Renmin University in Beijing, China. The award, established in 1979,
enables foreign archivists already in the United States or Canada to attend
the SAA annual meeting. Prof. Zhou is an associate professor in the School
of Information at Renmin University, where she teaches and conducts research
on information management systems and computer application technology.
She has written extensively in these areas and has translated several
essential English language works on electronic records into Chinese. She
has also designed and developed information management systems for several
corporations in China's burgeoning enterprise sector and for government
agencies and organizations.
Xiaomu
currently is a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan, headquartered
at the Bentley Historical Library, when she isn't auditing classes at
Michigan's School of Information. Her purpose in coming to the U.S. was
primarily to develop an electronic records management curriculum, which
she will teach at Renmin University beginning in 2001. Xiaomu's knowledge
of and skills in management information systems and computer applications
have allowed her to contribute to the work of the Bentley Library and
she has shared her expertise with staff and students alike. While learning
much about archival principles and techniques in America, she has also
become a tremendous resource on international practices on electronic
records. An acute observer of educational methods in America, she plans
to incorporate the best of what she has observed into her own teaching
of graduate students at Renmin University. In honoring Prof. Zhou with
the Holmes Award, we also honor SAA Fellow and former SAA president Oliver
Wendell Holmes, an activist in international archival affairs and a promoter
of SAA's international outreach efforts.
Theodore
Calvin Pease Award
The 2000
Theodore Calvin Pease Award winner, entitled "Analysis of Remote Reference
Correspondence at a Large Academic Manuscripts Collection," was written
by KRISTIN E. MARTIN as a master's paper for Professor Helen Tibbo
at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The paper analyzes letter, telephone, fax,
and e-mail correspondence sent to the Southern Historical Collection at
Chapel Hill for the years 1995 and 1999. The study shows how changing
technologies are affecting not only the quantity of the remote reference
inquiries received by archival repositories, but also their nature. The
Pease Award Committee was impressed with the research design and data
gathering system used in the paper. It addresses an issue of high relevance
for the archival community, and its research design can serve as a helpful
model for future user studies. The study evidences the careful scholarship,
clear presentation, and thoughtful analysis that make it a worthy recipient
of the Pease Award.
Established
in 1987, the Theodore Calvin Pease Award is named for the first editor
of the American Archivist and is given to the best student paper
as judged by the current editor of the American Archivist and two
individuals with expertise in archival research and literature. Kristen's
paper will be published in the winter/spring 2001 issue of the American
Archivist.
Colonial
Dames Scholarship Award
The Colonial
Dames Scholarship award enables two young professionals each year to attend
the Modern Archives Institute at the National Archives. The applicants
must have been employed less than two years in the profession and be an
employee of an archival institution or agency with a fair percentage of
its holdings from the colonial period, predating 1825. Established in
1974, the award is funded by the Colonial Dames of America (Chapter III,
Washington, D.C.).
The awardee
chosen for the institute's spring cycle was CHRISTINE MORELAND-BRUHNKE.
Christine has a bachelor of arts in anthropology and works at the Rio
Grande Historical Collections where she is writing and revising collection
finding aids for the Online Archive of New Mexico. Christine was unable
to be with us today but wanted to thank us for the opportunity to attend
the institute.
G. MARIE
ROGERS is the Kentucky Guide Program Coordinator at the Kentucky State
Archives. She received her undergraduate degree from Berea College and
an M.L.S. from the University of Kentucky. Marie had the good fortune
of attending the institute's winter cycle during one of the few snow storms
that blanketed the Washington Metropolitan area. She told the SAA awards
subcommittee that she enjoyed the institute despite the snow!
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