Architectural Records Roundtable 2005 Meeting Minutes

Architectural Records Roundtable 2005 Meeting Minutes

Introductions

Beth Dodd ran the meeting and started by introducing herself and Ardys Kozbial, co-chairs of the roundtable. After the liaisons gave their announcements, each person identified himself or herself by name and institution. There were 25 people in attendance. Beth reminded everyone to sign in on the sheet that was passed around the room.

Roundtable Business:

Liaison Reports

Aimee Felker, Council

Aimee is the ARR's new representative to council and she introduced herself to the group.
Aimee reminded the co-chairs to send changes in leadership to Nancy Beaumont. [8/26/2005. Request was sent by Carlos Salgado and ARR has sent in its changes.]
Aimee reminded the co-chairs to send the sign-up sheet from the meeting to SAA. SAA keeps track of meeting attendance in order to plan for the size of room each group will need.
Aimee read the top level statements from the SAA President's Strategic Priorities Issue Statements. [The document will be sent to the ARR in a separate message from these minutes.] The three strategic issues statements, at the top level, are as follows:
Strategic Issue 1: Technology. Changing information technology challenges archival principles, practices, and competencies, threatening to diminish the relevance of archivists.
Strategic Issue 2: Diversity. The relevance of archives to society and the completeness of the national record hinge in part on the profession's success in ensuring that its members and the holdings of American repositories reflect more fully the diversity of society as a whole.
Strategic Issue 3: Public Support. Although the public values history, it does not connect archives with historical knowledge and therefore does not support archival programs.
Aimee reminded the group that SAA Council meets 4 times per year and that the budget setting meeting is in February.

Michael Bullington, 2006 Program Committee

The next annual meeting will be a joint meeting including SAA, NAGARA (National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators) and COSHRC (Council of State Historical Records Coordinators) in Washington DC, July 31-August 6, 2006.
There is no stated theme. However, an important goal of the 2006 meeting is to broaden our perspectives and to focus on the commonalities between archivists and records managers working in different spheres. The Program Committee's call for proposals states, "The Committee actively seeks proposals that incorporate the concerns of those working in government settings and that address topics of concern to all the sponsoring groups. Proposals that address other aspects of contemporary archival theory and practice also are strongly encouraged and welcome." The Program Committee expects the process to be competitive.
Because the other groups do not have policies for endorsing proposals, endorsements will be suspended for 2006.
Update on endorsements. At the 2005 annual meeting, a group petitioned Council to look at the process of endorsing session proposals. Council discussed the petition and agreed that the endorsement process during the 2004 proposal period was confusing. For the 2007 annual meeting, each section and roundtable will be allowed to endorse two proposals. Additionally, Council wanted to make clear that endorsement from a section or roundtable does not guarantee that the proposed session will be accepted. Endorsement is one factor among many that are considered by the Program Committee.
The deadline for session proposal submissions is Friday, October 7, 2005.
Please send session proposals to Program Committee Co-Chair Robert Horton ( robert.horton@mnhs.org ) electronically. Proposal forms may be found on the SAA web site at http://www.archivists.org/conference/dc2006/proposals2006.asp

Liz Konzak, Diversity Committee

The Diversity Committee is working on Strategic Issue 2 (see above) in the areas of membership, increasing knowledge of scholarships and educational offerings.
The Diversity Committee is reminding SAA members to consider diversity in the widest sense possible and poses the question: what could this round table do to be more diverse.
Leadership of the Diversity Committee can be found on the SAA web site at http://www.archivists.org/governance/leaderlist-unit.asp?catID=9&subcatID=84 The purpose of the Diversity Committee can be found on the SAA web site at http://www.archivists.org/governance/handbook/diversity_com.asp

Beth Bilderback, Visual Materials (VM) Section

Thank you Beth for agreeing to another year's service as the ARR liaison to the VM section.
Beth takes ARR concerns to the VM section and she makes sure that the ARR is represented in the VM Section newsletter.
Beth is the editor of the Architectural Records Column in Views (the VM Section newsletter). Send architecture-related announcements, events, projects, etc to Beth at bilderbk@gwm.sc.edu Beth also sends reminders to the ARR list when each Views deadline is approaching.
The VM Section dinner is on Thursday, August 18 at Mother's. Meet in the hotel lobby across from the SAA registration desk at 7 pm.
The VM Section meeting is Friday, August 19, 12-2 pm. Bring your lunch.

Ardys Kozbial, Standards Committee

At the 2004 annual meeting, Tawny Ryan Nelb chose to step down as ARR's liaison to the Standards Committee. Ardys found it hard to determine expectations for this liaison role and decided to take it on herself to gather information.
The commitment this year was attendance at the Standards Committee's annual meeting at the conference. At that meeting the Standards Committee had a brain-storming session about the proposed Standards Portal project. The Standards Portal is envisioned as a web-based gathering of information about archival standards. As it stands at this annual meeting, the home page for the portal would reside on the SAA server. Standards would be divided into clusters mirroring archival activity (these clusters have not been finalized): archival administration, records management and appraisal, arrangement and description, preservation, access. Each cluster would be managed - both content and the web site - by a defined group. The bran-storming session considered options for management of these web sites - from content to policies to procedures to ways of monitoring the sites.
After the meeting, Annemarie Van Roessel from the Avery Library at Columbia University volunteered to serve as the ARR's liaison to the Standards Committee through the 2006 annual meeting.

Nomination/election of Co-Chairs for 2005/2006.

Ardys is running for the position of Chair Elect of the Visual Materials Section and is stepping away from her duties as Co-Chair of the ARR. Beth sent a message to the distribution list asking for nominations or volunteers. Laura Tatum, who is working on project to process Eero Saarinen's papers at Yale University responded. Beth said that she would continue if there were no other nominations. There were no nominations from the floor. The group declared approval of Beth and Laura as co-chairs of the roundtable by acclamation. The Roundtable thanks Ardys Kozbial for her committed service since 2002.

ARR web site .

The roundtable is still looking for a volunteer to be its webmaster. Beth and Ardys have envisioned the site as a resource for roundtable members, consisting of static pages. Content would include links to repositories, possibly repository descriptions, frequently asked questions, sites about preservation of architectural materials and the like.

The UNESCO archives portal was mentioned and it can be found at http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=5761&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

Email distribution list .

The ARR's listserv has moved to the SAA server as of July 2005. To subscribe to the listserv go to http://www.archivists.org/listservs/index.asp#roundtables Moving to the SAA server should alleviate spam problems. The subject line of messages from this listserv should begin with [archrecs]. You may post messages to the list if you are a member (ie if your email address is on the list). Contact Beth Dodd or Laura Tatum with questions; if they don't have the answer, they may refer you to Brian Doyle, SAA" Director of Member and Technical Services.

As of July 2005, the ARR has 97 members.

Announcements

The architecture session for this year is "Using Architectural Records in New Orleans"; it will be held on Thursday, August 18, 9:45-11:15 am. Description of the session is as follows: With New Orleans as the canvas, the peculiarities and particulars of architectural records and research are examined. An architect and an architectural historian describe their work in building restoration and house research, respectively, while the archivist from the New Orleans Notarial Archives, the only United States repository dedicated to notarial records and home to a genre of architectural drawings unique to the city and its civil law tradition, addresses the challenges of these treasures. Speakers are Ann Wakefield, Archivist, New Orleans Notarial Archives; Robby Cangelosi, AIA, Architect, Koch and Wilson Architects. and Judy Bethea, House Historian.

Martha Mahard, Chair of the Visual Materials Cataloging and Access Roundtable reminded the group about the roundtable's meeting on Thursday, August 18, 4-5:40 pm.

Beth Dodd announced that a group would be meeting at 9 am on Friday, August 18 in front of the Concierge Desk to go together to the New Orleans Notarial Archives' open house. [8/19/2005. Eight people gathered and were received warmly by Ann Wakefield at the Notarial Archives to view some incredible records and listen to Ann's informative descriptions of them.]

COPAR newsletters. Helena Zinkham reported that all of the COPAR newsletters have been scanned by the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. They are now contained in one huge .PDF file and LC is working on how to break up the file into logical chunks. They are rescanning the index and will put out a call for unbound issues if they are necessary for rescanning. URL: http://lcweb4.loc.gov/natlib/becites/prints/copar/COPARnews.pdf

Although neither Waverly Lowell nor Tawny Ryan Nelb were in attendance, each sent an update about their book via email. The working title is Architectural Records: Managing Design and Construction Records . They are looking at galleys now and have been told that the publication date is spring 2006.

Environmental Design Archives, UC Berkeley. (from Waverly Lowell via email). The EDA is working closely to produce the +Berkeley/Design/Books series. Edited by UC Berkeley Architecture Professor Marc Treib and published by William Stout Books, these scholarly studies will vary in scope, from analyzing particular works to examining broad issues; each will be heavily illustrated with selections from the Archives' holdings.

The International Confederation of Architecture Museums / North America (ICAM/NA) will be meeting in Chicago on October 20-23, 2005. The ICAM web site can be found at http://www.icam-web.org/e/news.htm . Contact Mary Woolever ( mwoolever@artic.edu ) at the Art Institute of Chicago for more information about the fall meeting.

Nancy Loe from CalPoly San Luis Obispo reported that there was position restored in her department. In addition, they received NEH funding to process their collection of Julia Morgan's papers, including architectural drawings. They have chosen to process the Morgan papers and are reprocessing some of their collections using "Standard Series for Architecture and Design Records," by Kelcy Shepherd and Waverly Lowell. Nancy is looking for input from others who are using the Standard Series for processing their collections. Beth Dodd endorsed the Standard Series stating that she also uses it in communicating to potential donors the types of records that they collect. The standard series was applied to the O'Neil Ford collection- a very large collection of diverse records that had very little original order. See the finding aid at: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/utaaa/00059/aaa-00059p1.html.

Projects:
Environmental Design Archives, UC Berkeley (from Waverly Lowell via email).

In December 2004, the Environmental Design Archives (EDA) wrapped up work on "The Moderns: Arrangement and Description of Bay Region Architectural Archives", a two-year, NEH-funded project to process and preserve the papers of architects William Wurster / WBE (Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons) and William Turnbull, Jr. / MLTW (Moore, Lyndon, Turnbull & Whitaker) and landscape architects Garrett Eckbo and Robert Royston. Another component of the NEH-funded project was the digitization of nearly 500 drawings, photographs, and documents from the four collections. Check out the project level digital images at http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=tf8k40079x&doc.view=items.
Dayna Holz has joined the EDA staff as the archivist on a Getty Foundation-funded project to process the records of architect Arthur Brown Jr. (collection dates ca. 1906-1956). She will be working with Betsy Frederick-Rothwell who was also the assistant architect on the NEH project.

Session Proposal Ideas

Reminders. Anyone can propose a session; a proposal does not have to originate in a section or a roundtable. The co-chairs ask that if do you propose a session related to architecture, please let them know. That can help prevent duplication of effort. Tips for preparing a successful session proposal are available on the SAA website at http://www.archivists.org/conference/proposals101/.

Ideas discussed:

Office of the Architect of the Capitol
Records management of architectural records
Historic records that are used for current building management
Documenting monuments. Projects mentioned were the Flight93 monument, which has kept all proposals for the memorial; the Viet Nam Memorial; the Oklahoma City memorial. Consider records management issues involved with all of these.
Using old records to inform current renovations. Pick a renovation or restoration project and consider all of the records used to inform that project.
Other items included suggestions for tours in Washington, such as: the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Center for Architecture, Design and Engineering, the National Gallery Archives, American Institute of Architects, and National Building Museum