Architectural Records Roundtable 2004 Meeting Minutes

Architectural Records Roundtable 2004 Meeting Minutes

SAA Architectural Records Roundtable (ARR)

SAA annual meeting, Boston, Mass.

Thursday, August 5, 2004, 5:30-7 pm

Introductions

Beth Dodd ran the meeting and started by introducing herself and Ardys Kozbial, co-chairs of the roundtable. Each person identified himself or herself by name and institution. There were 38 people in attendance. Beth reminded everyone to sign in on the sheet that was passed around the room.

Beth gave a definition and purpose of the roundtable. The ARR's official description which is posted on the SAA web site is as follows: [The ARR] provides a forum for members to discuss issues related to access and management of architectural records and related fields.

Roundtable business

Liaison reports

· Danna Bell-Russell, Outgoing Council Liaison.

Introduction of the ARR's incoming Council Liaison, Peter Gottlieb
SAA's statement about the Patriot Act is on the SAA web site.
The deadline for section and roundtable annual reports is Dec.31, 2004.
SAA council has modified the amount of money that sections and roundtables may spend without SAA approval. The amount is $100. There is to be no fundraising by sections and roundtables without SAA approval.
Section newsletters are now produced only in an electronic format. Individuals who want to receive paper copies of section newsletters should get in touch with the section chair. ARR news appears in the Visual Materials Section newsletter which is called Views. (see report from Beth Bilderback below)
Program issues. SAA is trying to give more guidance to people submitting session proposals. Suggestions and hints for preparing a successful session proposal are available on the SAA web site at http://www.archivists.org/conference/proposals101/ . The endorsement process seems to be problematic and warrants more discussion.
The NHPRC is in financial trouble and SAA is asking for letters of support to be sent to congresspeople, especially those who sit on the operations committee.

· Todd Daniels-Howell, 2005 Program Committee.

Create and submit proposals.
Tips on strengthening proposals can be found on the SAA web site (see URL above). Completeness is important. Remember that the Program Committee often receives up to 120 proposals for 60 session slots.
Proposal forms can be found on the SAA web site at http://www.archivists.org/conference/proposals.asp
The deadline for session proposals is Friday, October 8, 2004 .

· Tawny Ryan Nelb, Standards Section.

Tawny has found communication in the Standards Committee to be problematic and she has chosen to step down as liaison to this committee. [Ardys will find out more about the duties and expectations of the liaison to Standards Committee from the new committee chair before looking for a new liaison from the ARR members.]

· Beth Bilderback, Visual Materials Section and newsletter liaison.

Beth takes ARR concerns to the VM section and she makes sure that the ARR is represented in the VM Section newsletter.
Send articles and announcements to Beth at BILDERBK@gwm.sc.edu . Beth will send notice of newsletter deadlines to the ARR distribution list.
Everyone please take note that for the first time in a long time, the ARR and the VM section meetings are not competing with each other. Last year, the section and the roundtable asked council and the program committee to make sure that these 2 groups were not competing since there is so much overlap in membership.

Thank you and a formal recognition of Mary Woolever, Archivist at the Ryerson & Burnham Archives for her participation and direction in the mammoth effort of incorporating the Burnham Index to Architectural Literature into the Avery Index to Architecture Periodicals.

Thank you to those who participated in sessions this year, particularly "Managing Architecture and Design Records in Electronic Formats." This session, endorsed by ARR, will be held on Sat, August 7, 1-2:30 pm. The session chair is Ardys Kozbial and the speakers are Tawny Ryan Nelb, Nora Zaldivar and Kristine Fallon. Everyone is encouraged to attend.

A special thank you to Anthony Reed and the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site for hosting a pre-conference reception, a joint event with the Museum Archives Section.

Nomination/election of Chair and Vice Chair for 2004/2005. Beth sent a message to the distribution list asking for nominations or volunteers for the position of co-chair of the ARR for the coming year. There were no nominations or volunteers. Beth asked for nominations or volunteers at the annual meeting. Membership voiced that they are pleased with Ardys and Beth co-chairing the session and moved that the ARR would like them to continue. The motion was seconded. A voice vote was taken. All approved. No opposition. No abstentions.

Pursuing "best practice" status for "Standard Series for Architecture and Design Records," by Kelcy Shepherd and Waverly Lowell. The ARR voted to pursue steps with the Standards Committee to have SAA officially endorse this book as a "best practice." An oral vote was taken. There were two abstentions and the rest approved.

The ARR is looking for a web master to start up a web site. Nancy Hadley, AIA archivist will talk to Beth after the meeting.

Announcements

Distribution list.

· Waverly Lowell, UC Berkeley, suggested using the distribution list to help researchers. Distribution list participants should feel free to send a message to the list looking for an architects papers (eg does anyone know the whereabouts of Jane Smith's drawings?).

· There are 81 people on the distribution list.

Helena Zinkham. The COPAR newsletter will be scanned by the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. LC has applied for funding for this effort.

Waverly Lowell, UC Berkeley, announced that the Environmental Design Archives' (EDA) project lists are now available as both EAD-encoded finding aids and Excel spreadsheets. Searching for one of the EDA finding aids in the Online Archive of California ( http://www.oac.cdlib.org/ ), for example Julia Morgan, retrieves the EAD-encoded version which shows the user an "endless scroll" of project names. Looking at the web page about Julia Morgan on the EDA site ( http://www.ced.berkeley.edu/cedarchives/listcoll.html ), the user finds the projects in an Excel spreadsheet, which is easier to read than the finding aid.

Projects

Nathaniel Parks, Art Institute of Chicago. With funding from the Mellon Foundation, The Ryerson & Burnham Archives has begun to put its finding aids online. They are interested receiving comments and critiques of their beta EAD site: http://www.artic.edu/aic/libraries/rbarchives/rbarchives.html . Send comments to Nathaniel Parks at nparks@artic.edu . Feedback on the following issues is especially helpful:

· Clarity of visual appearance

· Clarity of navigation

· Ease of finding what you're looking for:

Basic search
Advanced search
Search within individual finding aid

· Speed to load pages

· Were the results clearly presented?

· What confused you?

· What did you like?

· What were you looking for, but didn't find, either as functionality of the pages or in the content/results of your searches?

Ellen Zazzarino, Denver Public Library. The Denver Public Library has received grants to process six architectural collections.

Tawny Ryan Nelb, Nelb Archival Consulting. Tawny has made more of her "Media and Support Charts" and has them available for sale. Tawny makes these charts from pieces of drawings that are being discarded. Each laminated card has approximately 10 sample pieces of drawings along with physical descriptions. For example, for a blueprint, there is a sample of a blueprint and a physical description of it. These charts are good to have around for students, volunteers and anyone who may be new to identifying the wide variety of architectural drawing formats.

Tawny and Waverly have been working on the "Manual on Architectural Records" which will be part of the SAA Basic series. Publication is set for 2005. It's hard to publish a book about architectural records without color, so Tawny and Waverly have been working very hard on that front. They have already received funding from Graham Foundation and are looking to Getty for additional money.

Session Proposal Ideas

1. The 1884 and 1984 World's Fairs were in New Orleans. Architectural records and World's Fairs. (Gerry Schaad)

2. Waverly has been asked to participate on a panel about women in a men's world.

3. Historic Preservationists and Architects working together.

4. Appraisal of 20 th century nonelectronic records.

5. New Orleans architecture (Ardys)

Other items

Tour suggestions.

· Historic New Orleans

· Tulane

· A National Trust for Historic Preservation site

· A mansion that is on a river boat tour

Suggestion for the Visual Materials Section Advanced Workshop Committee. 3-day workshop about the preservation of architectural records including photographs.

Ask SAA Council about spreading out section and roundtable meetings. There are so many competing with each other that it's hard to get to any one of them.

Nancy Hadley, Archivist at the AIA says that architects are looking for records management advice.